Twenty-Three
I NEVER GOT a chance to talk to Hutch that night.
Instead, just at the height of everything, Sullivan, who had been both sulking all night about not getting included in the family dinner and self-medicating with prosecco, started throwing up.
She threw up on the lawn right next to me, but as The Gals swooped in to help take her back to her cottage, she stopped them.
“No,” she said, drunkenly. “I want Tracy.”
We all looked around, trying to figure out who Tracy might be, until Sullivan pointed at me.
I put my hand on my chest. “I’m Katie ,” I said.
“Whatever,” Sullivan said.
Every single one of The Gals offered to take charge of that moment, but Sullivan wasn’t having it. “Tracy only,” she declared.
What could I do? She was my boss.
As I helped her across the lawn toward her cabin, I said, “Should you be drinking like this? You’ve barely recovered from sun poisoning.”
“My plan was to drink every single night,” Sullivan said. “So I’m behind schedule.”
Too little, too late anyway.
I hoped to drop her off, set her up with a glass of water and some Tylenol, and get back to the far more interesting spectacle of the brothers duking out their long-held resentments at last. But as soon as we got inside, Sullivan started crying—those big, earth-shaking, all-is-lost tears that you only have when way too much prosecco has removed all your inhibitions.
“I hate my life,” Sullivan sobbed as I helped her wash her face and brush her teeth. “How did it wind up like this?”
“Things will get better,” I said, finding her baby-doll PJs in her suitcase and helping her into them. “Life isn’t a straight line. It’s always ups and downs. That’s just how it goes.”
“I don’t want the downs!” Sullivan protested, sounding much more sober. “I only want the ups!”
“Nobody wants the downs,” I told her. “But they’re good for you.”
Sullivan squinted at me, all skeptical, as I hitched up under her shoulder and walked her toward the bed. “Easy for you to say—over there, doing fine.”
“Are you kidding?” I said, handing her a glass of water and two Tylenol. “I’m doing the opposite of fine.”
She looked at me like she was expecting proof.
So I said, “My fiancé cheated on me with a pop star, I might be about to lose my job, I got ridiculed online for being frumpy, I’m a terrible swimmer, I’m in love with someone who hates me, and I’ve gotten trapped in a web of lies—none of which I told. Not lately, anyway. But all of which I’ll be punished for!”
“Wow,” she said, starting to look tired. “Your life is worse than mine.”
“Probably.”
“Let’s be best friends, then,” she said, as I helped tilt her down to her pillow and then pulled up the covers.
“I’ll be your best friend,” I said, “if you won’t fire me.”
“Deal,” she said.
And then she lifted her hand from under the covers and held it out for me to shake.
Which—what the heck—I went ahead and did.
She’d never remember, anyway.
BY THE TIME I got back outside, Hutch was gone.
Only Cole remained—alone. In a pool chair. Surrounded by The Gals as they tended to his swollen eye and busted lip.
“Where’s Hutch?” I asked.
“He left,” Cole said, as Ginger opened up the first-aid kit.
“He left? For where?”
But Cole shrugged. “Didn’t say. He just took off.”
Hutch left?
I mean, granted, it had been a couple of hours, but Hutch had, just tonight, learned that I was single. I got that his first order of business—mid-fight and all—might be addressing that long-standing beef with his brother. But I really had been assuming the whole time that his second order of business would be…
Throwing me over his shoulder and carrying me off to bed.
Or something.
Now that I was officially… available.
Out of a million possibilities, I would never have predicted Hutch going home without even saying goodbye .
I would have expected a moment of closure, at least.
But then I wondered if maybe Hutch had pretended to go home but was actually waiting for me at my cottage. There was more than one way to get a moment of closure.
I pointed at Cole, who had been sleeping on the floor of my place for the last two nights. “You,” I said, “find somewhere else to sleep tonight.”
Right? Just in case.
“What?” Cole protested. “Where?”
“I’m sure Aunt Rue will take you in,” I said. “Or one of The Gals.”
“But all my stuff is there!”
“I’ll put it out on the porch.”
BACK AT MY cottage, alas—no Hutch.
No texts or missed calls, either.
I put Cole’s stuff out, anyway.
I tried to call Hutch, but no answer. I sent a text, and then several more. I left a ton of voicemails. Finally, I borrowed Rue’s car to drive to the marina, where there was no sign of him. And when I ran out of ideas…
I called Beanie.
“Stop trying to make contact,” Beanie said. “It’s getting embarrassing. I’m embarrassed just hearing about it, and I’m not even you.”
“But he didn’t say goodbye!”
“I get that it’s anticlimactic—”
“I need closure!” I wailed, in a tone that reminded me of Sullivan.
“—but you’re just going to have to wait.”
“But everything got revealed—and then he just left !”
“Maybe he’s having a work emergency,” Beanie said, like the calm voice of reason. “Maybe he’s injured from the fight. Maybe he needs some time to take it all in.”
Okay. I hadn’t thought of a work emergency. That had potential.
“Whatever it is,” Beanie said, “ten more voicemails won’t change it.”
“Beanieeeee,” I whined. “Where’s your fighting spirit?”
“It went to bed two hours ago. And then you woke it up.”
“Sorry.”
“I get it. There’s a lot to process. Give the poor man a minute—and take one for yourself, too. Wash your face, put on your softest PJs, and go to bed. Everything’s always better in the morning.”
BUT THINGS WEREN’T better in the morning.
Hutch was still hardcore unavailable.
And everybody else was suddenly unavailable, too.
Cole and Sullivan were nowhere to be found, and even when I knocked on Sullivan’s door to check on her hangover, I got no answer. Rue and The Gals left early to go antiquing on Sugarloaf Key, and Beanie had an eight A.M. client meeting. Not to mention, in the wake of the internet being mean to me, I had decided to take a technology break and deleted all my social media.
So it was just me, and the breeze, and the Starlite swimming pool alone together all day.
I hoped against hope that Hutch might show up for our standard swim lesson that day, but he didn’t. I waited thirty minutes, and sent a hopeful text that just said: Still on for swimming?
And then I got into the pool alone.
Alone, and uninformed.
Apparently, there was some kind of storm that had been brewing in the Atlantic for the past few days that I’d been totally unaware of.
The Starlite felt like a ghost town that day—and that was another reason why. Even though the storm was supposed to make landfall much farther north, closer to Orlando, most of Rue’s Vrbo guests had canceled their trips.
So things were extra quiet.
For posterity, here are the thoughts I was having that day, as Hurricane Rafael was gathering strength in the Atlantic without my knowledge:
Hutch had every right to feel however he felt. I had gotten myself embroiled in a nasty sibling rivalry. I had pretended—under duress, but still—for three straight days that I was dating his brother… who I barely even liked. You could say that I just hadn’t volunteered the truth, but there was no question I’d deceived him—and helped his brother mess with his head.
I’d had my reasons, of course, but still.
He had every right to not say goodbye. And to not call. And he might detest me now, fair and square.
But that didn’t change the fact that I was in love with him.
The way I was missing him. The way I couldn’t stop longing for him. The way my thoughts, and my heart, and my entire body were completely capsized by everything that had just happened… there was no other explanation. Based on misery alone, it just had to be love.
I KNEW I didn’t have much time. But I had much less time than I thought.
When I showed up at the air station the next day, blithely unaware of the looming weather crisis, the place was all business.
At some point overnight, Hurricane Rafael had apparently whipped himself into a Category Four hurricane and shifted course—now headed for Miami, not Orlando—sooner, faster, and angrier than expected. Landfall was now expected in twenty-four hours, not thirty-six, and the air station crews were doing all preparations possible so they’d be ready to render aid after the worst had passed.
So much for my technology break.
Points to Beanie for calling it. Hutch was having a work emergency.
I’d been bobbing around in an empty pool, lovelorn and full of regret—while Hutch was preparing to rescue a massive American city from a major hurricane.
Category Four hurricanes, as defined on the Saffir-Simpson Scale, have sustained winds up to 157 miles per hour, in case you’re wondering.
I googled it, obviously.
So, yeah: I was maybe not quite as top-of-mind for Hutch as he was for me.
Once I got to the air station, he was there—but I barely saw him. And when I did catch a glimpse, he didn’t see me, or talk to me—or even seem to register that I was present.
As if I was already long forgotten.
I got it.
Of course I was forgotten. Hutch had genuine, death-defying heroics to prepare for. I’d done enough research to know how hard the Coast Guard worked in the wake of hurricanes. They were the first responders as soon as the storm had passed.
Depending on the damage, Hutch could be saving lives, transporting people off rooftops, taking patients across the city, rescuing boaters, helping with evacuations, bringing in water and food, saving families and their pets—and anything else that needed doing—for weeks , taking the required hours between shifts to sleep and then heading out again, day in and day out.
Which begged the question: Did he hate me? Or was he just… busy ?
I might never know.
This was a real emergency.
One I truly couldn’t help with. At all. For many reasons. Not the least of which—I found out at the station in our first morning meeting—was that they were evacuating the Florida Keys.
“Why the keys?” I whispered to Omar, in the back. “This thing’s headed for Miami.”
“It shifted course again,” Omar whispered back.
Sure enough, it had. Now it was headed for Key Largo. Which, if you need a little help with geography, stood directly between us and the mainland.
I quietly panicked while the meeting continued—as the higher-ups laid out all the procedures and everyone got their orders. They were moving all their helicopters to Miami to wait out the storm, which seemed odd at first. But it made sense as I thought about it: if their equipment got damaged, they couldn’t help in the aftermath.
AS SOON AS the meeting was over, I walked to the hangar, looking for Hutch.
When I didn’t see him, I stood by the open doors and called Rue.
“We’re evacuating,” I told her, feeling like I had the inside scoop.
“Oh, we’re already on the road, sweetheart,” she said. “The Gals and I decided to take a road trip to Phoenix in Benita’s Suburban. No hurricanes there.”
“Brilliant,” I said.
“You should probably change your flight home. Everything out of Miami is getting canceled.”
“Good point,” I said.
“Try Tampa. Or Orlando. Take my car. Heck, if everything’s crazy, just drive it home to Texas.”
“Take your car?” I said.
“Bring it back eventually,” Rue said. Then, with affection, “I trust you.”
“So—is this it? I’m just—leaving? This feels very sudden.”
“Well, that’s how natural disasters can be.”
“I didn’t even get to say goodbye to you.”
“We’ll see each other again,” Rue said. Then she added, “But you should get going. The Overseas Highway is already filling up.”
“Okay,” I said. Then, “Rue?”
“Yes?”
“Thank you for everything.” And then I could hear a waver in my voice. “I loved living at the Starlite.”
“Come back anytime, sweetheart.”
I hung up, turned, and caught sight of Hutch, just as he caught sight of me.
He was in his flight suit, with a backpack over his shoulder and his aviators on, about to stride out to the airfield.
“What are you still doing here?” Hutch asked. “You should be on the road by now.”
“Are you leaving?” I asked.
Hutch looked over at the waiting helicopter out on the tarmac. “Yes.”
“What about George Bailey?” I asked.
“Lieutenant Alonso is driving all the animals up. They’ll stay with us.”
“It’s OK to bring pets?” I asked. He sure was all business.
“Not technically. But the XO there is pet-positive.”
“The XO?”
“Executive officer.”
“Ah.”
Was this the best we could do, conversationally? Didn’t we have some other topics to cover? Why were we defining military abbreviations right now?
Hutch assumed I was worried about the storm. “Don’t panic,” he said, “but you should leave now. Go back to the Starlite and load up your stuff, and then drive to the mainland. Get gas first. Head up as far from the coast as you can get before stopping for the night.”
“But…” I said, like a dummy. “I wasn’t supposed to leave for a week.”
“Well,” Hutch said, “everybody’s leaving now.”
“Yeah.”
Across the tarmac, the helicopter crew was waiting, watching Hutch like, Hurry up. Hutch glanced back at them.
“I want to say I’m sorry,” I blurted out then. “About how everything happened.”
Hutch just nodded. “Me, too.” Were we both sorry in the same way? I really couldn’t read his face in those glasses. I thought about reaching up to take them off.
Everyone was still waiting for him. He took another look at the helicopter, and then he said, “I’m sorry about this, too—but I’ve really gotta go.”
He held my gaze for one more second. Then, in slow motion, he turned and strode away.
I watched him go.
That was it? That was all? No goodbye? No closure of any kind? He was just going to tell me to evacuate and then fly off to Miami?
I never made a conscious choice to run after him. By the time I realized it was happening, I’d dropped all my stuff, and I’d launched into a full George Bailey–style gallop.
“Hutch!” I called, but he didn’t hear me over the noise of the bird.
I sprinted faster to catch up. “Hutch!” I called again, and this time I caught his wrist.
He turned back and looked at me.
The sight of him there—windblown and suited up for duty—kind of stopped my heart.
“Hutch!” I shouted over the whirring of the blades. “Do me a favor, okay?”
He was listening.
Even recounting it now, I can’t believe what I was about to do. All I can figure is that circumstances had raced out ahead of me, and my rational thinking hadn’t caught up. That’s the only way I could possibly have said what I said:
“Before you go—can you kiss me goodbye?”
“What?”
One more time, louder. “Kiss me goodbye!” I shouted.
Omar was waving his arms now for Hutch to hurry up.
Hutch glanced that way and then back to me. He still had his backpack over one shoulder and his helmet under his arm. Everybody was waiting. A hurricane was coming. What the hell was I thinking, chasing Hutch down the tarmac?
It was foolish. We hadn’t talked about anything or cleared anything up. We were surrounded by the chaos of half-truths and random explanations. I had no idea how he felt about me. But it did seem likely that I might evacuate, go home to Texas, and never see Hutch again. And if that’s how things were going to go… I wanted one last kiss.
The one I hadn’t been able to ask for before he knew the truth.
I braced for Hutch to shake his head.
Of course he would.
But then, instead, he took a step closer—and pulled me to him by the waist with his free arm, clamping me to him so tightly that I tilted backward. And then he gave me the only kind of kiss there was time for—or room for, or reason for. A no-time-for-chitchat kind of kiss. A you-asked-for-it-you-got-it kiss. A kiss churning with things unsaid. Intense. Melting. Just his arm clutching me tight, his mouth eclipsing all my racing thoughts, and the storm, and the future… all our time already borrowed. How long did it last? Three seconds, tops? But it was like emotional lightning—as if we’d stepped into a current of something bigger than both of us. Something vast, and awe-inspiring, and something I knew, even as it happened, that I would never—not ever—forget.
And then it was over.
He let go and took a step back.
I blinked at him for a second—breathless, my knees feeble, my heart slumped and panting against my ribs.
“There’s your kiss,” Hutch said with a nod, taking another step back. “Now get the hell out of here.”