Chapter 17
CARTER
I’ve almost finished the romance novel that I bought from Mia. I’m not the same person I was when I started it. I’ve taken my time on purpose because there are too many parallels between this fictional guy and me.
The hero just told the heroine he’s in love with her without explaining who he really is. He’s standing in his kitchen, making her coffee, rehearsing the confession in his head. I close the book and set it on the small table beside me.
It’s almost over—the book and my stay here. I officially have a month left.
After breakfast, the two of us are on the beach with our boards.
She kept her promise and is teaching me to surf.
The morning sun is bright, and the swells are gentle enough that Wendy told me we were doing a lesson.
I’m getting better, and I can almost stay on for thirty seconds before eating shit sideways.
Whether I stand or fall, she cheers me on from the shallows like I won a competition.
“Again,” she says, holding my board steady in waist-deep water.
“I need a minute.”
“You need to stop thinking so hard. Your body knows what to do.”
I waggle my brows at her.
She splashes me with a laugh. “Focus, Banks.”
We go for another hour. By the time she calls the lesson, my eyes burn, and my arms are jelly.
“You’re doing great,” she says.
“You’re being kind,” I tell her, brushing my pinkie against hers.
She smiles and glances away from me.
We walk the boards up to the rack behind the B&B, and she rinses them with a hose.
I take a real shower and a nap. When Wendy enters my room, it’s dark. I flick on the seashell lamp next to the bed. She sits, and I see the worn leather album and a small wooden box in her hands.
“What’s that?” I ask, sitting up right beside her.
“Something I want to show you.” She climbs onto the mattress and crosses her legs, setting everything in the space between us. “This is the original guest book.”
She flips the album open. The pages are yellowed, and the handwriting changes from entry to entry.
Some are in pen, and others are in pencil that’s barely legible from the years.
I lean against the headboard. The pages turn, and so do the decades.
There are names, hometowns, dates of stay.
Some of the entries are one line, while others fill the page.
“Read this one,” she says, pointing to an entry from 1983.
We came to Seaside because our marriage was falling apart. We left because it wasn’t anymore. Whatever is here, protect it. The world needs more places like this.
—David and Lacey Meredith, Savannah, Georgia
“There are hundreds of these stories.” She turns a few more pages.
“This couple came every year for fifteen years. This woman stayed for a month after her husband died and wrote that Gran had saved her life. This family brought three generations here for a reunion, and the grandmother said it was the first time she’d seen her grandchildren in four years. ”
Wendy opens the wooden box. Inside are folded letters, postcards, and photographs from guests who wrote years later to talk about how their stay at Seaside had changed their lives.
“Gran keeps every single one.” Wendy holds a faded postcard between her fingers. “She reads them when she’s having a bad day. She says the letters remind her why the house matters.”
I pick up a postcard from a woman in Ohio who stayed in the Seahorse Room in 2014. Four sentences thanking Gale for a conversation they had on the porch about grief. The ink is faded, and the edges are soft from being handled.
Wendy runs her finger along the spine of the album. “This place is alive, Carter. It holds people’s stories. Their worst moments and their best ones. That’s why I can’t let some corporation with a checkbook turn it into a resort with a rooftop pool and a cocktail menu. I don’t know what to do.”
She closes the album and rests her hand on the cover. “I want to be here in twenty years. I want my kids to grow up in this house the way my dad did. I want to sit on that porch when I’m Gran’s age and read letters from people whose lives changed because they had walked through the front door.”
She looks at me, and her eyes are bright. “I’m so scared I’m going to lose this.”
“Did something happen?”
“They called,” she whispers. “I heard their voices and how badly they want the property.”
I wrap my arm around her. “It won’t happen. Just stay strong. Okay?”
“I’m trying,” she admits. “Some days are so much harder than others.”
The postcard is still in my hand, and I wish there were something I could do. There is, but she’d never accept it.
“What can I do for you?”
“Just listen,” she says, leaning forward to kiss me.
“That I can do.”
She tastes like butterscotch and coffee.
“Thank you,” she says. “You calm my nervous system.”
“You might be the only person in the world who experiences that feeling around me.”
The thought makes me chuckle.
“Oh, so you really are an asshole outside of these walls?”
She puts the album and the box on the nightstand beside the romance novel and settles back against me. She presses her lips to my shoulder, then along my neck.
“Wendy.”
“Hmm?”
“I need to tell you something.”
She lifts her head and looks at me, waiting. The words are right there, but my mouth won’t open. I’ve rehearsed this a hundred times on the balcony at three in the morning, and right now, with her looking at me like that, I can’t start the sentence.
Her phone rings from the nightstand. She glances at it.
“Shit. It’s Gran.” She sits up. “Hold on.”
My hands unclench. The air comes back into my lungs. I hate how good it feels to be interrupted.
Wendy answers, and her eyes widen. “I didn’t answer my door because I’m not at the B&B right now,” she lies, lowering her voice.
I walk to the balcony and glance toward the bungalow. Gale stands in her living room.
“No, I’m not secretly dating anyone. On the beach? With who? They said what? He was tall and handsome. Right, Gran. And who fits that description?”
Someone must’ve seen us. My jaw tightens, and I grip the railing. A yacht skirts across the water in the distance.
“Carter? Do you really think he’d date me? Get real. Okay, I’ll be back later. Love you. Bye,” she says.
Wendy moves next to me, and I wrap my arm around her waist.
“They’re suspicious,” she says.
I thread my fingers through her hair and kiss her. “I hate hiding you.”
“Acting like a couple would cause too much attention,” she says. “I want to enjoy us, not be the talk of the town. Anyway, sorry about the interruption. You were going to say something.” She smiles.
She’s waiting for me to finish a sentence that could change everything between us.
“I forgot,” I say, leading her back inside.
She tilts her head. “Really?”
“Yeah.” I reach for her hand because holding it is easier than looking at her.
“The guest book got to you, didn’t it?”
“Kinda. There’s so much history in these walls.”
“I know. Sometimes, I think about all the people who have come and gone. I always wonder what happened to them after they left.” She squeezes my hand. “We still get tons of postcards.”
“The B&B really is a best-kept secret,” I mutter, pulling her onto the bed with me.
We lie here while the breeze blows through the curtains. My arm wraps around her.
“Fallon texted me seventeen times today,” she says.
“About?”
“You. Us.”
“What did you tell her?”
“To calm down. She doesn’t know the details, just that something happened.”
“It’s a little more than something,” I say.
Before we get too comfortable, my phone vibrates on the table next to me. It’s my best friend, Louis.
“Take it,” Wendy says, seeing the name. “You’ve been rejecting his calls all week.”
“Don’t be logical,” I say, and she reaches across me and answers the call, handing me the phone.
“Hey,” I say with a smile into the receiver.
“Wow. You are alive. I was getting ready to send a search party for you, my friend.” His accent thickens when he’s annoyed. “I thought maybe the island had swallowed you.”
“Don’t you have a wife you should be occupying?”
“I do. But I’d like to talk to you about something important.”
Wendy sips her wine.
“Sure, anything,” I say.
“I’d like you to be the godparent of baby Louis.”
“Oh, wow. I’m not great with kids, but yes, I’d make sure he was taken care of, and no one took advantage of him. I’d swear my life on that,” I say.
Louis laughs, and I hear him tell Addison. The two of them are giddy and expecting next month.
“How is Addison?”
“She’s perfect. Beautiful. Going to make a great mom. The love of my entire life.”
“Happy for you,” I say.
“Something is different.” He pauses. “Wait, are you seeing someone?”
Wendy sets her glass down. She walks over and settles into my lap, her legs across the armrest. Her head rests against my shoulder, and her fingers trace the collar of my shirt.
“Not sure what you’re talking about,” I say, inhaling the smell of her shampoo.
“You’re lying,” he says, and I often forget how well he knows me. “You sound like you did after Victoria.”
The name hasn’t been spoken in years. Victoria, who I came home to, only to find her cheating on me. She cried when I caught her. It’s been nine years, and Louis still knows it’s the wound that’s never fully healed.
“Don’t speak her name,” I say.
He lets my annoyance linger. “When does your vacation end?”
“August third.”
Saying it out loud changes the weight of it, and Wendy shifts against me. It’s one thing to think about it, but saying it makes it real.
“Coming to visit me after? I hope we’ll have a baby by then,” Louis says, and I can hear the smile in his voice.
“Of course. I’ll see you in Montclaire.”
“Can’t wait, my old friend,” he tells me. “Anyway, if Addison doesn’t have breakfast, she’s going to get cranky. I’m happy for you. Bring your girlfriend to Montclaire. I’d like to meet the woman who’s changed you.”
“Goodbye, Louis,” I say, and the call ends. I set the phone on the table.
Wendy is warm against me. The stars shine over the water.
“Who’s Victoria?” she asks.
“A woman I thought I’d marry,” I say, gulping down the rest of the wine in my glass.
“And what happened?” she asks.
“She cheated and tried to ruin my life,” I say.
“I’m sorry that happened. Selfishly, I’m glad it did,” Wendy says, capturing my lips and making me smile. “Because you’re here. With me. Right now.”
“Me too,” I tell her.
Even after the nap, I drift off with her in my arms. Surfing exhausted me, and Wendy’s been working nonstop to get ready for the event.
She shifts, which causes me to wake up. I carefully carry her to bed, placing her on the mattress before sitting on the edge.
I reach for the lamp and stop to pick up the box.
I sift through the postcards, reading the dates, realizing some of these were postmarked fifty years ago.
I open the browser on my phone. The screen glows, and I type into the search bar.
Historical designation for coastal properties in Florida.
The state’s historic preservation office is the first link, so I click it.
The property has to be at least fifty years old, retain its architectural integrity, and hold significance to the local community.
I scan the rest of the rules, and Seaside qualifies.
A designation would put guidelines on what developers could do with the land, and no one wants it for the building.
The application requires a lot of documentation that I don’t have access to.
I exhale, wondering if I should get Gale involved. The guest book Wendy showed me has fifty years of letters, proving how much the B&B means to this community. Every postcard is a testimony. Every guest book entry is proof. The application practically writes itself.
I read for an hour and save several links before locking my phone. When I turn around, Wendy has rolled onto my side of the bed. Her face is pressed into my pillow, and her arm stretches across the space where I was. I climb back in, and she moves toward me, holding me.
I almost told her the truth, and then Gale called, and I let the moment pass. It felt like a sign, but I know better. It wasn’t some divine intervention protecting me. It was me protecting myself.
I want more time with her as Carter Banks, but every day she doesn’t know the truth feels stolen.