Chapter 1 #2
“I have been abandoned for at least four minutes.”
Caleb was short, wiry, red-haired, and pathologically curious. He had been Reid’s friend since adolescence, which meant he treated Reid’s authority as an amusing rumor.
Owen Price emerged from behind the hull of a half-restored sailboat. White paint marked one sleeve of his coveralls, and his safety glasses were tangled in his dark curls.
“Morning, Noah. Morning, boss.”
“Morning,” I said.
Reid nodded.
Caleb squinted at us. “Awful.”
“What is?” I asked.
“You both look happy.”
“I’m furious.”
“You’re glowing.”
“That’s rain.”
Reid led Marlowe toward the office heater. “The Vega’s inverter came in. Caleb, install it before lunch. Owen, I need the forward hatch sealed by noon.”
Caleb saluted with his coffee.
Owen muttered something about tyranny and disappeared behind the sailboat.
I headed for the enclosed service van beneath the awning. Rain hammered its roof with enough force to swallow conversation.
Reid followed carrying two bins of parts.
“You replaced the heat-shrink?” I asked.
“Yesterday.”
“Blade fuses?”
“Yesterday.”
“Terminal strips?”
He looked at me.
I smiled. “I like to verify that your standards haven’t slipped.”
“You like watching me carry heavy objects.”
“That too.”
We loaded the bins into the van. I went through my equipment: meters, probes, insulated tools, battery tester, work lights, spare cable, terminals, connectors, waterproof tablet case.
Reid stood beside me, silent.
He wasn’t interfering. He was simply checking the list in his own head.
When I first began working for him, that attention made me uneasy.
Not because he was unreasonable. Reid demanded good work, but he never asked an employee to do anything he would not do himself. What unsettled me was how intensely I noticed him noticing me.
The measured fall of his boots on concrete.
The rough depth of his voice in a cramped engine room.
The flex of his forearm when he lifted a battery free of its brackets.
I had returned to the Oregon coast at twenty-seven with no savings, very little pride, and everything I owned packed into plastic storage bins.
Greyhaven had been home once. By then, my family had moved inland, and coming back felt dangerously close to admitting failure.
I had spent four years in Denver installing electrical systems in custom motor coaches for wealthy people who wanted heated marble floors and satellite televisions in vehicles larger than my first apartment.
The pay was respectable.
The hours were brutal.
The culture was worse.
The men I worked with considered cruelty a form of fellowship. I learned to laugh at things that made me sick because not laughing drew attention.
Then someone found out I was gay.
A joke appeared on my locker. Then another. A slur was carved through the paint on my truck.
Management advised me to develop a thicker skin.
I resigned before the end of the month.
Callahan Marine Works was advertising for a certified marine electrician with integrated navigation experience. I had the qualifications and enough desperation to apply even though returning to Greyhaven felt like moving backward through my own life.
Reid interviewed me in the office below our apartment.
He wore a dark blue sweater with the sleeves pushed to his elbows. His hair had been longer then, brushing his collar, and silver already threaded his beard.
He asked precise questions.
More importantly, he listened to the answers.
When he asked why I had left Denver, I offered him the polished lie: restructuring, poor advancement, personal considerations.
Reid watched me for several quiet seconds.
Then he accepted the answer.
He didn’t pry. He didn’t make me prove my pain before he treated it seriously.
Afterward, he walked me through the yard.
Everyone greeted him. Not with fear or practiced enthusiasm, but with familiarity. Trust. Affection.
At the main bay, Caleb had been half inside an engine compartment.
“Is that the new electrician?” he asked.
“Possibly,” Reid said.
Caleb gave me a long inspection. “Can he cook?”
“I’m hiring him to repair boats.”
“We already have several people who can’t cook.”
I laughed before I could stop myself.
Reid looked at me.
Something in his face softened, there and gone so quickly I spent months wondering whether I had imagined it.
He offered me the position that afternoon.
Nothing happened between us for a long time.
Nothing, however, was not the same as absence.
Nothing was Reid leaning over my shoulder to study a schematic, his chest nearly touching my back.
Nothing was his palm resting briefly at my spine when we passed each other inside a narrow cabin.
Nothing was lunch on the seawall and conversations that lasted beyond sunset.
I learned he was gay because Caleb mentioned an ex-boyfriend while recounting a disastrous camping trip.
Across the break-room table, Reid went still.
I pretended not to notice.
Later, he found me alone in the tool room.
“Caleb has no filter,” he said.
“Owen claims he has too much oxygen.”
Reid opened a cabinet, stared inside it, then closed it without taking anything.
“I don’t usually discuss private matters with employees.”
“Understood.”
“I’m not ashamed of them.”
“Also understood.”
His gaze found mine. “I don’t want you thinking you need to hide here.”
The room smelled of varnish, dust, and hot metal.
Rain tapped the small window.
Every instinct I had developed in Denver told me to deflect. Laugh. Deny. Protect the vulnerable part of myself before anyone else could reach it.
Instead, I said, “I wasn’t certain you knew about me.”
“I knew.”
My heart lurched. “How?”
His eyes flicked away, then back.
“The way you watched me.”
Heat climbed from my collar to my scalp.
Reid’s own face colored above his beard. “That came out wrong.”
“No, it didn’t.”
“I wasn’t trying to embarrass you.”
“You weren’t.”
“I only meant—”
“I understand.”
We both became fascinated with the concrete floor.
After several unbearable seconds, I asked, “Was I obvious?”
Reid raised his head.
That tiny break appeared in his restraint again.
“No,” he said quietly. “I wish you had been.”
We did not kiss that afternoon.
We did not kiss the next day either.
Reid believed romance between an owner and an employee was a spark beside spilled fuel. I believed men like him did not choose men who arrived in town with debt, exhaustion, and their life stacked in storage tubs.
We might have circled each other forever if not for the September storm.
Three boats tore loose after midnight.
Everyone came in.
For six hours, we fought wind, flooding docks, and lines that snapped like rifle shots. We hauled a damaged sloop into the covered bay and secured everything that could be secured.
By dawn, Owen and Caleb had gone home.
Reid and I stayed to inspect the emergency pumps.
The power went out while we were in the sail loft.
Darkness swallowed the room.
A gust struck the building so hard the rafters groaned.
I reached for the wall.
My hands found Reid.
His closed around my arms.
“You hurt?” he asked.
“No.”
Neither of us let go.
Lightning opened the room in white-blue brilliance.
For an instant, I saw him clearly—hair soaked, shirt plastered to his body, water clinging to his beard. His chest rose and fell too quickly.
So did mine.
“This would be a mistake,” he said.
“Almost certainly.”
“I’m responsible for your job.”
“I’m aware.”
“If we damage this—”
“We’ll handle it.”
His fingers flexed against my arms. “That’s not a plan.”
“It’s the only one I have.”
Another flash illuminated his face.
I saw hunger there.
Fear too.
The combination undid me.
I kissed him first.
There was nothing cautious about it.
Months of restraint collapsed in a single breath. My mouth found his, and he answered with a force that drove me backward. My hips struck the workbench. Then his hands were in my hair, my fists were tangled in his shirt, and his body crowded between my thighs.
He kissed like a man who had denied himself too long.
His mouth was hot and relentless. Rainwater cooled my skin while his beard scraped my jaw and his tongue slid against mine. I wrapped a leg around him, pulling him closer, needing every hard line of him against me.
A broken sound escaped his throat.
His hands moved over my back, my waist, my hips, learning and claiming at once. When his mouth left mine to drag down the side of my neck, I nearly lost whatever sense I had left.
The storm battered the roof.
Thunder rolled through the loft.
I remember Reid saying my name against my skin as though it frightened him.
I remember answering by pulling him closer.
Afterward, we spent nearly an hour establishing rules.
Then he kissed me again, and several of those rules became immediately theoretical.
“Noah.”
I blinked.
Reid stood beside the van, watching me.
“Where were you?”
“The September storm.”
His expression warmed. “The loft?”
“The workbench.”
“The workbench that never sat level again.”
“You damaged it.”
“You wrapped yourself around me like climbing rope.”
From the service bay, Caleb made a loud retching noise.
“Mind your business,” I called.
“Stop discussing your business at industrial volume.”
Reid reached for my jacket and straightened the collar. “The lower highway is taking water. Use Breaker Avenue.”
“That adds twenty minutes.”
“It stays above the river.”
“I know the route.”
“Then take it.”
“I’ll be careful.”
His knuckles brushed the side of my throat.
The touch was brief, but my body remembered what his hands could do far too well.
“Call after North Quay,” he said.
“I always call.”
“I know.”
Owen had vanished back into the sailboat. Caleb stood with his back to us, reorganizing cable with theatrical concentration.
I caught the front of Reid’s jacket and pulled him toward me.
The kiss was quick only because it had to be.
His mouth opened against mine. His hand closed at my hip, firm enough to send heat through me. For one suspended second, the rain, the yard, and the waiting jobs disappeared.
When I released him, his eyes were darker.