Chapter 27
TWENTY-SEVEN
PRESENT DAY
Madeline
“You sure you’re okay to get home alone?” Chloe walks me to the front door so she can lock it behind me.
“Of course,” I say with an emphatic nod.
“Sandy Harbor is just about the safest place on the planet.” The island is a sleepy, family-oriented place where people leave their cars unlocked and their bikes on their front lawns with no fear they’ll be stolen.
I’ve never had one moment of concern about being out alone at night.
But I admit that tonight, I sort of wish I’d driven to the bar instead of walking.
It’s only a handful of blocks, but I’m still a little creeped out from that guy who was staring at me earlier.
I’m glad I didn’t mention it to Chloe, though.
Her kid is asleep upstairs, and she’s paying the babysitter by the hour.
She doesn’t need to deal with driving me home on top of all her other responsibilities.
Besides, I’m probably just overreacting.
The other locals at the bar didn’t seem fazed by that guy, it’s not like he’s a stranger around here.
I step onto the porch and close the door behind me. And then I nearly jump out of my skin when a shadow slants across the floorboards. I whirl around, ready to run, when I spot Garrett leaning against the clapboard siding of the building.
“Garrett!” I press a hand to my heart. “You scared me to death.”
“Sorry.” He holds up a hand to show me he’s harmless. “My intent was the complete opposite.”
“What are you doing here at this hour?”
He lifts a shoulder. “You seemed a little uncomfortable about the extra attention that guy at the bar was giving you, so I thought you might want someone to walk you home.”
My heart squeezes. Not only did he notice the guy bothering me, but Garrett picked up on the fact that he was creeping me out.
“It’s so late,” I murmur. “Did you hang around here this whole time?” I lost track of Garrett hours ago.
He was sitting with Ian, but I was intentionally not looking at him.
At some point when I turned around, they had vacated the table.
He shoves his hands in the pockets of his jeans. “I came back at closing time.”
My instinct is to tell him he didn’t have to do that, but I’m glad he did.
I look out past the porch railing at the quiet streets, realizing I was more nervous about walking home alone than I wanted to admit.
But that’s not the only reason I’m glad he came back.
I’ll take any opportunity to spend time with him.
I peek in Garrett’s direction as he guides me ahead of him down the stairs.
In the bar earlier, he wore a pale blue button-down shirt, but he must have taken it off and gone into his workshop because now, his plain gray T-shirt is coated in a fine layer of sawdust. The sleeves cling to his biceps, covering the spot where I remember his scar, but still revealing bits of his tattoos.
We step onto the sidewalk and turn toward the east, where I can hear the waves crashing beyond the dunes. A full moon glows in the sky overhead.
“Do you want to walk along the water?” Garrett asks .
I nod, and we head toward the path that leads to the beach.
I take a deep breath, pulling the salt-kissed air into my lungs as the cool night breeze pricks at my skin.
My shoulders relax, and a sense of gratitude washes over me.
I don’t know who this man is or what comes next for me.
But I can’t regret this chance to step out of my normal routine and be here on a night like this.
“It’s hard to remember why I waited so long to come back here,” I muse, slipping out of my shoes and feeling my toes sink into the sand.
“This place really draws you in, doesn’t it?” Garrett says.
We wander down the beach to where the hard-packed sand meets the ocean waves.
I take a tentative step into the water, and it swirls around my ankles, but I don’t panic.
The cold is soothing after eight hours on my feet, and I know I’m safe when Garrett falls into step next to me.
I shift my shoes under one arm and pat my hip, looking for a spot to put my phone so I won’t drop it in the next wave.
I would have brought my cross-body bag to the bar if I’d known I’d be walking home on the beach.
“Do you want me to put that in my pocket?” He nods at the phone.
“Sure. Thanks.” I hand it to him.
“So, this is the first time you’ve been back to Sandy Harbor since you were a kid?” he asks.
I nod.
“What took so long?”
“My family left abruptly.” I look to Garrett for signs that he’s heard this story before, but he looks genuinely interested. “My mom said it was because she got a new job in Maple Ridge, but it always felt… I don’t know. Like something else was going on she wasn’t saying.”
“Did you ever find out what it was?”
“No. My mom says she was too busy working and raising kids and doesn’t really remember.” I press my lips together as the creepy guy’s questions come back to me. Does he know something? But then I shake off that thought. I have enough mysteries to solve without forming new conspiracy theories.
Garrett takes my elbow and gently tugs me out of the path of a jellyfish. “I would have thought you would have come back after high school. Or college.”
“Honestly, the whole thing was so painful, I decided a long time ago that I’d never come back.”
“And how does it feel now?”
“There’s nowhere else I’d want to be.” I look past Garrett to the houses lined up beyond the dunes.
“But this is a different part of the island. I grew up south of here, and I haven’t been back there yet.
I don’t even know if my old house is still standing.
I’m sure you remember the destruction from Hurricane Wendy.
” It was all over the news, even in landlocked Maple Ridge.
“Do you think you’ll go back and look for it while you’re here?” Garrett asks.
“I don’t know.” My gaze skates to the moon reflected in the water. “I worry about what I’ll find, and that it might break my heart.” I could say that about so many things in my life.
His arm brushes my shoulder, and the warmth seeps into my skin. “Sometimes it’s important to get closure, even if it breaks your heart. Then you can say goodbye to old memories and move on to new ones.”
“How do you know so much about getting closure and saying goodbye?”
A shadow crosses his face. “Everyone has lost something—or someone.”
I want to ask who he’s lost. I want to know more about his life, what brought him here, what matters to him. Not just to find out if he’s Adam, but to fill in all the blank spaces of who he is now. I settle for, “Why did you move to Sandy Harbor?”
He takes a few steps in silence, as if he’s thinking it over, and finally, he says, “I grew up outside of San Diego, and after high school, I took a road trip to see the rest of the country. Up until that point, my little corner of California was all I really knew. I ended up in New York City, at a job working in the facilities department of a downtown high-rise. It took about six months of cleaning up after those Wall Street bros and fighting my way through crowded subways to make me realize that maybe I was a beach guy after all. I came down to Sandy Harbor to get away for the day.”
Garrett pauses his story to guide me toward the path through the dunes. “This is our street,” he says.
Hearing a voice that’s so like Adam’s define something as ours , I’m hit by an irrational sense of longing.
What if it was our street, and Adam and I were walking to the home we shared?
But this man says he’s Garrett, and he’s in the middle of telling me a story to back it up.
“So, you came for a day and… never left?” I nudge him to continue.
His lips twitch into a half-smile. “I was in a diner having lunch when Ian sat down on the stool next to me. He was my age, barely out of his teens, and it was the middle of August, but he was wearing a three-piece suit. He looked like a little kid wearing his dad’s clothes.
It turned out that his dad had actually died a couple of years earlier, and Ian had taken over the business.
He’d just come from some meetings with his lawyer and was completely in over his head.
We got to talking and found out we had a lot in common. He ended up offering me a job.”
We arrive at the intersection of the path and the street, and Garrett stops walking to look down at my bare feet. “How’s the cut on your heel? Do you need to put your shoes back on before we walk on the concrete?”
I lift my foot to check the thick bandage I put on my heel before my shift.
It hadn’t bothered me at Hudson’s or on the walk, but with the friction from the sand and water, it’s starting to fall off.
“I think I might need to put my shoes back on.” I look around for a bench, but don’t see one.
“Do you mind if I lean on you?” I wobble on my good foot and reach out a hand in his direction.
He steps closer and takes my arm to steady me.
“Maybe this would be more efficient,” he says.
The next thing I know, Garrett is scooping me off my feet and holding me securely against his chest, just like he did the other day on the beach.
In my surprise, I let out a little gasp and throw my arms around his neck, clinging to him.
“You okay?” he asks.
“Maybe you should have been a lifeguard and not a carpenter,” I say with a breathless laugh. “You’re really good at saving people.”
Garrett carries me up my porch steps and stops to lower me to my feet by the front door.
The streetlamp slants across him from above, highlighting the angles of his face and the contours of his body.
Sometimes he looks and sounds so much like Adam it takes my breath away.
But I don’t remember that freckle being on Adam’s cheek or the habit that Garrett seems to have of rubbing the back of his neck when he’s thinking.
I search my memory, but the details of Adam are starting to fade.
Would the Adam I knew have learned to swim, or surf, or build beautiful houses?
An awareness vibrates across the narrow space between us. Is this gravitational pull for Adam or for Garrett? For the sweet boy I loved half a lifetime ago, or for the thoughtful man who pulls me from the waves and walks me home at night and sweeps me off my injured foot?
My gaze drops from Garrett’s eyes to his lips. If I kissed him, would it feel familiar and comfortable, or new, exciting, and electric?
Garrett freezes for a whisper of a moment, his eyes glued to mine as if his thoughts are drifting in the same direction.
And then he leans in, sliding one hand into my hair and the other around my back, pulling me closer and pressing his mouth to mine.
With a gasp of surprise and pleasure, I stand on my tiptoes and wrap my arms around his neck.
He angles his head for better access, dragging his tongue against my bottom lip, and I open my mouth, deepening the kiss, savoring the scent of cut wood and ocean air on his skin.
The kiss moves from exploring to urgent, and as he lifts me up onto the porch railing and slides his hips between my thighs, I forget that I’m supposed to be analyzing this experience and looking for signs that I’ve been here with this man before.
I fall into the moment, into the feel of him, the heat between us.
For the first time in years, maybe for the first time since the day Adam died, I feel like I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be.
That thought has me shoving him away and sliding off the railing. “I have to go,” I whisper, while inside I’m screaming, What were you thinking? I hurry across the floorboards and swing the front door open.
“Madeline, wait,” Garrett calls, but I’m halfway in the house and already turning to close and lock the door behind me.
I slump onto the couch and press my hands to my flushed face.
I just kissed a man I don’t know and definitely don’t trust, and now the only thing I’m clear about is that I’m more mixed up than ever.
Outside, I hear Garrett’s footsteps slowly thump down the steps, and the wild, irrational part of me who blows up her engagement and packs up and moves to the beach for the summer wants to fling open the door and stop him from leaving.
Because I might be confused about whether he’s Garrett or Adam, but I am clear about one thing.
I want to kiss him again.