Chapter 28
Chapter Twenty-Eight
AUSTIN
“This is the life, man,” Dave said with a contented sigh before taking a large bite of his breakfast sandwich.
Across from him, his friend and the other half of my morning’s charter saluted with another sandwich. “Sure beats sitting in traffic on the Kennedy Expressway.”
“No argument here,” I said, then sipped from my coffee mug.
The sea was a flat, turquoise calm, the mid-morning sun a warm, benevolent weight on my shoulders.
It was one of those easy days on the water that tourists dreamed of and paid good money for.
An easy trip, requiring little more from me than finding a decent patch of water and baiting a few hooks.
We were on a break, the boat rocking gently in the calm swell.
The only sound was the low murmur of my clients’ conversation while we took a break and ate the breakfast I’d picked up from Driftwood Grill that morning.
Half an hour later, I was in the cabin rinsing out my coffee mug in the tiny galley sink when my phone buzzed against the wooden desktop. I glanced at the screen, expecting it to be one of my siblings or maybe Iris.
But the name on the screen made me frown.
Gus Davis.
It wasn’t a text. It was a call. There was absolutely no reason on God’s green earth for Iris’s contractor to be calling me on a Friday morning while I was out on the water.
Unless something was wrong.
I snatched up the phone, my heart thudding painfully against my ribs, and swiped to answer.
“Austin? Thank God. I wasn’t sure if you’d have a signal out there.” Gus’s voice was tight with stress. “Listen, I’m at the hospital in Marathon. There’s been an accident at the house. It’s Iris.”
The gentle rocking of the boat, the sunlight streaming through the cabin porthole, the distant laughter of my clients—it all stopped. My vision narrowed to a single, tight point, the universe collapsing into the sound of Gus’s voice. My blood didn’t just run cold.
It turned to solid ice in my veins.
“What kind of accident?” My voice was strangled. “Is she okay? Gus, talk to me, damn it!”
“She fell down the stairs. She’s got a bad break in her leg. And a concussion. She was unconscious when we found her.”
Unconscious.
The word knocked the air from my lungs. I gripped the edge of the desk, the image of her lying broken a horrifying slash of red against the canvas of my mind.
“They’re taking her into surgery now,” Gus continued. “For the leg.”
My training, the part of my brain forged by years of dealing with emergencies on the water, kicked in, overriding the raw, screaming panic.
“Okay. I’m on my way. I’m turning the boat around now.
Tell them… tell them her family is on the way.
” The word family sounded both like a lie and the most honest thing I had ever said. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
“I’ll tell them,” Gus promised. “Drive safe, son.”
I hung up, my hand shaking so badly I almost dropped the phone. For a terrifying second, I just stood there with the cabin swaying around me and the specter of a thirteen-year-old memory rising up to choke me.
Then I shoved it down, hard. There was no time for the past. Only Iris mattered.
When I burst out of the cabin, the sun was blinding after the dim interior. My clients looked up from their coffees, their easygoing smiles faltering as they took in my face.
“What’s wrong?” Dave asked, his brow furrowing.
“Family emergency.” My voice was clipped, leaving no room for questions. “We have to head back. Now. I’m sorry.”
“Hey, of course,” the other guy said immediately, already cleaning up. “Don’t worry about us. Is everything okay?”
I didn’t answer. I was already at the helm, my hands moving with almost violent efficiency.
I fired up the engines, the powerful diesels roaring to life, and spun the wheel hard.
The boat leaned into a sharp, aggressive turn that sent a spray of white water over the bow.
I pushed the throttles all the way forward.
Line Dancer leaped ahead, the bow rising from the water like a startled animal.
The usual satisfying roar of her engines was a soundtrack to my terror, each pulse a frantic beat matching the hammering of my heart.
The run back to the resort was an exercise in white-knuckled agony.
My mind was a churning, chaotic sea of its own.
It’s my fault.
The thought was a relentless, punishing rhythm.
I shouldn’t have left this morning. I should have known better than to leave her alone in that death trap of a house. That damn huge staircase. Just like the ladder. I’d seen her on that other rickety piece of crap, so determined, so reckless. The staircase was no different. Dangerous.
Please let her be okay. I’ll do anything. I’ll be better. I’ll stop being such a damn hermit. I’ll even go to family dinners without complaining. Just let her be okay. Please.
My asshole of a father had shown me how a person could just choose to walk away, to leave a hole in your life where a foundation was supposed to be.
That was one kind of loss. But the ocean had taught me a crueler lesson—that the universe could just snatch people away without warning.
I didn't know which was worse, but I knew I couldn't survive a third lesson.
Which brought that day back, the same way I saw it in my nightmares. The debris field. The empty water. The terrifying silence after the storm. The ghost of that day, the one I kept chained in the deepest, darkest part of my soul, was rattling its chains, threatening to break free.
No.
I squeezed my eyes shut for a second, gripping the wheel so hard my knuckles hurt. This was not that day. This was not the same. Gus said she was alive. But the reassurance was a thin, flimsy shield against the onslaught of fear.
I docked the boat with a speed and precision born of undiluted adrenaline, the hull bumping against the pilings with a force that would normally make me cringe.
I barely secured the lines, shouting a gruff, “Thanks for your understanding” to my clients before sprinting down the pier toward my truck.
I didn’t look back.
I didn’t care about the boat.
I didn’t care about anything but getting to her.
The drive to Marathon was a blur of aquamarine water, sun-drenched asphalt, and green scrub.
I pushed my truck, weaving through the slower-moving tourist traffic with reckless impatience, earning more than one angry honk.
I didn’t care. The cold dread from the boat cabin had now settled deep in my gut, a sickening weight.
I screeched into a parking spot at the hospital in Marathon, not even bothering to see if I was between the lines.
I just killed the engine and ran. The automatic doors of the emergency entrance hissed open and swallowed me into a world of jarringly bright fluorescent lights and a low, humming tension that was a world away from the open sea.
The waiting room was a grim space populated by a handful of people in various states of distress or boredom. I spotted Gus immediately in a hard plastic chair, his large frame looking out of place.
He glanced up as I approached, his face a mask of weariness and relief. “Austin. You made good time.”
“How is she?” The words were a raw burst, no room for pleasantries. “Have you heard anything?”
“They took her up to surgery about half an hour ago. The orthopedic surgeon met with me before she went in. Said it’s a bad break of the tibia. Needs a rod, maybe some plates and screws. But he was confident. Said she’s young and healthy.”
A rod. Plates. Screws. The words were clinical, brutal. I pictured her leg, so strong and tanned, now broken, needing to be pieced back together with metal. A wave of nausea washed over me.
“And the concussion?” I asked, my voice tight.
“They did a CT scan,” Gus replied, his tone reassuring. “Said there’s no bleed, thank God. Just a nasty knock. They’ll be monitoring her closely.”
I ran a hand over my face, the rasp of my stubble a harsh, grounding sound. “Thank you, Gus. For being here. For calling me.” The words were ridiculously inadequate.
“Of course.” He clapped a heavy, comforting hand on my shoulder.
“She’s a good kid, that Iris. Got a lot of grit.
I heard the thump and her holler when she fell, and I knew something was wrong.
I’ll head back to Heron House, make sure everything is locked up tight and the crew knows what’s going on.
You call me if you hear anything, you understand? ”
“I will,” I promised. “Thanks again.”
He gave my shoulder one last squeeze before leaving me alone in the waiting room. I approached the admissions desk, a formidable barrier of beige laminate.
“I’m here for Iris Holloway,” I said to the woman behind the glass, trying to keep my voice steady.
She typed something into her computer. “Are you family?”
The question hung in the air. What was I? Her neighbor? The guy she’d been sleeping with? The man who was in love with her but too much of a coward to say it?
“Yes,” I said, the word coming out with a surprising, fierce conviction. “Her mother has passed, so I’m her family.”
“She’s in surgery, sir. The orthopedic floor is on the third level. You can wait in the surgical waiting area up there. Someone will be out to speak with you when they have an update.”
The surgical waiting room was even more soulless than the one downstairs.
A few rows of uncomfortable-looking chairs, a television bolted to the wall playing some inane talk show with the volume muted, and several sad-looking fake plants.
I sank into one of the chairs in the corner.
The adrenaline that had been fueling me for the last hour drained away, leaving me hollowed out yet filled with a familiar, low-grade panic.
A crawling dread filled with silence.
Waiting.
Not knowing.