Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
It was a week after the party at the cove, and Celia was still grounded.
No surprise that being grounded in the Harper household meant that nothing was really so different from normal.
It couldn’t run without her. Immediately after their newspaper meeting, she had to leave school, hurry home, work at the front desk of the inn, get her sisters ready for bed, and go to sleep, only for the entire day to repeat itself all over again.
“It’s like I’m constantly grounded,” she said to Landon one day as he walked her back to the inn. “I won’t be free till next year.”
Next year felt like a bright light. It felt like the only thing she could really believe in.
This deep in the semester, Celia had been forced to decide upon a theme for the first issue of the newspaper.
She’d landed on one that felt sort of lackluster but important—recycling in the town of Bluebell Cove and how they could improve it.
Each of her journalists had chosen an industry—fishing, tourism, restaurants, real estate, or accounting—and analyzed how recycling was currently used in that field.
The best articles analyzed Bluebell Cove’s environmental conditions and their effects on its surroundings.
Celia was sort of happy with how the issue was coming together, although she felt it wasn’t inspired enough for Georgetown University to notice her.
Her real idea was still waiting for her, she knew. The idea that would make her career sing.
But Landon told her how thrilled he was with the idea. “It’s like we’re always saying. I don’t want to give up on the world yet. And we can use the newspaper to get the word out. We can spread actual knowledge!” It was cute how excited he was.
A few days before the newspaper was set to be printed, Celia returned home after a long shift at the inn to find that the fridge and cabinets were nearly empty, and she had nothing to make for her sisters for dinner.
For days, she’d written food lists for her father, asking him to go to the grocery store or send one of his staff members.
But there had been a steady stream of autumn tourists, and it seemed that he’d given himself over to them rather than helping her.
Rage boiled her blood. She went to her room and said to Ivy, “I’m going out. ”
Ivy didn’t look up when she said, “You’re grounded, remember?”
Celia rolled her eyes, grabbed her own wallet, and stalked down the street. She dared her father to come out of his office and see her leave.
At the grocery store, she stocked a basket with bread, cheese, eggs, rice, and vegetables. She felt uninspired in the cooking department but wanted to fill her sisters’ bellies before bed. She paid with her own money and returned home to find her father on the front porch, glowering at her.
“Where were you?” he demanded, his voice icy.
Celia didn’t have time for this. She tore up the steps, eager to hurry around him and start cooking. But before she could, her father stepped in front of her and blared, “You don’t respect me? You don’t respect the rules I’ve set for you? Why do you think I should respect you back?”
Celia was suddenly flustered and hated herself for it. She gripped her bag of groceries and said a very delicate, “Dad, I need to make dinner for the girls. They’re hungry.”
Her father flared his nostrils. “What you need to do is get back to the inn. A busload of tourists is about to arrive, and I can’t do it all by myself.”
Celia was flabbergasted. She’d been at the front desk of the inn since after school, and her father hadn’t spoken to her once about working overtime, nor about this busload of tourists. “The girls come first,” she stammered, trying to pass him again.
“No!” her father cried. It looked as though he wanted to reach for her again, wanted to whip her off the porch and across the lawn. He’d never actually laid a hand on her, not really, but fear ebbed in her heart.
He said, “The inn always comes first. It’s our lifeblood. It’s everything we stand for.”
Celia froze with surprise and made herself very small, like a hunted rabbit. When she couldn’t think of what to say, she dropped the bag of groceries and heard the crack of eggs on the concrete. No! she thought. I can’t take it. It’s too much!
Before she could stop herself, Celia turned on her heel and fled the house, fled her father, fled her thousand-plus responsibilities, her hungry sisters, and the world her mother had left behind.
At first, she ran without a plan, tears lining her cheeks and drying in the chilly evening air.
But then she realized that her feet were taking her somewhere she wasn’t entirely sure she should go.
Still, it felt inevitable. When she bounded up the sidewalk to Hanson Smith’s immaculate Victorian home, the biggest and most elegant fortress in all of Bluebell, she let out a strained sob.
What on earth was she doing? Her watch read eight, but none of the lights downstairs in the Smith household were on.
The only light came from the second floor.
Somehow, she knew that was Hanson’s bedroom.
It was lucky that his parents weren’t home, she supposed. If they were, she wouldn’t be standing there at all. Knocking on the door or ringing the bell would only announce her to no one.
Which meant there was only one way to do this.
Like something out of a movie, Celia picked up a small stone and threw it at Hanson’s window. She’d always had an okay arm and decent aim, though it was nothing she’d ever been able to pursue with her responsibilities at the inn. The stone clacked against the sill and dropped into the bushes below.
A second later, Hanson appeared in the window, looking down at her.
Celia’s heart stopped. Since his note in her locker, they hadn’t spoken—only a few fleeting moments of eye contact in the hallways.
She’d started to believe he regretted it now, and he didn’t like her after all.
Or worse, that the note had been a joke, something he and his football friends laughed about when she wasn’t around.
But now, he raised his first finger, disappeared from the window, and appeared on the porch in his coat and hat.
Wordlessly, he walked over to her, took her tiny hand in his massive one, and led her to a shadowy path that snaked around the back of his house and led them directly to the cove.
The stones beneath their feet were slippery with moss, and the forest was remarkably tranquil.
A half-moon curled in the darkening indigo sky.
Celia’s tears had long since dried on her cheeks.
All she felt was Hanson’s skin on her hand and her breath.
When they reached the beach, Hanson released her hand and turned to her. Usually at school, he wore a crooked and handsome grin, like he knew better than everyone else, but now, he looked deathly serious, as though he couldn’t believe this was happening either.
“I heard you were grounded,” he said.
Celia’s heart swelled at the idea that Hanson was talking about her with other people.
“I was. I am.” Celia blushed. “I’m sorry about my dad.”
“I’m sorry about him, too,” Hanson said. “He seems like a piece of work.”
Celia let her eyes fall to the sand. She wondered how many high school lovers had come to a blustery cove to talk in private over the years. She wondered why she already referred to Hanson as her “lover” in her mind. Maybe he just wanted to be friends.
She was the weird, smart girl. This wasn’t the typical story.
“You have a good arm,” Hanson said coyly. “I can’t believe you threw a stone at my window, though. You want my dad to kill me?”
Celia felt a lurch but looked back at him to find him smiling.
She grinned back, because it was impossible not to.
Not for the first time, she wondered if this was what her own mother had felt when she’d fallen for her father.
Not for the first time, she pondered what on earth her mother had seen in James Harper, a man so needlessly cruel.
How did anyone fall in love with the right person? she wondered.
“I can see how itchy you are,” Hanson said, leaning against a large rock and crossing his arms. The breeze off the ocean made his curls flicker across his forehead. “Being a senior is tough. You want to move on with your life, just like me.”
Celia was caught off guard. It wasn’t typical to imagine that the high school quarterback and so-called “king” of the senior class wanted to move on.
“Where do you want to move on to?” she asked.
Hanson shrugged. “I want to make something of myself, you know? Maybe that’s what everyone wants.
My dad wants me to work with him after high school.
He wants me to fold into his company and make it bigger and better after he’s gone.
But sometimes I think he’s so cynical. Like, his agenda is always to make a dollar, two dollars, and two dollars into ten dollars, right?
But what about the other things in life? ”
Celia had never imagined that the wealthy Hanson Smith could think like this. “What are the other things in life?” she asked. She had no idea what he would say.
“There are places outside of Bluebell Cove, for one,” he said. “Maybe I want to go to college? Perhaps I want to get out of Maine? It’s so dang cold around here. What if I want to travel around the world? Go to Florida? See the warm sun for once? Learn how to surf?”
Celia imagined Hanson on a beach in the Gulf, his skin tanned, his muscles ropey.
She tried to picture herself in this story but could only find herself far back at the beach bar, pulling her hair out over a story she wanted to write for a newspaper.
Perhaps her life would be a permanent state of searching, making, and hurting. Maybe that was what she wanted.
She certainly couldn’t imagine herself on a surfboard.
Briefly, she told Hanson about her plans to attend Georgetown and become a journalist. “An environmental angle might be cool,” she told him. And then she parroted what Landon had said about making the world a better place, using the tools they had.
She could tell that this appealed to Hanson.
“I’m thinking about our world more and more, and how we should do what we can to save it.” Hanson bowed his head. “I mean, if you knew some of the stuff my dad was getting up to, you’d freak out. It’s downright evil, I think.”
Celia’s brain fizzed. Although she and Hanson were sharing an intimate moment, and although she felt closer to this handsome hunk than she ever had to another human (she thought), she couldn’t turn her journalist brain off.
“What is he doing?” Celia asked.
Hanson shook his head ominously and brushed his fingers through her hair. Her throat swelled.
“Trust me. You don’t want to know,” Hanson said, and then he pressed his lips onto hers, drawing her into his warmth, his beauty, his confidence. She couldn’t believe it was happening. She couldn’t believe that he’d answered her question with a kiss.
But all that evening, she let herself be swept up in this private and impossible romance, wondering what on earth would happen next.
Privately, she knew she had to get to the bottom of whatever Hanson’s father was doing.
Maybe she could wear Hanson down, eventually.
Perhaps he’d slip. Or maybe they’d accidentally fall in love with one another.
Perhaps they’d work together to fight both his father and hers and make the world a better place.
Landon could help if he wanted to. Oh, but when she thought of Landon, she felt a stab of guilt that was hard to comprehend.
Somehow, she knew he wouldn’t like this. Somehow, she knew to keep it a secret.