Chapter 40
FUCKING STORAGE UNITS.
BILLIE
On Monday and Tuesday, we prep for the bureau meeting.
After I told Neve we needed to cancel our weekend planning, she came over with binders—actual physical binders with color-coded tabs, because Neve approaches interior design and municipal planning with the same terrifying precision—and the three of us spread out across Peter’s dining table with laptops and coffee and enough data to make my skull vibrate.
This is the part where my brain shines. He has the numbers—revenue projections, cost analyses, funding timelines, comparable projects from similar coastal communities.
Neve has the visual presentation: renderings, mood boards, and phased design plans that make the marina look like something out of a tourism magazine.
And I have the thing neither of them has: I know every inch of that waterfront—I know which pilings are rotten.
I know where the tide undermines the foundation.
I know which buildings are salvageable and which ones need to come down, and I know exactly how long each phase will take because I’ve been building things in this town since I was nineteen years old.
Together, we’re annoyingly good at this.
“Tim’s going to come with the storage units pitch again,” I say on Tuesday night after Neve’s gone home. It feels more natural to use his first name sometimes. Like it puts an extra bit of distance between us, and makes it a little easier to ignore the fact he’s my father.
“I know.” Peter’s reviewing the harbor master’s structural report for the third time. “We counter with the economic impact comparison. Storage units generate one-time rental income. The marina generates tourism, employment, and ancillary business revenue—”
“I know the numbers, baby. I helped create the spreadsheet.”
He looks up. Grins, blushing, and it makes me want to bite him in that way you want to bite puppies because they’re so damn cute. “Sorry. Nervous energy.”
“Channel it into something useful. Quiz me on the presentation.”
He does, and I nail every question. The look on his face—pride, genuine pride, not the patronizing kind I grew up getting from my father but the kind that says you’re incredible and I’m lucky to be in the room with you—sends a warmth up my spine that wraps around my heart like the coziest blanket on the coldest day.
The meeting starts well.
Better than well. The mayor leans forward during Peter’s revenue projections, and Neve whispers to me that this is a “very good sign,” based on her extensive study of municipal body language, which is a sentence I never thought I’d hear.
The harbor master nods along to my structural assessment of the waterfront buildings.
Two of the bureau members ask follow-up questions that are engaged rather than combative. Cole looks genuinely happy to be here.
We’re winning. I can feel it. Our presentation is tight, the data is compelling, and every counterargument we anticipated has been answered before it’s raised. The environmental assessment didn’t raise any red flags, so it won’t delay any of the work.
Peter is in his element—calm, articulate, authoritative without being condescending—watching him work a room is like listening to someone speak a foreign language fluently.
This is what he was built for. And the fact he’s using it for this, for a small-town marina in Nova Scotia instead of a corner office in Toronto, brings up feelings I refuse to dissect in a municipal building.
Then my father stands up.
He’s been quiet throughout the entire presentation. Sat in the back row with his arms crossed and his jaw set. I’d been so focused on the other bureau members I’d almost forgotten he was there. Almost.
“If I may,” Tim starts, and his voice carries the easy authority of a man who’s been part of this community long enough to think that entitles him to the final word on everything. “I appreciate the work that’s gone into this proposal. It’s… thorough.”
The pause before his final word is deliberate. He says it the way you’d compliment a child’s art project. No, the way he’d compliment a child’s art project. My fingers curl under the table.
“However, we need to be realistic about what this town can support.” He’s addressing the mayor now, not us. Smart. “A marina revitalization of this scale is a gamble. It’s speculative revenue based on tourism projections that may or may not materialize. What I’m offering is certainty.”
He pulls a folder from his bag and passes copies to the bureau members, handing one to me, Darcy and Neve to share.
“I’ve secured private funding for a storage facility on the waterfront lot.
The developer’s ready to break ground next month.
No public money required, no risk to the town, guaranteed lease income from day one. ”
The room shifts. I can feel it—the gravitational pull of a sure thing versus a vision. Bureau members flip through Tim’s folder, and I watch their brains do the math. Safe versus bold. Guaranteed versus possible.
Peter’s hand finds my knee under the table. Not squeezing, not urgent. Just there.
“With respect,” he says, his voice steady in a way mine wouldn’t be, “storage units represent a fixed, low-ceiling revenue stream. The marina project generates compound economic benefits, like tourism spending at local businesses, seasonal employment, property value increases along the waterfront, and grant eligibility for coastal developments—”
“With respect,” my father echoes, and the mimicry is so pointed I feel it in my teeth, “you’ve been here, what, a few months? I’ve been part of this community for nearly sixty years. I think I have a handle on what Balsam Bay needs.”
The silence that follows is excruciating. Peter doesn’t flinch—his face is perfectly composed, boardroom-calm, not a single crack—but his hand tightens on my knee, and I know that restrain cost him something.
“We’ve heard compelling cases for both proposals,” the mayor says, and I can already hear it in her voice—the pivot, the dodge, the political calculus of not wanting to pick a side. “I’d like to call a vote.”
The vote splits.
Even.
All eyes turn to the mayor for the tiebreaker, and for one suspended moment, I let myself believe she’s going to choose us.
“I think we need more time,” she says instead. “I’m tabling both projects for thirty days. We’ll reconvene with any additional data or community input and vote again.”
Thirty days. She’s tabling us for thirty days. Which means Tim has thirty days to lobby, to schmooze, to do what Tim Cameron does best—work the room when no one’s watching.
Neve’s hand lands on my arm. Peter’s is still on my knee. I’m being held together by the two of them, and I need it because the expression on my father’s face as he gathers his folder is one I’ve known my entire life.
Satisfied. Not victorious—he didn’t win. But satisfied, because he didn’t lose, and in Tim Cameron’s world, not losing is the same as being right.
After gathering our things, we say goodbye to Neve, and I make it to Peter’s car before I fall apart.
Not crying. Worse. That hollow, buzzing stillness where your body hasn’t decided whether it’s going to rage or grieve, so it does neither, just vibrates at a frequency that rattles your bones.
“That was a good presentation,” he praises from the driver’s seat, hands on the wheel, not driving. His voice is measured. Controlled. The boardroom voice again. “The data was strong. The harbor master was on board. The mayor was clearly leaning our way before Tim—”
“I know.”
“We didn’t lose, Beth. Thirty days is—”
“I know.” I stare out the windshield. “Can you—can you be mad for a second? Instead of strategic? I need you to be mad.”
His silence is brief and loaded. When I look over, Peter’s boardroom mask is gone. What’s underneath it is white hot. It’s also hot hot and makes me wanna jump him, right here in the parking lot.
“I’m furious,” he whispers. “I have been since he opened his mouth. The way he talked about this project—the way he looked at you, like you were some kid playing dress-up at a real meeting—”
“He came to my job site.” It falls out. I didn’t plan it, didn’t build up to it, didn’t cushion it. It just… falls. “Last week. While you were in Toronto. He showed up and told me I was embarrassing myself. That the marina was a tourist trap. That I should stay in my lane.”
Peter goes still.
“He said the business stuff isn’t me. The planning, the organizing. I’m good with my hands, but I should leave the rest to… to people who are built for it.”
“Built for it,” Peter repeats slowly, so low it barely qualifies as sound.
“His way of saying my brain isn’t wired for it.
Without actually saying the words ADHD, because he doesn’t believe in it.
He thinks it’s an excuse I use for being scattered, and the PMDD is me being dramatic, and the bisexuality is a phase.
Everything about me that doesn’t fit into his neat little box is a deficiency he’s been trying to correct since I was a kid.
” I’m not crying. My voice is steady and flat, and that’s almost worse.
“I didn’t tell you because you were dealing with your own stuff. I didn’t want—”
“Don’t.” His hand is on the steering wheel so tight the leather creaks. “Don’t say you didn’t want to burden me. Please don’t say that.”
“I wasn’t going to.” And I mean it. “I was going to say I didn’t want to talk about it on the phone. I wanted to tell you in person.” I pause. “I didn’t get the chance to because we needed to focus on the meeting. And there was never a right time, you know?”
He nods. Barely. His jaw is working, he’s cycling through responses—the strategic one, the measured one, the one that would make sense in a boardroom or a therapist’s office. He discards all of them.
“He’s wrong,” he says. “About all of it. Every single thing he’s ever said to you about who you are and what you’re capable of—he’s wrong, Beth.
You walked into that room today and presented a revitalization plan the mayor took seriously.
The harbor master—a man who’s worked that waterfront for thirty years—agreed with your structural assessment.
Your father sat in the back of that room and watched his daughter command it.
And instead of being proud, he pulled out a folder full of storage units.
” The last two words come out like they taste bad.
“Storage units,” I echo, and something between a laugh and a sob escapes me.
“Fucking storage units.” He drops his head back against the headrest and stares at the ceiling of the SUV’s cab.
“I sat in that meeting and smiled and used my professional voice and talked about compound economic benefits while your father condescended to you in front of the entire bureau. I want you to know it took every ounce of self-control I have ever developed in my entire career to not—”
“I know.”
“He doesn’t get to talk to you like that.”
“I know,” I repeat, softer this time.
“And he doesn’t get to talk about our project like it’s some naive fantasy when we have data—”
“Baby.” I use the term of endearment, the one that’s reserved for intimacy and the fairy tale we’ve allowed ourselves to live these last few weeks.
But I need to because this—the way he’s talking about me, the fact that he wanted to defend me but didn’t because he knew I wouldn’t want him to publicly—wasn’t born out of our working relationship.
This is what blossomed slowly, over quiet moments and the comfortable familiarity we’ve come to know.
I reach over and put my hand on his forearm. The tension in his muscles is so tight, it’s almost rigid. “I know. I know all of that.”
When he turns his head to look at me, his eyes are bright with a fury that isn’t about the meeting or the project or even Tim.
It’s about all of it. Every dismissal, every belittling comment, every time someone looked at me and saw my limitations instead of my capabilities.
He’s angry for me in a way no one has ever been, and I don’t know what to do with that except hold onto his arm and let him feel it.
“We have thirty days,” I say, knowing we don’t have that long, and the next time the bureau meets, Peter will be back in Toronto.
“We have thirty days,” he repeats.
“So, let’s use the time we have.”
He exhales slowly, and some of the tension leaves his shoulders. Not all of it. But enough. He turns his hand over under mine, and our fingers lace together. We sit in his car in the municipal parking lot while the sun peeks through the clouds, and we don’t drive anywhere for a long time.