6. Cole
SIX
Cole
SIX MONTHS LATER
Footsteps sound on the dock. Morgan always knows where I am. Sometimes I worry a siren concocted him, but that’s just him. He senses my moods, knows when I need him, like he was put on this earth to keep me safe.
He drapes his jacket around my shoulders, still warm from his body heat, scented with the cologne I bought him years ago because it suited his soul—briny seafoam, petrichor laced with sea salt on my tongue, the promise of a fearsome storm.
I focus on the hazy reflection of the dock light on the water, even though I know I’ll drown in a wave of homesickness whether I look at him or not.
Sometimes I think I miss him more when we’re together than when we’re apart, but then he leaves and that’s always worse. He’s right here. I know, but that’s over.
“What are you doing here, Sunshine?” He clears his throat and amends, “Cole.”
It takes a while to break a habit. I get it. I kicked him out three months ago, and every morning I wake up to an empty bed and wonder where the hell he is.
“I feel closer to him here,” I say.
Shadows cloak the windows of the wheelhouse. I haven’t stepped foot on the Briar Anteros since she returned. She’s as haunted as I am. The end of the dock is close enough for now. Baby steps.
“Finn’s birthday is next month,” Morgan says.
“I know.”
“Five years is a big birthday.”
“Morgan…”
“He keeps asking when you’ll come home.”
I pick at a sliver of sun-bleached wood splintering from the dock. “What do you tell him?”
He’s silent long enough that I cast a look over my shoulder. From this angle, his long body is as tall and impenetrable as a wall of water, even with his head bowed and his face hidden in his hands. He’s the strongest man I’ve ever known, and I broke him.
“I tell him you’re…” He inhales a shaky breath, then lowers his hands. “I tell him you wish you could be here, but you have to fish.”
I rip the splinter from the dock and toss it into the water. “That’s messed up.”
“It is.” He plunks down beside me. “But a lie is kinder than telling him his uncle is twenty minutes away, and refuses to see him, that the only living connection he has to his daddy abandoned him.”
That’s why I don’t come around the family anymore. It hurts too much. Them. Me. I don’t want Finn to see me like this—drowning in self-loathing, a complete waste of the life Seb sacrificed.
“Seb isn’t on the boat, Cole. He isn’t in the Bering Sea. You can find the parts of Seb you miss with Finn, who really needs you.”
“I can’t.”
“Just come to the birthday party. Shay wants you to come too.”
I laugh mirthlessly. “I doubt that.”
Shay hasn’t spoken to me since I skipped Seb’s memorial because I couldn’t say goodbye, or be around other people when I was still struggling to accept my limp, let alone board a ferry and cross Puget Sound so soon after nearly drowning.
“Shay wants you there. I wouldn’t lie to you.”
“I don’t know. You lie to orphans,” I tease.
I smile despite my sadness. Smiles are weird like that.
You smile when you’re happy, but also when you’re sad; you can force a smile, or hide behind one.
A smile can be welcoming or sinister. I’ve gone without smiling for so long that the only time I smile is accidentally, and it hurts, especially when Morgan is the culprit.
“Shay knows what it’s like to lose a sibling,” Morgan says.
A seagull lands on top of the post at the end of the dock and shakes the damp from its feathers before settling in for the night.
Some fishermen believe that fallen sailors lost at sea return as seagulls.
Maybe it was a comfort to them to have their brothers close, but seagulls haunt every fishing vessel, and that’s a lot of ghosts.
“Do you think Shay is still Lexie’s sister, even though Lexie died?” I ask.
Morgan’s brows dart together. “You don’t feel like you’re Seb’s brother anymore?”
I shake my head.
“I wasn’t born with a brother, but Seb became mine, and after he died…” He shifts his gaze to the water, thick lashes fanning his cheeks as he blinks. “I’m still his brother, and so are you. Death doesn’t change that.”
A breeze skates across Lake Union, a whisper from the north. Morgan sidles closer, and wraps his arm around my shoulders. I tense. It’s the most we’ve touched in months.
“Please let me hold you,” Morgan says. “It’s our anniversary.”
“I know what day it is.”
He strokes the wedding band tattoo on my left hand, and I rest my head on his shoulder.
“Thank you.” Morgan kisses the crown of my head.
I don’t know what the hell he’s thanking me for. If I were him, I’d hate me.
We sit in silence as the boats sway gently on their tethers. There’s nothing to talk about. We’ve already said all the things we could have said to make this work. Memories are all we have left.
People walk their dogs. Dusk turns fully dark. Traffic slows until the automatic lights at the intersection blink on empty roads.
Muscle spasms burn through my battered bones. It’s nothing compared to the pain of sharing space with Morgan, of thinking about Seb, but I sit with my misery. Every time we’re together feels like the last time, and I’m greedy. I’ll take what I can, even if we’ll both pay for it later.
“Rest your head in my lap.” He guides me onto my good side and strokes my scalp with his fingertips. He always knows when I’m hurting.
A powerful gust of wind stirs the brackish water and exhales mist against my skin, a far cry from the icy spray of windswept waves in the Bering Sea.
“Knowing what you know now, would you still marry me?” Morgan asks.
“I would.” No consideration necessary. “What about you?”
As soon as I ask, I wish I hadn’t. I wouldn’t blame him if his answer changed.
His hand stills. “I’d marry you over and over again, Cole. No matter how much it hurts.”
“I don’t want to hurt you.”
He lifts my left hand and kisses my knuckles. “If we both want this, why can’t we fix us?” His voice breaks.
“I don’t know.” I can’t explain it.
Why can’t I move on? Why can’t I let us be happy? Why do I resent him for saving me? Why didn’t the ocean take me?
“I should go.” I plant my palm on the dock and push up to sitting.
“No. Stay. We don’t have to talk. I’m sorry.”
“You did nothing wrong.”
He reaches for my hand like he wants to pull me from the water, but I’m locked in a cage hurtling to the bottom of the ocean.
I can't drag him down with me. I rise to my feet with reckless speed, and pain shoots through my sciatic nerve, showering my leg with pins and needles. I teeter back toward the ground.
“Careful.” Morgan jumps up, and steadies me with his hands on my hips.
“God damn it.” Tears sting my eyes. I don’t know if it’s the pain, or the humiliation, but I’m furious. “Stop saving me.”
He drops his hands. His face crumples. “Sweetheart.”
“No. Don’t fucking pity me.”
“I don’t pity you. What hurts you hurts me too.”
“Go home, Morgan.”
He tosses his hands. “Where’s home? Our place? The one you changed the locks on? The guest room at Seb’s? I don’t have a home if I don’t have you.”
“You moved in with Shay?”
I have no business being jealous, but I am anyway. For the first few days after I kicked him out, I worried about where he ended up, but he’s been taking care of himself for almost as long as I’ve been alive. Raised by wolves, that guy.
“I moved in with Finn. Shay’s just there too.”
“Sounds like you know where to go then.”
I limp down the dock and push through the metal gate. It slams shut with a grating clang that rattles the bones inside my ears.
Morgan catches up to me in seconds without breaking a sweat. “Wait. I’ll drive you.”
I stuff my headphones in my ears, and the custom playlist I titled Melodramatic Asshole picks up where I left off.
“Hey!” He yanks my headphones out. “I’m not done talking to you, and I’m not done with you. When I said until death do us part, I meant it.”
“You kept your vows. The man you married died when you saved me.”
“What about your vows?”
“What about them? I’m not the man who made them.”
I snatch my headphones back and head toward our building.
This time, he doesn’t stop me. He gets into his truck and follows me as I hobble up the hill and walk the three blocks to our loft.
I don’t wave goodbye. I don’t tell him thank you.
I don’t respond when he tells me again that our conversation isn’t over. Our marriage isn’t over.
I grip the handrail like a life ring, and haul myself up the stairs to the loft that feels hollow without him. Morgan won’t drive away until I turn the light on, so I shuffle to the window in the dark, stabilizing myself with a hand on the boxes I packed his stuff in.
Beneath the glow of the streetlamp, Morgan stares up at our window, fist to his mouth like he’s fighting off tears. I could call and ask him to come up. I could open the window and shout his name. I could stare at him in the darkness until he checks on me.
But I don’t.
I turn my back to the window, pull the lamp string on my bedside table, and wait for him to drive away.
Once the sound of his engine fades, I turn off the light and crawl under the covers on his side of the bed.
Then I lie awake for hours, wracked with guilt and pain.
There’s a bottle of oxycodone in the bathroom, but I won’t take it. Pain is my punishment.