23. Morgan
TWENTY-THREE
Morgan
“Morgan!” Cole shouts.
I blink, look at the water, then turn toward the voice. Cole’s sandy hair lifts with the wind as he runs toward me, dressed in a rain jacket over joggers.
Fog blooms from his mouth with each precious exhale. He skids to a stop in front of me, and takes my hand, blue eyes wide in fear. “What are you doing?”
“I saw you. I thought you…” I scan the water back toward the stern. “I saw someone jump. Shit. Javi’s been having such a hard time. What if he—”
Cole drags me away from the rail. “Morgan, no one went overboard.” With a hand on each shoulder, he spins me toward the amber rectangle of the open door. “Look.”
Lawrence and Javi stand sentry outside the gear room. Alejo ducks out from behind them.
“Where’s Wes?” I check the wheelhouse and, sure enough, he’s at the helm.
Relief fills me. “Oh my god. I’m so sorry. You seemed so real. I thought I lost you again.” I hug him tightly, burying my face into his neck, reassured by his warmth and scent.
Cole tenses. He doesn’t hold my head against him the way he would have before everything went wrong. He doesn’t hug me back at all. My hands drop to my sides. Somewhere between terror and relief, I forgot how broken we are. How long will it take to erase the muscle memory of reaching for him?
“Let’s talk inside, far away from the ocean.” He steers me forward with a wary glance and his hand on my shoulder. “You guys can go back to bed,” he calls across the deck.
My legs feel weak, like the fear hasn’t fled me yet. The boat pitches and I slip, but Cole tightens his grip on my shoulder and stabilizes me. “Careful.”
“Thank you.”
A nod is his only answer. The fear that filled me fades, replaced instead with shame. At least the gear room is empty by the time we reach it, so no one else will witness my mental breakdown.
The warmth that greets me inside should comfort me, but it stirs up déjà vu instead, and it only gets worse when Cole pushes me down onto the trunk like Javi did last year. I dart a glance at the floor on my left to make sure Cole’s lifeless body isn’t there.
“You’re shaking,” Cole says.
Yeah. I’m losing it.
“How long were you outside?” He peels off my hoodie and drops it on the ground. It lands with a heavy squelch.
“Not long.”
He reaches for the bottom hem of my tee.
“I didn’t fall in. I was rained on. I can take off my shirt.”
Storms coalesce in his gaze, then fade. “Fine.”
While I stubbornly struggle to pull my shirt over my head, he takes off his jacket and hangs it up, then wraps a towel around my shoulders.
“Thanks.”
“No problem.” He grabs one of the rewarming kits Javi made after last year, and pulls out a pair of hand warmers. “Here.” He cracks the gel packs to activate them and passes them to me. His fingers touch mine, but don’t linger before he fishes inside the kit again.
The hand warmers are totally over the top. If the guys were here, they would make fun of both of us. But it feels nice, and it’s been so long since he’s taken care of me. Since anyone has.
He swaps the wet towel around my shoulders for a wool blanket, just like Javi did.
What if this is all in my head and Cole is dead and my brain couldn’t take it? I check the floor for him again.
Cole swipes the infrared thermometer over my forehead. “98.6 degrees.” He frowns at the screen, then at me. “You’re still shaking.”
“I don’t know why.” I do. It’s because I’m freaking out.
I really thought he jumped in. I thought he died again. I don’t want him to see me like this, when I can’t tell what’s real and what’s not, when I’m tangled up in the present and the past. He’s not my safe person anymore, and it kills me.
I bend to untie my boots, but I’m trembling too much. “Can you?”
He swallows. “Yeah. Of course.”
The past and present blend even more as he kneels to take off my shoes. The head bowed before me has sandy hair, not Javi’s jet black, but I can’t shake my anxiety.
“Are you real?” I ask.
He lifts his head, brows wrinkled. “What?”
“When I got out of the water, you were over there, covered in blankets, barely alive.” I point to the spot. “I asked Javi if he thought you would die, and he said yes. I was so scared. I couldn’t say goodbye. I couldn’t lose you. But he promised I wouldn’t have to do it alone.”
Cole covers his mouth with his hand.
“I was too weak to even reach for you, but he helped me lie next to you, then linked my fingers with yours so I could hold your hand one last time.”
“I’m sorry,” Cole whispers in a voice as fragile and fleeting as a feather on the wind.
I blink and swallow briny tears, returning my gaze to the floor. “Tonight I thought I saw you jump, and now I don’t know what’s real, and what’s not.”
“Morgan.” Cole frames my cheeks and forces my gaze back to him. “Look at me. I’m right here.” He takes my hands and dips them under his shirt. “I’m warm. I’m breathing.”
He flattens my hand over his heart. His pulse thumps against my palm, strong and hale and nothing like the night he almost died. “My heart is still beating.”
Finally, I believe him. I lunge forward, grabbing fistfuls of his shirt, dragging him close enough to press my ear over his heart. The relief is so overwhelming, my tears spill over. “I thought I lost you again.”
He holds my head in place over his heart and rubs my back as I cry and cry and cry. I can’t stop. Everything I’ve kept inside crashes over me.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers again and again, still hugging my head to his chest.
Distantly, it occurs to me that he’s never seen me like this. He was so sick when we got to the hospital. It took ten days for him to be stable enough to take the breathing tube out. He’d lost so much blood, but he survived. I couldn’t fall apart in front of him. I had to be strong for him.
“Come on.” Cole extends his hand, eyes tender, and lifts me to my feet, then wraps the blanket tighter around me. He bypasses my room for the stairs up to his. “We’ll have more privacy.”
Given his past behavior, for all I know, he wants to give me privacy to fall apart by myself.
“You first, in case you fall,” he says.
“I’m not going to fall.”
“But your blanket might.”
He opens the door for me, and his fingers graze my skin as he slides the wool blanket from my shoulders.
Goosebumps pebble across my body. It’s not the cold. It’s him.
He exhales softly, eyes raking over me, then tucks his fingers inside the waistband of my joggers. “Can I take these off? The bottoms are wet.”
“What are we doing?” I’m too fragile for mixed messages and rejection.
“I think we need to be near each other. Is that okay?”
“Yeah, okay.” His answer is too vague to comfort me, but I don’t want to be alone either.
I drop my pants and kick them aside, then climb under the covers, still warm where he slept. I scoot back to make room for him as he strips to his boxer briefs and follows me into bed. We roll onto our sides, facing each other.
“Are you okay?” He brushes my hair back from my temple.
“Mmhm,” I hum.
“You scared me,” he whispers.
A tear slides down his cheek and lands on the pillow, the first tear I’ve seen since I told him Seb died.
He inhales a trembling breath. “When I saw you standing on the bow, I was more afraid than when I realized I was going to die. It took less than a minute to reach you, but the fear that you might jump, and I would lose you, or that you’d be hurt in any way, was more excruciating than when the sorting table slammed into me.
” He swallows. “I put you through that pain for days while I was in the hospital.”
His tears flow freely. I hush him and swipe them with my thumbs.
“I knew you were hurting,” he continues. “You lost Seb too, but I blamed you for saving me—not for his death. I blame myself for that. The other day, I should have been strong enough to talk about Seb instead of leaving you like that.
“Seb’s death wasn’t your fault, Morgan. It was never your fault. I was wrong to blame you for saving me. If you had jumped out there tonight, I would have saved you too, and I sure as hell wouldn’t have gone to get a survival suit. I never should have held that against you.”
The weight I’ve carried since last year disappears. “Thank you. I needed to hear you say that.”
“I was so caught up in my pain, I covered my ears, and pushed everyone away. I hid behind noble intentions. I wanted to stop hurting you. I was bad for you and Finn. I didn’t deserve you. I didn’t deserve any of you. And I did believe that. Sometimes I still do. But that wasn’t the only reason.
“I’m terrified to lose you. Any of you. I just couldn’t admit it to myself until the night we said goodbye to Seb, let alone say it out loud. I lost Seb, and it nearly killed me. I lost Seb, and it was my fault. I’ll never forgive myself if someone else dies because of me.” He breaks into a sob.
I inch closer. “It wasn’t your fault, Cole.”
“No. I should have paid more attention. I should have listened to you. If I’d stayed home, Seb would still be here. Finn wouldn’t be alone.”
“Finn isn’t alone. He has us.”
“Still…”
“What happened to you could have happened to any of us, whether you stayed home or not. It could have been me who got hurt. ‘Danger’s always been a part of the deal.’ You told me that, remember? The Bering Sea killed Seb. Not you.”
He closes his eyes, lashes wet with tears, then takes a deep breath before opening them again. He disagrees, but that’s okay. We’ll work on it. With any luck, I’ll convince him to go to therapy, or I’ll tie him to the bed and read him a book on grieving.
“You should hate me,” he says.
“I could never hate you.”
“No. I abandoned you when you needed me. You were right. I’m worse than your family.” He sucks in a breath, like he’s drowning in guilt and won’t reach the surface until he confesses everything. “I should have been there.”
“What?”
“I should have been there when you needed me, when you were grieving, when you were parenting Finn. I should have been there.”
“You’re here now.” I lean in, cradle the back of his head, and kiss him softly.
“I understand if you don’t want to try again. If it’s better for you to move on, I’ll respect that. I want you to be happy, but I’m going to keep fighting for you until you tell me to stop. I don’t want to lose you.”
He tries to look away, but I trap his chin between my thumb and index finger. “You haven’t lost me.”
“I haven’t?”
I shake my head. “You’ll never lose me.”
“Thank you.” Silent tears stream down his cheeks. “I didn’t want to hurt you.”
“I know, Sunshine.” I cup his cheeks and kiss his forehead.
“I love you,” Cole says.
“I love you too.”
“What if love isn’t enough? What if it doesn’t fix what I broke?”
“Then we’ll rebuild.”
He hides his face against my chest. “Can you sleep with me tonight?”
I shrug, feigning nonchalance. “I guess so. I’m already here, anyway.”
He lifts his head and laughs. “I swear that wasn’t part of my plan.”
I steal a kiss before his smile fades. “When I thought you were going to die, I begged you to kiss me back, to let me kiss your smile again.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Not your fault, Sunshine.”
I pull him closer, and kiss him again, this time teasing the seam of his lips, and when he opens his sweet mouth for me, I savor him.
This kiss isn’t a passionate prelude to sex.
It’s soft and gentle. That’s what he needs right now, especially after the weeks I treated him so coldly and weaponized sex. It’s what I need too.
The warmth of his body heat radiating toward me reassures me he’s still here, and the azure depths of his irises soothe my broken heart.
“Before I woke up, I had a nightmare that the Briar Anteros was sinking,” Cole says when we part.
“Shit.” Many fishermen believe dreams like that are a bad omen.
“I couldn’t find you. Alejo told me to check the engine room, but you weren’t there.” He clears his throat. “Seb was.”
I squeeze his hand. “I’m sorry.”
He squeezes my hand back. “Seb told me to go, that you needed me on deck. I didn’t want to leave him, but he forced me out, said he was already dead, and I was wasting his sacrifice. Then I woke up, and heard you shout, ‘Man overboard.’
“I know you don’t believe in that stuff, and I don’t know if I do either, but I’m going to listen to Seb.
I don’t want to waste his sacrifice. I want to stop wishing I died.
I want to live again. I want to be there for Finn.
I want to help my friends. I want…” His brow wrinkles, lashes shadowing his irises.
“I want you. I want to come home to our home, the one we make with Finn.”
I’m scared he’s going to break my heart again, but after ten years together, I know when he’s sincere, and I believe him. The chance to spend the rest of my life with him is worth risking pain again.
“I want that too, Cole. I want you.”
His blue eyes are as vulnerable as when he first told me he loved me. “You do?”
“Come on now, Sunshine. You’re my husband. I go where you go.”