Everything You Hate (Port Haven #1)

Chapter 1

Chapter One

Scarlett

Welcome to Port Haven.

The sign is faded and salt-worn, creaking on rusted hinges as I step off the ferry.

You can see the whole town from the dock.

All six blocks of it, if you squint. A single main street lined with weathered storefronts, a white-steepled church, and a diner with a neon sign that buzzes like a dying insect.

Beyond that, dense forest swallows the horizon, and beyond that, the endless gray Pacific.

I hoist my leather messenger bag higher on my shoulder and check my phone.

No signal.

Of course not.

I’m officially off the grid.

I’ve spent the last forty minutes crossing the Puget Sound in a boat that, if you ask me, is too small to be on such a large body of water.

I’ve been distracting myself from the wind and the roller coaster waves by trying to get the ferry captain to talk to me, and he’s spent those same forty minutes making very clear he has no interest in doing so.

He’s a man who has made peace with long silences and expects everyone around him to do the same.

But I’ve never been good at silence.

My producer used to joke that I could get a mime to talk, but by the time Port Haven materializes out of the morning fog, I’ve gotten exactly nothing useful.

No name. No opinion on the treasure hunt.

No comment on the Merricks or the Havens.

But there’s one moment, when I ask directly about the feud between the two founding families, where annoyance flares hot behind his eyes before he turns back to the wheel.

I’ve hit a nerve.

Interesting.

Now he’s doing whatever boat captains do when they dock, and I take a second to appreciate the view.

The man may have the verbal skills of a brick wall, but he looks damn good working with those ropes.

Tall, broad-shouldered, wearing a weathered Carhartt jacket over a faded Henley, work boots that have seen actual work, and stubble that isn’t carefully cultivated but exists simply because he can’t be bothered to shave.

Dark hair that curls slightly where it’s too long around his backward baseball cap. A scar cut through one eyebrow.

“Thanks for the ride,” I say, flashing my most charming smile. “Any chance I can buy you a drink later? Get the real Port Haven story?”

He doesn’t even look at me. Just grunts and points toward the ramp.

Oookay. Message received.

I turn, and my heel catches between the planks. My suitcase wheel catches at the same time, and the handle rips out of my hand, the whole thing toppling off the edge of the dock, pulling me with it. I pitch forward, arms pinwheeling, already bracing for the cold of the water—

Big hands clamp around my waist, and suddenly I’m falling backward instead of forward. I collide with a solid wall of chest.

The captain.

His body is warm and his arms are steady, and it feels so good to have arms around me that for one stupid, breathless second I just stand there and let a man who hasn’t said more than ten words hold me upright.

“Jesus Christ,” he mutters, his breath warm against my ear. “Are you trying to get yourself killed?”

I twist in his grip to face him, suddenly aware of how close we are. He’s younger than I’d thought—maybe mid-thirties—with eyes the color of storm clouds. The scar through his eyebrow is more jagged than it looked from a distance.

“Just trying to make an impression,” I say, my voice steadier than my pulse. “Is it working?”

He releases me like I’ve burned him. “Your suitcase is in the water.”

I glance down. My leather messenger bag has landed on the dock, but my Prada suitcase bobs in the gray water below like a very expensive buoy.

Perfect. Absolutely perfect start.

“Well.” I smile, because smiling is what I do when things go wrong. It’s reflex by this point, muscle memory from five years on camera. “At least it’s waterproof. I think.”

The captain glowers at my suitcase, then at me, then looks back at the suitcase with the resigned expression of a man who has absolutely not signed up for this shit today. He sets his jaw. The muscle in his cheek jumps.

“You got anything in there that can’t get wet?”

“My dignity,” I say.

He doesn’t laugh. Just sighs, and I watch the debate play out behind his eyes: leave me standing here with my floating suitcase and walk away, or be decent and help.

Decency wins, barely.

He strips off his jacket, revealing forearms corded with muscle and a scar that runs from his left wrist halfway to his elbow. He drops the jacket on the dock, kicks off his boots, and before I can say anything, he’s jumped into the water.

The cold hits him in a visible shock. He grits his teeth, wades out to where my suitcase floats, grabs the handle, and hauls it back toward the dock.

Water streams off his shoulders and plasters his Henley to his chest as he climbs up the ladder.

He tosses the suitcase up onto the dock with a wet thud.

“You good?” he asks.

“Great,” I say, though I haven’t been aware in the same zip code as ‘great’ in a long time. “You’re soaked.”

“Occupational hazard. You got a place to stay?”

I glance around the dock. “Well, I was told to ask for the harbormaster.”

Something shifts in his expression. A flicker of... is that amusement? It’s gone before I can pinpoint it, and he points toward the end of the dock.

“Harbormaster is Dockside Doug. Office is right there. Can’t miss him.”

“Thank you.” I give him my brightest, most grateful smile. “You’ve been incredibly helpful.”

“I really have.” He nods toward the office. “Go on. He’ll sort you out.”

I yank my four-hundred-dollar pump free with a splintering crack that definitely comes from the wood and not my shoe.

God, I hope it’s the wood.

I slide it back on, extend the handle on my suitcase, and start down the dock.

Shit. It’s definitely the heel. It wobbles precariously with every step.

I switch to tiptoes, which makes me feel ridiculous, but my dignity left the building eighteen months ago and has yet to come back.

The office is a small, weathered building at the end of the dock, its windows fogged with salt. I push the door open with my hip and step inside.

A bell jingles.

No one answers, but a radio crackles softly with nautical chatter.

The room is warm and smells of coffee and diesel fuel.

A counter full of tour brochures cuts the room in half, and behind it, a desk sits in one corner, piled with papers, binders, and a dented steel thermos.

On the wall behind the desk, a sign declares, “Your opinion matters!” in a bold, friendly typeface.

Underneath, in a smaller font: “Not to me, but I’m sure someone somewhere cares at least a little bit. ”

And in the center of the floor, on a bed of old life jackets arranged in what can only be described as a throne, lies the largest bulldog I have ever seen in my life.

He’s the size of a compact refrigerator, with jowls that hang like saddlebags and a snore that rattles the windows.

His tongue lolls out one side of his mouth. He does not stir.

I stand there for a full ten seconds, suitcase dripping onto the floorboards, before I understand what has happened.

I turn around. The ferry captain stands at the end of the dock, arms crossed, watching me with dark amusement. Our gazes meet through the window, and he raises one hand in a cheerful—for him—wave.

“That son of a bitch.”

Behind me, something squawks loudly in answer.

I jump and wobble on my shoes, nearly going down again. Perched on a stand in the corner is a bright green parrot with a crooked crest and beady, judgmental eyes.

“Fuck me sideways,” the parrot says, very clearly.

“Excuse me?”

“Fuck me sideways,” it repeats, and then adds, “Son of a bitch. Abort, abort!”

I stare at it. The parrot stares back unblinkingly.

“Your owner is an asshole,” I inform it.

The parrot considers this, head cocked. “Not dead yet,” it says, then lets out a sound very much like the ferry’s horn.

I exhale a slow breath and drag my suitcase back outside. He’s still there, leaning against a piling now, watching me with that same infuriating smirk.

“Dockside Doug,” I say when I reach him. “Very funny.”

“You wanted the harbormaster. He’s the harbormaster.”

“He’s a dog.”

“Yeah.”

“He’s unconscious.”

“It’s how he prefers to spend his working hours.

” He pushes off the piling and stands to his full height, which is considerable.

The way he scans me makes me feel like he’s taking inventory, and the slight curl to his lip tells me he’s found the tally wanting.

“You’re the reporter the Merricks invited. Scarlett Crawford.”

Not a question. His tone makes it sound like a disgusting diagnosis.

“That’s me.” I keep the smile in place. “And you are...?”

“Nobody you need to worry about.” He steps closer, and I catch the scent of salt water and diesel on his still-wet clothes. “This is a new low for Malcolm Merrick. Bringing a disgraced morning show personality with eight million Instagram followers to spread his version of history.”

Disgraced.

So he’s seen it.

Of course he has.

Everyone has.

The clip has eighteen million views and counting, and not one of those people knows that the woman screaming into a camera wasn’t actually an entitled bitch losing it over a coffee order.

No, she was a woman drowning, and nobody bothered to throw her a life vest. Instead, they filmed it and plastered it all over social media.

But I don’t say that. I keep smiling. I’ve gotten very fucking good at smiling through the hard things. “You’ve done your research.”

“I watch the news.” His gaze stays on my face. “We do have Wi-Fi out here. Sometimes.”

Behind him, the parrot has apparently decided to follow us outside. It swoops down from the office roof and lands on a nearby piling with a flutter of green wings.

“Fuck me sideways,” it announces to the harbor at large.

He turns and points at the bird. “Cap. Inside.”

“Abort, abort, son of a bitch!” the parrot replies cheerfully.

“Inside. Now.”