Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen
Scarlett
The message I’d been waiting for—hoping for, dreading—comes at four forty-five, while I’m in my bathroom at the Tidewater, tweezing an errant eyebrow hair and weighing whether to even bother with makeup for the bonfire.
It wasn’t a date, right?
My phone pings, and I almost ignore it. Malcolm had been blowing it up since last night, which I discovered when I got back and it connected to wifi.
Seventeen missed calls, forty-three texts, and one email flagged urgent with a subject line that read, simply, “Call me.” I’d turned the phone face-down on the nightstand and crawled into bed with the smell of Dean still on my skin and the taste of him still in my mouth, and I hadn’t looked at it since.
But instinct tells me not to ignore this one, and when I see the name, my heart drops through the floor. I feel like I’m going to throw up as I open the email.
Scarlett, results are in. All clear. No evidence of recurrence. Call if you want to discuss, but the short version is: you’re good. Dr. Leland said to tell you congrats.
I read it three times.
The relief comes like one of the waves from last night’s storm, knocking me off my feet, leaving me reeling.
I slide down the bathroom wall and sit on the tile with my knees pulled to my chest. The message glows on my phone screen.
You’re good.
It goes on to talk about yearly follow-ups, but I can’t process it.
Tears stream down my face. Each inhale is jagged, like my lungs have forgotten how to do the whole breathing thing, and the exhales sound close to sobs.
No one knows.
I’m sitting on a bathroom floor in a hotel room on an island where I’ve been nothing but a spectacle, and the most important thing that’s ever happened to me is a text message from a nurse practitioner, and there is no one here to tell.
I could call someone. My father. My old producer. A former colleague. A college friend.
I don’t want to call any of them.
I want Dean.
Grumpy, sexy Dean, who can’t decide whether he hates me or wants to devour me. The man who held me through a storm and made me feel things I’d forgotten I could feel.
Dean Kinsella is the only person I want standing in this bathroom right now.
I wipe my face with the back of my hand and laugh through the tears. Of course I want to tell him first. The man who barely tolerates my presence is the one I want to share this with.
Not because he’d know what to say. Because he wouldn’t try. He’d look at the message. He’d look at me. He’d understand that some things are too big for words, and his silence would be the exact right size.
I push myself off the floor. My legs are steady.
My hands have stopped shaking. I finish the eyebrow — steady now — and brush my teeth and pull my hair into something that looks intentional.
Jeans. Boots. A sweater thick enough for a beach bonfire in April.
No makeup except mascara. The woman in the mirror looks like herself again, or close enough.
Tonight isn’t about looking perfect for a camera. Tonight is about being alive, about standing on a beach with the salt air in my lungs and the sound of waves in my ears.
Tonight is about telling Dean the real reason I lost it on the barista all those months ago.
I tuck Evangeline’s journal into my bag just because I can’t seem to leave her behind.
We’re a lot alike, Evangelina and me. Expected to act a certain way, perform a certain role, keep the ugly parts hidden away.
She wrote hers down in a leather-bound journal.
I buried mine under eight million Instagram followers and a smile that has always felt fake.
The bonfire is on the north beach, past the marina, where the sand gives way to driftwood and the trees come down close to the water.
I can hear it before I see it—voices, laughter, the crack and snap of a fire built big enough to be seen from the ferry.
The wind carries the smell of woodsmoke and something sweet—marshmallows, probably, or the caramelized sugar of Wren’s pie, because of course Wren brought pie to a bonfire.
I park behind a row of trucks and pickups and one beat-up Subaru with a bumper sticker that reads “I’d rather be reading.” That has to be Piper’s car.
The Havens have claimed a stretch of beach on the north side of the fire.
I spot them before they spot me—a constellation of similar profiles, the same blue-gray eyes catching firelight from different angles.
Henry in his flannel, Mimi beside him in her leather jacket, their chairs close enough that the arms touch.
Bodhi with a beer, watching the crowd like a man on the clock.
Shea’s organizing something involving foil packets and a grill.
Piper sits cross-legged on a blanket with a book she’s not reading, glasses pushed up, watching Colter chase Hazel through the sand.
And there’s Dean. Back to the fire, talking to a man I vaguely recognize —tall, broad-shouldered, the same Haven bone structure but lighter hair, a smile that takes up his whole face.
Knox.
The firefighter.
I remember that smile from the photo Henry showed me at dinner.
Dean hasn’t seen me yet. He holds his beer bottle by the neck, and he’s listening to whatever Knox is saying, but his body is angled toward the path, like he’s been watching for something.
I step into the firelight, and his head turns. He smiles, and butterflies take flight in my belly.
“Hey.” He meets me halfway, but the closer he gets, the more his smile fades. By the time he reaches me, he’s all-out scowling. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” I set my bag down. “Is that Knox?”
“Yep. Flew in this afternoon. Heading back to Montana next week.” He looks over my face. Too carefully. “You okay?”
More than okay. “Yes.” But tears spring to my eyes, and his narrow. His expression darkens.
“Did someone say something to you? Hurt you? Who was it? Malcolm? Jasper? It was fucking Jasper, wasn’t it?”
Dammit. I swipe at my eyes and draw a fortifying breath before answering. “Dean, no.” I place a hand on his arm before he can stalk off and find a Merrick.
“It’s not Jasper. It’s not Malcolm. It’s nothing like that.”
His jaw works. “Then what is it?”
I open my mouth to tell him, but the words won’t come. And then Knox is walking toward us, and I lost the opportunity.
“The famous Scarlett Crawford.” Knox Haven wraps me in a hug before I can extend a hand, lifting me off the sand and spinning me in a half-circle like we’ve known each other for years.
When he sets me down, his grin is all teeth and warmth.
“I’ve been hearing about you since I landed. Dean won’t shut up.”
Dean scowls. “I haven’t said a word.”
“Your silence is deafening, man. That’s how we know.” He winks at me. “Nice to finally put a face to the recent main topic of our family group chat.”
I glance at Dean. “So I’m the topic of your group chat?”
“I don’t chat,” he mutters.
“He refuses to participate. But the rest of us have been texting about you for a week straight. Piper started it. Then Shea. Then Colter sent a gif of that cartoon wolf with the heart beating out of his chest. It escalated from there.”
Dean’s jaw is doing that thing where it looks like he’s trying to crack his own teeth. “Knox.”
“What? It’s true. Bodhi even weighed in, and Bodhi never weighs in.” Knox claps Dean on the shoulder hard enough to make him rock forward. “Said you’ve been ‘unusually present.’ Those were his exact words. Unusually present. For Dean, that’s practically a love sonnet.”
“Knox.” Dean’s voice drops to something adjacent to murder. “Go somewhere else. Now.”
Knox holds up both hands and ambles off toward the cooler, whistling. Dean watches him go like he’s calculating where to hide the body.
“Don’t,” I say.
“He started it.”
I bump his shoulder with mine. His arm brushes my back, and the contact runs through me like a live wire. He turns toward me and hauls me into his arms.
“Don’t,” I say again. “Your family’s watching.”
“My family’s been watching since you showed up.” He doesn’t move his hand from my back. “They’ve got bets.”
“On what?”
“Whether you’ll last the week. Whether I’ll say more than four words to you voluntarily.
Whether Bodhi will actually let you near No Name again after the storm.
” He cups my face in his hands, and his thumbs swipe my cheeks as if brushing away tears.
“Piper’s winning so far. She had you pegged from day one. ”
“What did she bet?”
“That you’d crack me open like a clam and I wouldn’t mind.”
“Do you?” I ask a bit too breathlessly. “Mind?”
“I hate it.”
Oh. Of course he does. Why had I thought he’d feel any differently just because of last night?
I try to draw away, but he holds me still and lowers his mouth to mine. “But I hate everything, Hollywood.”
Then he kisses me.
Right there, in front of his entire family and half the town, with the bonfire throwing sparks into the dark and the waves crashing behind us, Dean Kinsella kisses me like he means it.
And I kiss him back. Because I do.
Someone whistles. I think it’s Knox. Or maybe Colter.
Someone else—Piper, maybe—says, “Finally,” loud enough to be heard over the fire.
Dean doesn’t break the kiss. His hand slides from my cheek to the back of my neck, fingers threading into my hair, and he holds me there like he’s afraid I’ll float away.
When he finally pulls back, his eyes are dark, and his breathing is rough.
“There,” he says. Quiet. Just for me. “Now they’ll stop texting about it.”
“They’ll text more.”
“Probably.”
He releases me, but doesn’t let go of my hand. He leads me toward the fire.
“I thought this wasn’t a date.”
“It’s not. I don’t date.” His hand tightens around mine in direct contrast to his words. “It’s a bonfire. You’re a guest. I’m being polite.”
“Polite.”
“Exceptionally.”
The fire pops, sending a shower of sparks into the dark. Someone whoops. Hazel shrieks with delight as Colter lifts her onto his shoulders and spins her in a circle, her pigtails flying, Radar barking circles around them.