3. “HEY JEALOUSY”
“HEY JEALOUSY”
The drive home from the office had become a ritual.
A forty-five-minute meditation. A chance for Soren to decompress and release any unnecessary stress he carried back from Portland.
However, the longer he filled his father’s shoes, the less willing he found himself to let go of the stress on that drive back to Hideaway Bay.
After a year and a half at the helm, the glamour and glitz of playing CEO for a global company had finally worn thin, and he was now experiencing the real work that came with boatloads of stress—thirty-six vessels’ worth, to be exact.
But his tension wasn’t solely about the fleet.
Yes, he had to consider factors like rising diesel costs, safety issues, ship repairs, crew shortages, import price volatility, and the company’s public image, but there were also fluctuations in tariffs, contracts with outside vendors, concerns about climate change, and pressure from environmentalists.
On top of that, there was the tiresome game of playing politics with the board.
One would think the Hawthorne name would have leverage since he and his brothers held three powerful seats as controlling shareholders, but his brothers had jumped ship since Magnus died. And some days he felt like he was alone at sea in a leaky lifeboat.
Soren understood Greyson’s decision to take a non-operational role.
He’d always been more involved in the hands-on aspects of the job and had put in his years at sea.
Plus, he made it clear he hadn’t wanted a corporate position from the start.
His focus was at home, with Wren and their soon-to-arrive baby.
But Logan had no excuse. Maybe his younger brother felt pushed out by Soren’s aggressive seize of their father’s office, but there was still room for him in the company. They all had corner offices, whether they wanted them or not.
If Soren had waited for Logan to show up, the whole company would have capsized. So he was past feeling guilty for aggressively saving the company when no one else had the balls to take the wheel.
Soren was done mollycoddling the baby of the family. Logan was a grown fucking man, and it was time he started acting like it. It had been over a year since Magnus died, and they were all trying to find a new normal.
God, he hated that fucking term.
Soren gripped the wheel as his irritation swelled. Logan had an obligation to the company—to the family.
Fuck. Soren was starting to sound like his father, a man he despised for most of his life for being a manipulative, miserable prick who never shared a word of praise but made sure to voice every single disappointment he suffered whenever he looked at his three sons.
Soren did not want to take his father’s place in that manner. So he inhaled and exhaled—slowly—for the rest of the drive back to Hideaway Bay, in hopes that some bullshit breathing exercises might repair the fact that this job was much more stressful than he’d ever imagined.
Succession was a mother fucker. He was failing to earn the trust of the Magnus loyalists on the board, which he needed to steer the company where it needed to go. It also didn’t help that he was under intense scrutiny for this quarter’s performance.
Every soft quarter gave the board more ammunition.
If they didn’t ratify the board and bring in an outside shipping company to scale up their products’ reach, they would never approve the other changes Soren wanted to introduce, changes that, in his opinion, the fishery desperately needed to survive at a global scale in today’s market.
Inhale. Exhale.
One would think Logan would get that. Possibly even care about the outcome since the fishery paid for his rather cushy life.
And…Exhale.
His white-knuckled grip tightened on the wheel. He tipped his head left and right, letting the tension pop along his neck. He needed a massage, a good back rub to loosen these ever-tightening knots in his shoulders. Or better yet, a blowjob.
His mind instantly jumped to Jocelyn. Something had been off the last time he visited her. She seemed…guarded and not herself. Despite having a date with Olivia tonight, he was already looking forward to seeing Jocelyn afterward.
It should concern him how much one felt like business and the other felt like pleasure.
Driving over the bridge into Hideaway Bay always brought a jolt of relief. It also felt a little like Roger Rabbit getting thrown into the middle of Tune Town.
“What the…?”
Only in Hideaway Bay could Friday afternoon look like three p.m. on a Saturday.
He frowned at the sheer number of tourists and residents milling about as if they had nothing better to do than window-shop. “Don’t you people work?”
His speed slowed to a crawl as pedestrians jaywalked aimlessly to and from stores and made their way to the greens by the wharf. In the distance, he spotted a large billboard where Hawthorne Fishery proclaimed a grand presence as the town’s main donor and festival sponsor.
Jocelyn was a chairperson on the town’s event committee. She likely had something to do with this eruption of fall festivities. She might even be down at the wharf working some ticket booth or sign-up sheet like she often did during festivals and such.
“Let’s see what we’re supporting this week.” He pulled into an open parking spot on Main Street and pocketed his keys.
The temperature had cooled over the last week, and the click of flip-flops on hot pavement had finally faded. That quickly, it looked like The Great Pumpkin had exploded flannel and hay bales on every inch of the Town Square.
Tables with awnings lined the main drag as storeowners pushed their goods out front to mingle with customers. Pop-up vendors dotted the lawn, and farmer market stands threaded throughout.
Dogs barked from the gazebo where pens from the local animal shelter had been set up. An apple-pressing station had been arranged for the kids right next to the pet rescue area to keep them occupied while their parents were bullied into unplanned animal adoptions.
Soren casually drifted toward the wharf, with no plans of visiting the shelter or making cider, but something compelled him in that direction.
Street lamps along the way were decorated for the annual scarecrow competition that was likely coming up.
He wasn’t great about following the town’s calendar, so he wasn’t exactly sure when the voting would take place, but the events were usually ostentatious enough that nothing went by unnoticed.
The closer he came to the action, the louder the crowd grew.
A young woman with brown hair strummed a guitar at the corner, singing an acoustic cover of a Gin Blossoms song. He dropped a twenty in her guitar case and continued toward the gazebo.
Bodhi and Astrid Wilde sat at a table outside the Wilde Kettle and waved when Soren passed.
“Beautiful day for a walk into town,” Bodhi said, adjusting his grey ponytail and eyeing Soren’s suit. “Though you’re a bit overdressed.”
“Just came from work,” Soren explained. Bodhi was Wren’s father, and Astrid was his sister.
Astrid looked up from the playing cards she held. She and Bodhi seemed to be in an endless tournament of Gin Rummy. “You work too hard. It’ll start to age you if you don’t slow down, Soren. Then how will you ever find a good woman to put up with you?”
“I’m working on it.” He scanned the Town Square. “Wren and Greyson here?”
“They’re walking around somewhere, though I don’t know how much longer they’ll be out and about,” Astrid said. “Wren’s feet are swollen.”
A strange twinge of compassion and jealousy flitted through his chest as it always did whenever he was reminded that Wren was pregnant. It was bizarre to think they’d reached the stage of children and family planning, to think his brother was going to be a father in a few months.
All his life, Wren had always been Wren—best friend, confidant, quirky daughter of Haven and Bodhi. But now she was Greyson’s wife, and soon she’d be a mother.
There was the flutter again, only this time it was chased by a zing of urgency.
He was happy for them, but their happiness also made him excruciatingly aware that he was falling behind. Not that it was a competition. He just assumed they would all start having kids around the same time.
The pressure to find a wife and start a family so their children could grow up together had gotten heavier every day since they announced the due date at the end of November.
“If you see my daughter,” Bodhi said, drawing a card from the deck, “tell her to put her feet up and take a rest before she gets fat rolls in her ankles.”
Astrid swatted her brother in the arm. “Leave her be.”
“I’ll be sure to pass along the first part of the message.”
“You tell her to ignore her father and enjoy her stroll. Walking’s good for the baby.”
“So is rest. Take your turn, Astrid.”
“You know, Soren—” Astrid’s words cut off as she scowled at the cards Bodhi had played on the small wooden crate they used as a table. “You can’t lay that down. You need a set.”
“That is a set. My six is on your five.”
Soren left them bickering over their card game and continued toward the wharf, only to duck when Simon Mosley yelled, “Look out!”
A mini pumpkin bounced across the walkway and rolled into the street as Simon stumbled after it. Soren frowned at the getup he wore. He might have been going for an autumn scarecrow, but he looked more like a deranged clown.
“Sorry, Soren. Almost clocked you in the head.” Once the gangly goober retrieved his lost pumpkin, he attempted to juggle again. But that didn’t last long. Simon had many gifts. Most prominent was his talent at being uncoordinated at everything.
The citizens of Hideaway Bay got a serious hard-on whenever the seasons changed. They seized any excuse to throw a festival and came out in droves, volunteering to pull themed events together for travelers who visited to see the spectacle. Speaking of which…