Chapter 10
New Landings
I left the City without saying goodbye to Jared. It felt like ripping out a stitch on a wound that hadn’t closed—clean, decisive, and guaranteed to leave a scar—but it was the only way I could fathom leaving.
Outside the cab window, New York had already started to curdle. It was one of those hot summer mornings when the whole city smells like warm garbage and fermented fruit. A man in a suit was screaming at a hot dog vendor. A woman in heels was weeping silently into her phone. A pigeon flew headfirst into a Pret-A-Manger window, and no one even blinked.
At the airport, things only got worse. Overpriced salads wilting in plastic, way too many people at every terminal gate, more than one of them coughing into the air without covering their mouth, as if we’ve given up on the basic etiquette of civilization and hadn’t just lived through a global pandemic. On the plane, the couple next to me spent the entire six-hour flight negotiating their prenup. No whispering, just full-volume, passive-aggressive warfare at 30,000 feet.
By the end of the flight, I felt scraped raw, like the city had taken one last layer of skin just to remember me by.
I land in Seattle, then take a shuttle to a private airport on Lake Union, where I catch a second plane. It’s smaller than I expected, a five-seater seaplane that, when its engine is turned on, sounds like it’s held together by hope and duct tape. I put on the headphones handed to me while the pilot, Derek, dons aviators, flips a series of seemingly random tiny switches, and speaks into his radio while we prepare for takeoff.
The plane, essentially a skinny floating minivan with wings, rises smoothly over the mainland. Below us, the Salish Sea gleams like mercury, dotted with dozens of forested islands outlined by craggy coastline, and with every mile we journey, New York City starts to feel like a story I made up.
The tight band of anxiety that’s been wrapped around my chest—since quitting Pulse, since Jared’s confession, since saying yes to the last man I should have said yes to—begins to loosen.
As we arc toward an archipelago clumped in the shape of a heart, Derek gestures down to one of the smallest islands.
“That’s Shaw. Population 382,” he says. The little island looks like a secret someone tried to keep, with thick forests spilling to rocky shores, and only a few roads winding like loose threads through the trees.
“That’s Friday Harbor, the big city of the San Juans,” he says, pointing to another island. From up here, Friday Harbor looks like a tiny watercolor of coastal life. Fishing boats and yachts cluster in a horseshoe bay, docks stretching into the sound, and colorfully painted buildings fill a village surrounding a ferry dock.
“And over there: Orcas Island.”
I nod, feeling a quiet awe, as I take it in. Patricia once told me that Orcas Island is half the size of Nantucket but wilder, with endless miles of wind-carved wilderness and coastline, and more solitude. Liam’s great-grandfather was brought over to work the lime kilns in the late 1800s, she said, but when that work was done, he couldn’t bring himself to leave the natural beauty of the island, nurtured for centuries by indigenous tribes. He became one of the first white settlers, falling in love with and marrying a fisherman’s daughter who was of mixed Lhaq’temish descent. When the kids were little, Liam and Patricia returned here each summer, chasing tides and childhoods. After the grandparents passed, Gavin inherited the land and has spent a decade coaxing the old family home back to life, board by board.
In all the years I’ve known Jared, Gavin has never once invited us to visit him here.
As we descend, the island unfolds like a secret. The marina is tucked into a crescent-shaped bay, framed by weathered cliffs and old-growth forests of cedar, fir, and hemlock. It looks like a place people go to fall off the grid or fall in love. Maybe both.
Derek lands us on the water with barely a jolt, then jumps out and reaches out a tanned forearm to help me onto the dock.
He retrieves my luggage from beneath the plane’s cargo area, handing it to me with a boyish grin. He’s handsome enough that any red-blooded hetero woman in her right mind would notice and flirt back, but I’m not in my right mind.
“It was nice meeting you, Ava.” He reaches out to shake my hand. “See you in a few months. Unless you can’t tear yourself away.”
I’m not quite sure what to say. There is no way this is a permanent solution to my current problems.
“Happens more than you’d think,” he explains, reading my mind.
He hops back into the plane, and I watch it take off, shrinking to a speck and then disappearing into the sky.
Leaving just me, some gulls, and my impractical collection of luggage: my mom’s beat-up old roller I’ve had since I was twelve, a giant duct-taped cardboard box, and my dad’s old duffel bag.
The air smells like salt, pine, and the kind of clean that can’t be bottled and sold. I inhale and feel something in my chest expand. For the first time in weeks, I don’t feel displaced. I just feel ... here.
A white two-story hotel sits atop a hill that rises above the harbor as if it’s standing guard. Its copper roof is patina’d a sea-glass green, and its wraparound verandas make it feel like it was built for long summers, leisuring bayside with family. The kind of place where fairytales begin. Or horror stories, depending on the angle.
I pull out my phone on reflex and try to summon an Uber. One bar. Then none. The screen refreshes with: No cars available within 100 miles. Then I lose reception.
I hold the phone in the air and wander toward the road, arm outstretched like I’m searching for divine intervention.
A bald eagle soars overhead. I half expect it to judge me.
From somewhere on the other side of the dock, a voice calls out.
“That’s useless around here.”
I turn and find a bearded man in waders at the shoreline, pulling a crab trap from a dinghy. His face is carved by weather and time, and he has the unbothered energy of someone who’s never rushed for anything in his life.
“No reliable signal for a mile,” he says.
“I was trying to get an Uber.”
“I see.” The man squints at me like I just said I was summoning a Pegasus. “What’s an Uber?”
There it is. The sentence that perfectly captures the island and possibly the next three months of my life.
“It’s a ride share.”
“No Uber. No ride shares. There’s usually a taxi, but Terry’s on vacation. Your thumb will work, though.” He makes the universal sign for hitchhiking.
For a second, I wonder if I’m about to hitchhike for the first time in my life.
And then I see him.
Leaning against an old green Land Rover Defender, halfway up the ridge above the dock.
Gavin.
I don’t know how long he’s been watching. Long enough, probably.
He’s wearing jeans. Actual jeans. Beat-up boots. A soft brown T-shirt fitted enough that it’s clear the man has shoulders, biceps, and not an ounce of fat on him. No blazer, no city armor. Just ... him. In the wild. His arms crossed. His expression unreadable.
He straightens, pushes off the fender, and starts walking toward me like he’s got nowhere else to be, like this is just a normal Tuesday.
My pulse kicks. I didn’t prepare for this part.
His boots crunch over the gravel. The sun turns his hair into some annoyingly cinematic shade of molasses.
“Welcome to the island,” he says, stopping a few feet from me.
“Wasn’t sure if I’d landed in the right place or a witness protection program. You’ve got a real no sudden movements vibe going.”
Gavin huffs a laugh. “Well, we try not to startle the wildlife. That includes each other.”
He narrows his eyes at my luggage.
“Let me guess. All the shoes you’ve ever owned and the contents of your entire apartment?”
I roll my eyes.
He lifts the box and immediately makes a sound like he’s been punched in the kidneys. “Are you smuggling bricks? Is there cast iron in here?”
I hesitate.
“… Yes.”
His brow lifts. “That explains the hernia.”
“Cooking supplies and my mom’s favorite pan,” I say, quieter this time. “It’s… sentimental.”
He stops. Looks at me for a beat longer than I’m comfortable with. Then just nods once, as if he gets it. Or is pretending to.
I’m not sure which would be worse.
We load the rest in silence. I keep glancing at the water, the empty dock, the birds swirling above us.
This is it. The reset. The weird job. The eccentric remote island. The ex’s brother.
On the flight from New York, I questioned everything. Accepting this offer felt like career sabotage with a side of emotional masochism.
But now … now the air is clearer and my heart is quieter.
And, it’s only for three months. Now it feels less like running away and more like running toward something.
Am I really doing this?
I slide into the passenger seat, and Gavin closes my door with a solid, satisfying thunk as if answering me.
As he starts the engine, I catch a glimpse of his profile in this new context. The man not in a suit or across a conference table, but in the driver’s seat of whatever this next chapter is.
If this goes sideways, he’ll be the one to witness it all.
And somehow, that might be the most terrifying part.