Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
JUDE
Iwake up before dawn with a grin I haven’t earned and can’t shift. And muscles that are lying little shits about how much sleep I actually got.
The room’s still dark. The house is quiet except for the sound of the boiler kicking on downstairs – Dad’s up, then, making tea, starting his morning routine like clockwork. Like everything’s normal.
Like I didn’t spend a part of the night with Brynn Trelawney wrapped around me in a corrugated metal shed that smells of diesel and cat food.
I shouldn’t be grinning. I should be panicking. Should be cataloguing all the ways this was a spectacularly bad idea – and Christ, the list is long. She’s a Trelawney. Dad would lose his mind. The whole village would have opinions, and none of them good.
But mostly I can still taste her.
I roll out of bed and immediately regret it.
My legs feel like I’ve been climbing cliffs – which, technically, I have.
Once up to her cottage like a panicking idiot because I forgot she doesn’t sleep there, once back down to the harbour covered in mud and self-loathing.
My bad knee has seized up from the cold and the rain and there’s a pleasant, well-used ache in my lower back that makes me think of her nails digging in, her teeth on my shoulder, the way she—
Nope.
Not going there. Not yet. Not before coffee.
I pull on running gear because that’s what I do when my brain won’t shut up and I’ve got nowhere to be apart from chasing accounts and balancing books. I run. I sweat it out. I pretend that physical exhaustion can somehow organise the chaos in my head.
The morning air hits like a slap when I step outside – sharp and clean and still damp from last night’s biblical downpour. The cobblestones glisten under the street lights, and somewhere in the distance I can hear the gulls starting their daily campaign of chaos.
My feet find their rhythm easily – left, right, left, right.
Down towards the harbour, along the quay, past The Ship where the windows are still dark.
The swell’s still up from last night’s storm.
Fistral would be firing. I should be on a board, not in trainers.
But surfing requires a freedom I don’t believe I’ve earned yet – the freedom to do one thing that’s just for me.
I try to focus on my breathing. On the burn in my lungs.
On the way my knee loosens after the first half mile, the joint warming into a rhythm that almost works.
On anything except the replay reel my brain keeps serving up: the heat of her thighs, her voice in my ear – half command, half plea – the scratch of her nails down my back.
The way she looked at me after.
No. Not thinking about that either.
It was just sex. Stress relief. Two adults who can’t stand each other letting off steam in the least mature way possible.
Except it wasn’t.
But I’m going to pretend it was, because if I think too hard about the way she looked at me after – vulnerable and furious and halfway to honest – I’ll stop running altogether.
I round the corner past the chandlery and that’s when I see her.
Brynn’s in the shed doorway, hauling gear around like it’s a perfectly reasonable thing to be doing at half five in the morning.
The big doors are open, the trawler visible inside on its blocks, and she’s moving between the workbench and the boat with a focused energy that tells me she hasn’t slept either but she’s damned if she’s going to waste precious hours lying down.
She’s got her work boots on, hair pulled back in a high ponytail, and she looks about as friendly as a kicked badger.
Which makes two of us on the insomnia front, except she’s been productive with hers and I’ve just been lying in bed replaying the greatest hits.
I slow to a jog as I approach, and the smirk I’ve been trying to suppress all morning breaks free.
This is a terrible idea.
I’m going to do it anyway.
‘Morning, sunshine!’ I call out, far too cheerful for the hour.
She doesn’t look up. Just keeps coiling rope with quick, efficient movements that suggest she’s been doing this since she was old enough to tie her shoes.
I jog closer. ‘Sleep well? In that palace of corrugated metal you call home?’
Still nothing. But I see her jaw tighten.
‘You left your nails in my back, by the way.’ I’m grinning now, can’t help it. ‘Want me to FedEx them? Or should I just consider them a souvenir?’
She straightens up slowly. Turns to face me.
The look she gives me could strip paint.
‘Harding,’ she says, voice flat and dangerous, ‘if you don’t fuck off right now, I’m going to throw this spanner at your head.’
‘Noted. Friendly as always, then.’
She growls – actually growls – and turns back to her work without another word.
I jog past, laughing despite myself. ‘Okay. Maybe still a little mad.’
I make it another fifty metres before I glance back.
Can’t help it.
She’s bent over a rope coil, muttering to herself – probably cursing my name, my lineage, and my general existence. Her ponytail swings as she works and even from here I can see the set of her shoulders, the stubborn line of her spine.
The grin fades.
I’m not thinking about her mouth or her hands or the sounds she made.
I’m thinking about that notebook. The plans.
The lists. Harbour fees and supplier contacts and licensing applications and a future she’s building from nothing.
That’s the thing that got under my skin worse than her nails did.
Not the sex. The ambition. The fact that she’s staying.
I force myself to turn around. To keep running. To ignore the way the air in my throat feels tight and it has nothing to do with the pace.
I run harder, pushing my legs until they burn, until my lungs ache, until the only thing I can think about is putting one foot in front of the other.
It doesn’t work.
By the time I circle back towards home, the sun’s starting to break over the horizon – pale gold and fragile against the grey sky. The village is waking up. Lights are coming on in windows. Dot will be opening the post office soon, ready to catalogue everyone’s business.
And I’m covered in sweat, still grinning like an idiot, with scratch marks on my back and the taste of Brynn Trelawney still on my tongue.
Yeah.
I’m fucked.
I make it home twenty minutes later, legs burning, knee screaming, lungs aching, and that stupid grin still plastered across my face despite my best efforts.
The house I grew up in. The house I never left.
Kit moved up the hill with Jess, his first wife, years ago, and I stayed, because someone has to, because Dad needs someone here even if he’d die before admitting it.
The Harding cottage at the bottom of Quay Lane – small, stone, slate roof, the smell of fish oil and Dettol and nothing that’s changed since my mother walked out twenty years ago.
The kitchen smells like toast and strong tea when I let myself in through the back door.
Dad’s at the table with the newspaper spread in front of him, reading glasses perched on his nose.
At least he’s here though, and hasn’t wandered off somewhere.
He looks up when I enter, takes in my sweat-soaked shirt and flushed face.
‘You’re up early,’ he says. ‘Thought Mondays were your paperwork day.’
‘Couldn’t sleep.’ Not a lie. ‘Thought I’d get a run in.’
He grunts, turns back to his paper. ‘There’s tea in the pot if you want it.’
I grab a mug from the drainer, pour myself what’s left of the brew – strong enough to strip paint – and lean against the counter. My knee’s stiffened up again from the cool-down. There’s a pleasant ache in my lower back that makes me think of—
Nope. Not in front of Dad.
‘Forecast says rain later,’ Dad says without looking up. ‘Make sure you check the bilge pump on the Mary Jane before you head out.’
‘Already on the list.’
‘And that order from the chandlery—’
‘Picked it up yesterday.’
‘There’s weather coming in. Take your waterproofs.’
The weather came in last night. I don’t say anything.
‘Will do, Dad.’
I’m halfway through my tea when my pager goes off.
The shrill beep cuts through the kitchen like a knife. Dad looks up sharply as I fumble for the device clipped to my waistband.
Fishing vessel taking on water. 3 miles SW of harbour. All crew respond.
‘Bollocks.’ I’m already moving, dumping my mug in the sink. ‘I’ve got to go.’
‘Take your waterproofs,’ Dad calls after me again. ‘There’s weather coming in—’
I’m out the door before he can finish the sentence.
The lifeboat station sits at the edge of the harbour, a squat concrete building painted cheerful yellow that does nothing to disguise its utilitarian purpose.
By the time I arrive – still in my running gear because there’s no time to change – Cal’s already there, hauling open the boathouse doors with methodical efficiency that comes from forty years of this.
‘Harding,’ he barks when he sees me. ‘Get changed. We launch in five.’
I sprint for the locker room, strip off my sodden running kit, and pull on the layers: thermal base, fleece, waterproof overalls, boots, life jacket.
My hands are steady despite the adrenaline starting to spike in my system.
This is muscle memory now. Dress, launch, rescue, return. I’ve done it hundreds of times.
It doesn’t mean I’m not scared every single time.
Bill arrives as I’m pulling on my helmet, his face ruddy from the sprint down from The Shack ‘What’ve we got?’
‘Fishing vessel,’ Cal says, already in position at the helm. ‘Taking on water. Three souls aboard.’
‘Christ.’ Bill’s hauling on his own gear, movements quick despite his age. ‘Commercial or recreational?’
‘Commercial. The Jenny B out of Falmouth.’
I know that boat. Everyone knows that boat – she’s older than most of the fleet, held together with rust and prayer and the kind of stubborn optimism that keeps Cornish fishermen at sea when any sane person would’ve sold up years ago.