Chapter 24
Chapter Twenty-Four
brYNN
The fuel pump is fighting me.
Which is fine. I’m in the mood for a fight.
I’ve been at it since dawn, down in the shed with the trawler’s guts spread across the workbench like some mechanical autopsy.
My hands are black with grease, my back aches from hunching over the engine block, and I haven’t consumed anything except three cups of coffee and half a stale biscuit I found in my jacket pocket.
It’s fine. All of it. Completely fine.
The spanner slips. I bark my knuckles against the engine casing and swear loudly enough to send a gull flapping off the roof.
‘That sounded painful.’
I don’t turn around. ‘It wasn’t.’
‘Your hand is bleeding.’
‘It’s not—’ I look down. It is. ‘Shit.’
Cassie appears at my elbow, holding out a tissue. She’s wrapped in one of those massive cardigans that pregnant women seem to favour, her dark curls escaping from a messy bun, and she’s got that look on her face. The one that says she’s not leaving until she’s extracted information.
‘Thanks.’ I take the tissue, press it against my knuckles. ‘What are you doing down here?’
‘Walking. Doctor says I need to keep moving or the baby will come out the size of a small horse.’ She pats her belly. ‘Also, Cal forgot his lunch. Again. I swear, that man would forget his own head if it wasn’t attached.’
‘He’s lucky to have you.’
‘He really is. I remind him daily.’ She leans against the doorframe, surveying the chaos of the shed. ‘So. Want to tell me why you look like you’re planning to murder that engine?’
‘I’m not planning to murder it. I’m fixing it.’
‘Is that what we’re calling it?’ She nods at the workbench, where various components are scattered in what I would generously describe as organised chaos. ‘Because from here it looks more like a crime scene.’
‘It’s a process.’
‘Mmm.’ She’s quiet for a moment. Watching me with those sharp eyes that see too much. ‘Brynn.’
‘What?’
‘You look even more murderous than usual. And I say that with love.’
I focus on wrapping the tissue around my knuckles. ‘I’m fine.’
‘Of course you are. That’s why you’re down here at’—she checks her watch—‘half past ten on a Saturday morning, beating up boat parts.’
‘I’m working. Some of us have businesses to rebuild.’
‘Some of us have friends who notice when things are wrong.’
The word ‘friends’ catches me off guard. Are we friends? I’ve known Cassie for a few weeks. She’s been kind to me. But friendship implies sharing. Implies letting someone in.
I’m not sure I know how to do that anymore.
‘I’m fine,’ I say again. ‘Really. Just focused.’
Cassie doesn’t push. She just stands there, comfortable in the silence, letting it stretch until I either fill it or don’t.
I don’t.
‘All right,’ she says eventually. ‘Keep your secrets. But if you want to talk—’
‘I don’t.’
‘If you change your mind and want to talk, I’m around. And I’m excellent at listening. Comes from years of nursing – you learn to hear what people aren’t saying as much as what they are.’
I grunt. Go back to the fuel pump.
Cassie doesn’t leave.
‘What are you working on?’ she asks, moving closer to peer at the engine. ‘Cal mentioned you’re trying to get that trawler you bought seaworthy again.’
‘That’s the plan. Once I can get this fuel system sorted, I can carry on working on the hull. Then the electrics. Then—’ I stop. Realise I’m listing tasks like they’re a shield. ‘It’s going to take a while.’
‘But you’re going to do it.’
‘Yes.’
‘And then what? Start fishing?’
‘Refits. Repairs. Engines no one else wants to touch.’ I wipe my hands on the rag. ‘Trelawney Marine Services. It’s what my grandad built before we left. I’m bringing it back.’
‘Competition for the Hardings, then.’
I look at her sharply. ‘Different trade entirely. They fish. I fix. There’s no overlap.’
‘Tell that to Reuben.’
‘Reuben can go fuck himself.’ The words snap free from me, and I can’t help but chuckle at the shocked O Cassie’s lips form. ‘Sorry.’
‘Honest. I appreciate honest.’ She tilts her head. ‘Did something happen? With the Hardings?’
Training’s not until Monday.
Jude’s voice, cold and dismissive. The way he looked through me like I was nothing.
‘Nothing that matters,’ I say. ‘Just the usual. Trelawneys and Hardings don’t mix. I should have remembered that.’
Cassie’s quiet for a moment. Processing.
‘You know,’ she says carefully, ‘I’ve only been in Salt Bay for a few years. I didn’t grow up with the feud. To me, it’s always seemed…’ She searches for the word. ‘Exhausting. All that energy spent hating people for things that happened before most of them were born.’
‘Try being on the receiving end of it.’
‘I can imagine.’ She pushes off the doorframe. ‘Listen, I don’t know what happened, and I’m not asking. But I do know that you’ve been holed up in this shed for weeks, and that’s not healthy. For you or the boat.’
‘I go out.’
‘To training. And the shop. And back here.’ She fixes me with a look. ‘When’s the last time you did something just for fun?’
I open my mouth to answer. Close it again. Jude. That was the last time I had fun.
‘Come to dinner tonight,’ Cassie says.
‘What?’
‘Dinner. At ours. Cal’s cooking – and I told you before, he’s actually decent at it. His mother insisted all her boys learn. Said she wasn’t raising men who couldn’t feed themselves.’
‘I don’t want to intrude—’
‘You wouldn’t be. Cal’s brother is visiting – Morgan. He’s been up in Scotland for work, just got back yesterday. We’re doing a welcome-home thing.’ She waves a hand. ‘Very casual. Just food and wine and conversation that isn’t about fishing quotas or lifeboat maintenance.’
‘I don’t think—’
‘It’s not a setup, if that’s what you’re worried about.’ Cassie grins. ‘Morgan’s perfectly capable of finding his own dates. I just thought you might like to meet some people who aren’t ancient fishermen or gossiping villagers.’
I should say no. I should stay here, in my shed, with my engine parts and my anger and my determination to prove that I don’t need anyone.
But the thought of another night alone in that cottage, replaying Friday over and over, watching my phone not ring…
It was just sex, I tell myself. Just a few weeks of madness. What matters is the business. The future. Showing these Hardings that the Trelawneys aren’t going to be pushed around.
‘What time?’ I hear myself ask.
Cassie’s face lights up. ‘Seven. Bring wine if you want, but you don’t have to. And don’t dress up – I’ll be wearing whatever still fits over this belly, which at this point is approximately three items of clothing.’
‘I can do seven.’
‘Brilliant.’ She squeezes my arm as she passes. ‘It’ll be good, Brynn. I promise. Sometimes a night of good food and new people is exactly what you need.’
I watch her go, picking her way carefully down the harbour steps, one hand on her back.
New people. Right. Because the old ones have proven so reliable.
I turn back to the fuel pump. Stare at it for a long moment.
Then I put down my tools and head home to shower.
The cottage is quiet in the late afternoon light.
I’ve scrubbed off the worst of the grease, washed my hair twice to get the engine smell out, and I’m standing in front of my limited wardrobe trying to figure out what one wears to a casual dinner at a lifeboat captain’s house.
Everything I own is practical. Jeans. Work shirts. Jumpers chosen for warmth rather than style. I didn’t exactly pack for a social life when I drove down here.
In the back of the wardrobe, shoved behind my spare overalls, I find it: a dress. Dark green, soft cotton, the type of dress normal women might throw on for summer evenings. I bought it years ago, in another life, for a version of myself I’d almost forgotten existed.
I hold it up. It’s wrinkled. Probably too dressy.
I put it on anyway.
With a cardigan over the top – grey, slightly oversized, the most comfortable thing I own – and my good boots, it looks almost intentional. Like I made an effort without trying too hard.
I check my reflection and barely recognise the woman looking back at me. When did I start looking so tired? So guarded?
Since you came back here, a voice whispers. Since you let yourself hope.
I shove the voice aside. Fix my hair. Apply mascara for the first time in weeks.
I’ve got an hour to kill before I need to leave.
The cottage feels too quiet. Too empty. I could clean, but everything’s already clean – I scrubbed the whole place yesterday, burning off energy I couldn’t direct anywhere else.
I could work on the accounts for the business I’m trying to build, but the numbers swim in front of my eyes and nothing sticks.
I find myself drifting toward the back room.
Grandad’s things are still there, half-sorted. I’ve been avoiding this – the boxes of papers, the old photographs, the accumulated debris of a life lived and lost. Every time I start going through it, I end up sitting on the floor for hours, lost in memories that aren’t even mine.
But tonight, with the strange restlessness humming under my skin, I pull down a box, unable to resist looking at it closer.
Inside are letters. Dozens of them, bundled with rubber bands that crack when I touch them. My father’s handwriting on some, my grandfather’s on others.
And then – different handwriting. Smaller. More careful. Slanting slightly to the left.
Beneath the layer of Dad’s unsent letters: more letters. But these aren’t his. And they’re addressed to G.
She wrote back.
H didn’t just exist in my father’s desperate imagination. She was real. She wrote to him, and he kept every word.
I pull one out. Unfold it.
My darling G—
I know you think I’ve made my choice, but you have to understand – there was never a choice. Not really. Not the kind you get to make freely.
I miss you in ways I can’t say out loud. In ways I have to hide from everyone, even myself. Some mornings I wake up and forget, just for a second, that you’re not beside me. And then I remember, and the day goes grey.
Be patient with me. Please. I’m trying to find a way through this.
All my heart—H
The paper trembles in my hands. Not because of what it says – though that’s enough – but because of how it sounds. This isn’t a woman who chose to leave my father. This is a woman who wanted to stay and couldn’t.
I check my phone. Quarter to seven. Shit.
I shove the letters back in the box. There are more – I can see the edges of them, a whole layer I haven’t touched. H’s side of the story, waiting underneath my father’s grief like the answer to a question I’m not sure I want to ask.
Later. I’ll read them properly later.
Now, I have a dinner to attend. A life to build. A future to focus on that doesn’t involve Jude Harding or ancient family secrets or the growing suspicion that everything I thought I knew about my family is wrong.
I grab my bag, the bottle of wine I bought earlier, and the small bunch of flowers I picked up from Dot’s shop – a hostess gift, because even emotionally devastated women can have manners.
Dot had given me a look when I bought them. That knowing village look that says I’ve heard things.
‘Going somewhere nice?’ she’d asked.
‘Just dinner with friends.’
‘Friends.’ A pause. ‘Well. Good for you, dear.’
I hadn’t asked what she’d heard. Didn’t want to know.
The walk to Cal and Cassie’s takes ten minutes. The evening is cool but clear, the sun sinking toward the horizon, painting everything gold. Sea Salt Bay looks almost pretty at this hour – the harbour still, the boats bobbing gently, the sound of gulls fading as they settle for the night.
I could learn to love it here. If I let myself.
If certain people would let me.
I shake off the thought. Tonight is not about Jude. Tonight is about making friends, building connections, proving that I can have a life in this village that doesn’t revolve around a man who’s too scared to claim me.
Cal and Cassie’s cottage is warm and welcoming, light spilling from the windows, a shout of laughter and a squeal. I take a breath.
New people. New start.
I knock on the door.
A guy answers, dark, dead-as-fuck handsome with jet hair and eyes that drill me to the ground with one sweep. My tongue dries. ‘You are not Cal Morrison.’
The man grins. My gaze drops to his bare feet, the rolled-up edge of dark jeans.
‘Hell no. Younger, better, infinitely more interesting, and you must be Brynn. I’ve heard all about you.’
He holds out a hand and I place my hand in his, letting him pull me over the threshold.