7. June
JUNE
Morning’s a joke. If I managed to sleep at all, there’s no proof beyond the wrench in my neck and the sour taste coating my mouth. My body isn’t just tired—it’s annihilated, every joint ringing with the memory of last night’s disaster.
I don’t check the clock. Whatever hour it is, it’s still too close to yesterday. Sunlight tries to force its way in around the crooked blinds, but outside, the sky’s gone the color of old oysters—bruised and wet.
I don’t want to move.
But, as usual, the universe has other plans.
The phone starts with its shrill, insistent whine. No warning. No grace period. I grope for it on the bedside table, knocking over a cup in the process. Water everywhere. Perfect.
I groan as I check the caller ID. Lisa’s the only realtor on Nantucket who ever treated me like a peer instead of a lost kid with paint on her jeans. I almost let it go to voicemail. But guilt wins out, and I tap the green answer button.
“Hello?” My voice is barely tethered to my skull.
On the other end, the world is far too awake.
“June, I’m so, so sorry about your mom.” This feels so out of left field.
No greeting, not softening the blow—just straight to grief and apologies.
“I know you’ve been busy with family, so I didn’t want to bother you, but I wanted you to know I was thinking of you. ”
I try to hold myself together for at least four syllables. “Thank you. That means a lot.” Even to me, it sounds wrong.
Lisa barrels on, brisk in a way that should be comforting but isn’t. “I know you probably aren’t up to talking shop. But I wanted to give you a heads-up before you saw it online. It’s about Tom Nevers.”
If there’s a sound for hope dying, it’s whatever happens in my chest right now.
She keeps going. “It went under contract first thing this morning. All-cash offer.”
I don’t manage words—just a strange, burning inhale that hurts on the way down. It doesn’t hurt as much as losing my mom, but it’s a close second.
Lisa fills the silence with sympathy, tangled up in business.
“There’s always the old Brant Point keeper’s house—less square footage but huge potential—or that converted boat shed you liked last year?
” She’s silent for a moment, knowing none of those hold the same appeal.
“But I knew this one mattered to you. I’m so sorry.
I tried to get the agent to call you directly, but?—”
“Who bought it?” My voice might as well be a blade. I don’t even try to soften the edge.
She stumbles, unused to me being that direct. “It’s not public yet, but the paperwork’s from an LLC out of New York. They moved fast; earnest money hit escrow before sunrise. I can keep you posted if anything falls apart, but?—”
I hang up without saying goodbye.
The room tilts. My hands are numb.
All-cash offer.
Out of New York.
Moved fast.
It’s so obvious it makes me sick. Ashton. He knew. He knew how much I wanted that place—knew, and still let me believe, even briefly, that it could be mine. Maybe he bought it for the same reason he bought me—to keep it, to ruin it, or just to prove he could.
My body moves before my brain catches up. I don’t bother to brush my hair or my teeth. I don’t even look in the mirror.
I grab my keys and purse and slam the door hard enough that the sound echoes down the block.
The sky has decided to completely lose its mind—rain coming down in angry, uneven sheets, swinging between drizzle and outright assault. The kind of Nantucket rain that seeps straight into your bones.
I drive anyway.
The wipers can barely keep up. The roads are slick with salt and mud, puddles swallowing the shoulders so I have to guess at the center line. Each curve threatens to send me spinning, but I gun it anyway. I belong in chaos. That’s what everyone always says.
The ocean heaves beyond the dunes, whitecaps thrashing against a gray sky. It seems the world has decided to match my mood. And oddly enough, it’s a little comforting. Like the storm in the sky and the one in my heart might somehow join forces.
I make the turn toward Tom Nevers with a clumsy jerk of the wheel. Gravel spits under the tires. Just shy of the lighthouse, I park on the soft dirt shoulder. I don’t care if the road gives way under all this rain and the car sinks. Let it.
I barely get out before the wind shoves me sideways. Hair everywhere. Jeans soaked through in seconds. Shoes already ruined. The only thing keeping me upright is rage. Fiery, intense, unfathomable rage.
The Tom Nevers Lighthouse sits at the edge of the world, battered and beautiful.
The tower’s paint peels in widening strips, exposing underlayers like scar tissue, and the windows are crusted with salt.
The blue trim is faded, but it clings stubbornly to the battered wood, the way my soul has to this property with every dollar saved to put toward this beacon.
At the base of the walkway is a metal red-and-white SOLD sign, swinging obscenely from its post, clacking in the wind like teeth. There’s a phone number at the bottom, but my brain skates right past it.
I want to rip the sign free and hurl it off the bluff.
Instead, I stalk up the path, rain lashing my cheeks, nose burning with cold. The world is a grayscale painting—all shades of black and white, all loss.
Up close, the lighthouse is enormous and impossibly fragile at the same time.
I press my forehead to the nearest window, hands cupped against the cold pane, peering into the shadow.
The inside is empty. Bare floors. Wall patches from old water damage.
And yet, in my mind, it fills instantly with the warmth of easels in a sunbeam, canvases stacked everywhere—space flooded with color and life and anything but this silence.
It was supposed to be mine.
My studio.
My future.
Instead, all I get is my own breath fogging the glass.
I circle the exterior, boots sloshing through sand and tufts of wild grass.
The air is thick with ocean metal, rust, and the familiar rot of seaweed.
A narrow, time-worn path loops around the tower.
I imagine walking it every morning with coffee, ducking into the lantern room to paint while the world still sleeps.
I can’t stop myself. I try every door, every window, hunting for one soft spot, one sign this isn’t finished. But everything is locked tight. The world—my world—sold to the highest bidder.
Of course he did this.
The anger rattles through me. Painful and yet somehow unfeeling.
The wind is crisp enough at the top of the bluff to make me flinch, and I have to press my palm to the icy rail just to stay put. The SOLD sign clacks behind me like a metronome of failure—a reminder of defeat.
This was the dream. A place that was mine in every way that mattered.
Now, that’s never going to happen.
Instead, there’s only rain and wind and the knowledge that someone else holds the keys. The rights to my dream. One they never would’ve known about had I not spouted off my big mouth.
I squeeze my eyes shut until they sting.
If Ashton is behind this, I don’t know if I’ll ever forgive him. Not for the arrest. Not for the shame. Not even for the hundred small betrayals along the way—but for this. For letting me believe I could finally have a place in the world, then ripping it away the moment it became real.
My hands are purple with cold. My shoes are wrecked. My heart is a stone.
I turn one last time, memorizing the lighthouse’s rough geometry against the sky, then wipe my palms on my jeans and head back.
When I reach the car, tears I didn’t know I was holding spill over, hot against frozen cheeks. I hate how easily everything gets taken from me. I hate how even when I win, I lose. But most of all, I hate that Ashton is always the reason.
The windshield fogs the second I collapse behind the wheel. I rest my forehead against it and let myself shake—for just a moment.
One last look back. Even from here, the lighthouse looks lonely.
So am I.
After spending far more time than I want to admit searching for Ashton, to no avail, I head to the only place left that feels safe.
The Shack is a ghost when I pull up. Rain hammers the hood of my car, giving the whole lot a metallic shimmer, puddles blinding in the streetlight.
I don’t even bother locking up after myself.
Let the world take what it wants. I don’t care anymore.
When I step inside, the air hugs me in all the old, familiar ways. I don’t turn on every light, just the one over the register, so the rest of the room feels like the inside of a seashell. Dim. Secret. Muffled.
With no one here, no voices, no footsteps, it’s just the soft hum of the fridge and the sound of wind rattling the siding and me.
I’m dripping wet and bone-tired, soaked from chin to ankles, hair a wild snarl down my back, but the urge to scream is gone, replaced by the need to sit before my knees give out.
I drop straight into the nearest chair and press the heels of my hands into my eyes, willing the world to stop spinning.
It doesn’t. It doesn’t even slow down.
Not even a minute later, I hear the door creak open. It’s so on-the-nose it should be funny, but nothing is funny at the moment. I sneak a peek and let out a sigh. Of course it’s Mark. He seems to have a knack for orbiting my misery.
His shoes shuffle across the old floorboards before he pauses in the doorway, eyes flicking over my hunched form like he’s drafting a diagnosis. “You look like you’ve been through the wringer.” He doesn’t even try to soften it.
I don’t rise to the bait. Not only do I not have the energy, but I just don’t care. “Thanks. Did you go to charm school for that kind of tact, or does your diplomacy come naturally?”
He slides into the chair across from me. “I saw your car outside. Figured you’d turn up here eventually.” There’s nothing gloating in his tone. Just fact, dry as dust.
I let my head fall back against the wall. The wood’s cold. “I didn’t realize I needed an audience.”