Chapter Five
Parker
“D o you mind if I cut out early today?” I ask as Sebastian pilots the boat back toward the dock.
We were out in the ocean longer than expected due to rough water caused by a storm brewing down south. The passengers didn’t get as much fishing time as expected, but they caught a few decent-sized redfish and speckled trout, so everyone seemed happy and satisfied.
“You got a hot date?” he asks.
“I wish, but no. I’m working my first shift at Whiskey Joe’s tonight. Audrey wants me there at four, and I’d like to run to the office and take a quick shower.”
“Shouldn’t be a problem. Anson and I can wash down the boat, and I’ll call Dad to help the clients clean their catch. I’ll have Mom cash you out and leave your tips in the desk drawer. Swing by and grab it whenever.”
“Thank you, man.”
“You looking forward to it?” he asks.
“Working a second job? Not really, but I like helping Brew out,” I say.
“And you’ll get to spend an awful lot of time with Audrey.”
I nod. “That’s true. Hopefully, we both survive.”
“What exactly happened between you two in high school?” he asks.
“A lot. Some of it was amazing, and some of it was heavy as shit,” I say.
He looks up from the wheel and turns to face me. “How did I not know about the two of you if things were that serious?”
I shrug. “The only person who really knew was Anson, and that was only because he was our cover,” I admit.
“Cover?”
“Yeah, Anson and I worked for Audrey’s father that summer, remember?”
He leans back against the captain’s chair and mentally thumbs through his memories.
“The tugboat?” he asks.
“The tugboat,” I confirm.
Audrey’s father, Rand Fulbright, owns Sandcastle Cove Water Rescue, which provides boat maintenance and recovery services on and around the island. When Anson and I were in high school, we worked a summer with him on the tugboat and assisted in recovering vessels that had broken down on the water, either in the ocean or intracoastal. We’d haul them back to shore for the owners, and Rand would usually do the necessary repairs or handle the scrapping of the vessels.
“Audrey would drop into the office from time to time, and we struck up a friendship. Then, her visits became more frequent, and she started coming by to help with cleaning and paperwork. One evening, Rand caught us in the file room in a precarious state of undress. He lost his shit. I lost my job. Not that I could blame him. If I walked in on my sixteen-year-old daughter being felt up by a horny teenage boy, I’d lose my shit too.”
“Yikes,” Sebastian mutters.
“Yeah, yikes. I’d tried to keep my hands off—I really did—but there was just something about her. She was all red hair and fiery attitude, and I was a goner. After I was fired, we started sneaking around to see each other. We’d steal moments at school and after football games. She even snuck out of her bedroom window a couple of times, and we’d spend the night on a blanket out in the cove. Anson would cover for me with Mom when I lied about staying at his house, and he planted seeds in Rand’s head that I’d moved on to be with a cheerleader.”
I chuckle at the memory.
“So, what happened?”
I bring my eyes to him. “We broke up. I took off on a yacht with my best friends and didn’t return,” I say.
“Nah, it was more than that. A woman doesn’t hold a grudge that long over a simple breakup,” he points out.
“Yeah, I should have said I left her without so much as a goodbye.”
He lets out a low whistle. “Damn.”
“You want to know the heavy part?” I say. “That’s harder for me to talk about.”
I sit on the bench across from him and look back to where the charter clients and Anson are gathered, drinking beer and discussing the morning.
“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. Just say it’s none of my business,” he says.
“It’s not that. It’s just hard for me to talk about.”
I blow out a breath and start my tale, but I can see the scene play out in my mind as if it happened yesterday.
“Are you okay?” I asked as I led Audrey from the emergency room door to my truck.
“I think so,” she said, but by the time I helped her inside and made it to the driver’s side, she had started to cry.
I turned and unbuckled her seat belt and pulled her into my arms.
“Shh. I know it was scary, but if you think about it, it was a blessing in disguise. We were not ready. You know we weren’t, and this was nature’s way of saying the time wasn’t right,” I told her.
We’d found out she was almost three months pregnant just after Easter. And we had been working up the nerve to tell our parents ever since. We planned to tell my mom first by taking her out to dinner this weekend. But Audrey started cramping during today’s graduation ceremony. By the time our friends walked across the stage, she was bleeding, so I rushed her to the emergency room. They said she was losing the baby. Since she was sixteen and it was an emergency, they could treat her without her parents present, but the triage nurse told us that since she was on her father’s insurance policy, he would get a notification that she had been treated. Which meant we were going to have to come clean.
“I know, but I wanted it,” she said through tears.
“Look, I’m going to be a senior next year. You still have two years of high school left. Your parents already hate me. They’d have never let us be together when they found out. They’ll probably never let us see each other again once they find out about the miscarriage,” I explain to her again.
“We could run away together. They can’t stop us,” she said.
“Sure they can. You’re sixteen.”
“I’ll be seventeen soon.”
I shook my head. “Your dad would kill me. He already threatened to have me arrested when he caught you sneaking back in your window the night of the bonfire. What do you think he’ll do when he finds out I got you pregnant? He’ll have them throw me under the jail.”
“He can’t. The age of consent in North Carolina is sixteen.”
“Do you know that for sure?”
“Yes. I looked it up last night. I wanted to have all the facts.”
I sighed. “Where would we go?”
She bit the corner of her lip.
“We have no money, no place to go, no place to live. My mom has barely been scraping by since my dad took off. She works three jobs now just to keep a roof over our heads,” I said.
“I know.”
“I want all of this one day—I do—but not now. It’s too soon. I need to make something of myself first. As much as this hurts, it’s for the best. I wasn’t ready to be a parent.”
She nodded as she swiped at the tears on her cheeks. “Yeah, you’re right. We weren’t ready for it.”
She curled into a ball and faced away from me, clinging to the brown paper bag containing the pain medication the hospital had given her, and we rode to her house in silence.
“You want me to go in with you?” I asked when I pulled into her driveway.
“No. Dad is still at work. We’ll tell them tomorrow. I just want to go to bed,” she said.
I took her hand in mine and brought it to my lips, gently brushing them over the pulse point on the inside of her wrist. She took a calming breath.
“Okay. I’ll call you later to say good night,” I promised, leaning over to kiss her forehead. She then opened the door and walked into her house.
“Damn,” Sebastian murmurs, and it pulls me back from the memory. “That was heavy.”
I nod.
“That’s not even the worst part. I dropped her off, and I went to your graduation party that night and drank myself stupid. Then, the next day, I hopped in the car and went off with you and Anson to work on the yacht for the summer and never looked back. I didn’t call her or speak to her again—not until we returned home and walked into Whiskey Joe’s.”
“Fuck.”
Sebastian and Anson had graduated. I hadn’t, and while we were working and playing in Hawaii, I decided that I wasn’t going back. I finished senior year online, and we spent the next few years living the dream.
And Audrey was home, living a nightmare.
“Well, it makes a lot more sense now,” he says.
“What?”
“Her reaction to you.”
“Ah, you mean her barely contained rage?”
“Yeah, that,” he agrees.
“I deserve it—I know I do—but I’m not the same kid who left Sandcastle Cove, and I’m going to do everything I can to show her that.”
He shakes his head as he stands and takes hold of the wheel again. “Good luck.”
“Thanks.”
It’s going to take more than luck. I’m going to need a fucking miracle.