CHAPTER FIVE | London
CHAPTER FIVE
London
“Look, Trav, new meat.” One of the fishermen coming down the dock elbows the younger man next to him. “She looks like Pippi Longstocking.” He gives me a slow once-over, and I swear I can feel every inch of my body that his eyes touch.
I inwardly cringe but keep my expression neutral.
“Who the hell is Pippi Longstocking?” the younger one asks, his assessment of me a little easier to swallow.
“Shit. I forgot you’re a baby.” He elbows him in the side.
“Well, except for the hair color,” he says as they approach me.
“Pippi has red hair.” He looks me up and down a second time.
“Nice overalls.” He grins and I have to resist the urge to knock his teeth down his throat.
Then again, he’s already missing a few, so perhaps someone beat me to it.
“And the pigtails...” He reaches for the end of one of my braids, but I quickly step back out of his reach.
“One, Pippi Longstocking doesn’t wear overalls; she wears a patchwork dress.
Two, she wears bright, mismatched colors, and as you can see, I have on denim and white.
And while yes, she does wear her hair in two pigtail braids, they’re not only bright red, but they stand straight out.
So, I think your assessment might be a little lacking,” I fire off.
Trav, or at least that’s what the older man called him, tips his head back and lets out a full-belly laugh, the sound so contagious it brings a smile to my lips despite my irritation with the older man.
“She got you there, Lou.” It’s his turn to elbow the older man.
“Name of your ship?” I ask, holding the open ledger in front of myself.
“Independence.” The younger man is quick to answer.
I turn back to the previous page to verify the amount of catch they weighed in at the weigh station this morning.
“You were nearly a hundred pounds below quota,” I point out.
“Lookie here, Trav. She’s been here all of five minutes and already she’s talking about quota like she has a single functioning brain cell in that pretty little head of hers.”
“We had a line snap, lost an entire catch,” the younger man answers, keeping me from spitting out the less-than-professional retort forming on my tongue.
“I’ll make a note of it.” I nod, swallowing back the words I think better of saying as I check my watch. “Marking you out at eight fifty-seven a.m. Names?”
“Travis Richards.”
“Lou Hastings.”
“Times noted,” I say with a nod. “Have a good day, gentlemen.”
“Give me ten minutes and I’ll make sure you have a good day,” Lou says in the sleaziest way you can imagine.
“Somehow, I doubt you could make me have a good day even if I gave you a lifetime.” I pin him with a glare.
“You know, around here, we don’t take too kindly to outsiders who think they’re better than us.”
“Oh yeah? I guess it’s a good thing I was born and raised in Wren Cove then, isn’t it?” I tilt my head in challenge. “In fact, perhaps you’d like to verify that information with my father.” I point at my dad, who just happens to be boarding one of the ships docked in the harbor at that very moment.
“You’re Rand’s girl?”
“The one and only.”
“Apologies. I didn’t realize.”
“You’ll have to forgive Lou here. His manners are oftentimes lacking.
” The younger one steps in to rescue his much older coworker.
“I’m Travis, by the way. Which I guess I already told you.
Most people call me Trav.” He smiles and I’m immediately drawn to his eyes, which are the most unique yellowish color. Almost like cat eyes.
Not going to lie, if Travis were in regular clothes and not covered in dirt and what I can only assume is fish guts, he’d definitely be someone I would give a double take to on the streets.
He really is quite good-looking, in a rugged fisherman way.
Not that I’m interested. I’m not. I mean, in different circumstances, I would be, but alas, my life isn’t quite that simple.
And by not quite that simple, I mean that I’m stuck working for my ex, who hasn’t so much as looked at me in two days and has said as little to me as humanly possible.
His training, if you want to call it that, was basically just to throw a laptop at me and give me a stack of ledgers and wish me luck.
Luckily for me, my dad works in the industry and stayed up well into the late night hours last night, trying to help me figure it all out.
Under normal circumstances, I would have just asked my boss, but as I think we’ve established, these are not normal circumstances.
“London,” I finally respond.
“It’s nice to meet you, London.”
“You as well. Have a good day, gentlemen.” I nod, not giving Lou a second glance as I step past them and make my way toward two other crewmen making their way in my direction.
By the time I finish with the morning rounds on the dock, I’m hot, thirsty, and if I had to guess, rocking a pretty good sunburn on the back of my neck. My fault, of course. I know better than not to wear sunscreen, but I’m so used to working indoors, I didn’t even think about it.
Making my way back up to the office, I blow out a sigh of relief when I push my way inside to find the building empty.
I knew coming home would be hard. I knew that working for Penn would be even harder. But nothing could have prepared me for what I currently face.
I thought Penn would be distant, sure, but this silence... It’s deafening.
It’s not like we ended on bad terms—at least in the sense of how normal teenage breakups go. I told him I wanted to go; he said he understood. We said our goodbyes and that was that. There was no fight. No anger. Nothing. Just love and sadness.
Only, I was angry. Angry that he didn’t fight for me. Angry that he never once asked me to stay. Never said he wanted to go with me. Nothing. He just... gave up.
So why now, after all these years, is he treating me this way?
Like a villain? Like I’m someone to be resented and hated.
.. It’s not like I expected him to welcome me back with open arms, but this is someone I’ve known since kindergarten.
Someone I grew up with. Went to church and school with.
Spent nearly every summer with for as far back as I can remember.
Truth be told, I never considered Penn anything more than a friend until freshman year and even then, I didn’t think it would amount to anything. But it did. In a very big way. And for four years, we were the kind of couple that love stories were written about.
I wanted Penn to be my forever, but I wasn’t willing to give up everything else as a tradeoff.
I didn’t think that would be the end of us, though.
When I told him I was leaving, I never said I was leaving him, only that I was leaving Wren Cove.
I thought he’d offer to come with me, or at the very least ask me to stay.
When he did neither, something inside me shifted. Suddenly, it wasn’t me and Penn against the world... It was just me.
I plop down at my desk, looking out the window next to me that offers the most perfect view of the docks.
I can basically see everything that’s going on from here, which has proven to be a little distracting in the day and a half I’ve been here, but I also love that it gives me the ability to see who’s coming and going.
.. Though if I’m being honest, there’s only one person I’m watching for.
I just wish he’d talk to me. Hell, at this point, I’d settle for him even looking at me.
I want to clear the air. Say our peace and move on, because if we don’t, I might suffocate under the weight of this unsettling feeling that has been living rent free in my gut since I agreed to take this job on Monday.
“If you’re sitting there daydreaming, I’m going to assume that means you have no work left to do and I should give you more.” I startle at the sound of Penn’s voice, having believed I was alone. I hadn’t even considered checking the bathroom.
“Don’t do that!” I scold, flattening my palm to my chest where my heart feels primed to jump right through my ribs.
“Don’t do what?” he asks, turning his back to me to shuffle through some papers on his desk.
“Scare me like that.”
“Maybe if you weren’t over there in lala land, you wouldn’t be so easily frightened.” His voice is distant, cold in a way I’ve never known it to be in all the years I’ve known him.
“For your information, I wasn’t in lala land. I was counting the ships to make sure I didn’t miss anyone.” I say the first thing that pops into my head.
“Sure you were.”
I stare at his back, willing him to turn around, willing him to look at me, just once.
He doesn’t.
Since returning to Wren Cove, the one thing that has been apparently clear is how much has changed in the seven years I was gone, but none more than Penn Kade.
There’s not a shred of the boy I remember.
My rebellious, wild, fun-loving boy has grown into a hardened man who walks around with an enormous chip on his shoulder; at least where I’m concerned.
But that’s not all that’s changed.
When I left, Penn was lean, with long hair that brushed his shoulders and a ring through the side of his lip. Today, he stands before me six feet two inches of pure muscle. And not the kind you earn in the gym. The kind that can only be built by years of hard work and labor.
His once bare face is now covered with a full, short-kept beard.
His long, dark hair is gone, cut short on the sides and slightly longer on top.
No piercings. No tattoos outside of the two he already had when I left—a phoenix that I can see peeking out from under his gray T-shirt sleeve, and my initials on his wrist—which is one of the first things I noticed yesterday.
I don’t know why, but I expected him to, at the very least, have that one covered up. I still remember my reaction when he showed me what he had done. I wasn’t sure how to feel—that he had permanently marked his body with my initials. I’m still not sure how to feel, seeing them still there today.
“I’ve got the count done for the day. Three ships logged and unloaded. I was just getting ready to enter the numbers into the spreadsheets.” I curse the slight shake to my voice.
“Far cry from spinning around on a stage.” His words cut through me like fire, lighting my insides aflame.
It takes everything in me not to walk into the trap he’s so clearly setting.
Pulling in a deep breath, I blow it out slowly.
“It certainly is. But work is work and right now, any will do.”
“Funny.”
“What is?” I hate that his back is still to me, but at least he’s speaking.
“The girl who was too good for Wren Cove and everyone in it... Now look at you.”
“The boy who hated everything about this industry and swore he’d never walk in his father’s footsteps. And now look at you...” I throw his words back at him.
“Do not speak of my father.” His voice drips in warning.
“Do not speak to me like you still know me,” I fire back.
“Maybe you should take your own advice.”
“Maybe you should stop being such a baby and actually look at me!” The words come out louder than I intend them to, bouncing around the small space like a pinball in a machine.
He turns, so slowly I’m convinced I’ve made a mistake and he’s about to fire me, but when he actually faces me, it’s not anger I see on his face, but resentment.
He’s not pretending to hate me. He does hate me. The realization is as surprising as it is painful.
“Let’s get one thing straight...” He grips the desk behind him with two hands, squeezing the edge so hard that the wood groans.
“You are here for one reason and one reason only, and that’s to do a job.
If you don’t like how I manage my employees, the door is right there.
You can leave at any time. But something tells me you wouldn’t be here if you didn’t have to be, so why don’t you do us both a favor and just do your job.
I don’t want to see you. I don’t want to talk to you.
I just want you to do your job. Can you handle that? ”
His words hurt more than just my pride, but I’m way too stubborn to let that show on my face.
“You’re right. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t have to be.
I wouldn’t be anywhere near Wren Cove or near you!
But here I am. So either learn how to speak to me like an adult, or fire me now, because I won’t be your punching bag because seven years ago I hurt your little heart.
” I say it in the rudest, most condescending way I can muster.
His expression darkens and I can’t tell if he’s contemplating doing just that or even worse.
“Still the same spoiled brat you always were.”
“I could say the same to you. You can cut your hair and grow a beard, but deep down, you’re still the same immature jackass you’ve always been.”
“You about done?”
“I don’t know, Penn, are you?”
He looks at me for a long moment—stares daggers at me really—but I would take this over his silence any day.
“Get back to work.” He pushes off the desk and heads for the door. “And if you ever talk to me that way again, you’ll find yourself without a job. You are my employee, and you will respect me. That is nonnegotiable.”
With that, he steps outside, slamming the door behind him with so much force, the entire building rattles.
Well, hell...