Chapter 15
She heard the Range Rover before she saw it.
The gravel on the circular drive had a sound, a low crunch that changed depending on who was pulling in.
Jon's truck was heavy and slow. Morgan's Jeep was fast and careless.
Nate's work van scraped. Beck's was steady.
Even. The tires rolling at the speed of a man who wasn't in a hurry to get anywhere because he already knew where he was going.
Hudson lifted his head from her lap. His ears went forward. His tail started before the rest of him decided to move.
"I know," she said. "I hear him."
The porch faced the trees and the drive and the last of the day.
The live oaks were turning, not dramatically, not like they did on the mainland where the color went all at once.
Here it was slower. A branch at a time. Gold creeping into the green.
October on Ellery Cove was a season that didn't announce itself.
The Range Rover came around the bend in the oaks and parked behind her 4Runner. The engine cut. She watched through the porch railing as Beck checked his phone, put it in his pocket, and reached for the door handle.
Then he took his hat off.
He set it on the passenger seat. He ran his hand through the curls once and got out and came up the steps and Hudson met him halfway, tail going, body doing the full golden retriever greeting that involved pressing his entire side against Beck's legs.
"Hey, baby," she said.
He didn't respond. He just kissed her. Short and sweet.
"Hey."
"I'm not gonna lie, Beck. I've been waiting on one of those all day."
He kissed her again. Longer. She let herself lean into it. His hand came up to her jaw and his thumb rested against her cheek and for a second the porch and the trees and the evening were just backdrop.
"You get as many as you want, whenever you want."
"I'm starting to think you've been taking lessons from Hudson. You're getting smoother by the day."
Then that smile. "Maybe I taught him."
She laughed and punched his arm. He caught her hand and held it and they sat on the steps.
Hudson settled between them, chin on his paws, content with the arrangement.
The light was going amber through the oaks.
A mockingbird was working through its catalog somewhere in the trees behind the house, cycling through stolen songs one after another like a jukebox with no off switch.
"So," she said. "You said you had a meeting you needed to tell me about."
"Two things, really. The meeting's one. The other's about you."
"About me?"
"Yeah." He turned toward her. His knee pressed against hers on the step. "Jon told me your birthday's Friday and I want to do something for you."
"Beck, you don't have?—"
"I want to, Kirstin."
His eyes were steady. Not asking. Telling. Ethan Beck wanted to make her birthday matter and he'd come here to say it first, before the meeting, before whatever else was on his mind. She'd been the first thought.
"Okay. I trust you. Friday. My birthday." She pointed at him. "But Beck, if you embarrass me, I'm gonna kill you. You know that, right?"
"Noted."
"Now. The meeting."
His smile didn't fade but it changed. The boy left and someone older took his place.
"Addison and Morgan came by the facility this morning," he said. "Eight teams reached out about attending the workout Thursday."
The mockingbird stopped. Or she stopped hearing it. The amber light was still in the trees and his knee was still against hers and everything was exactly where it had been three seconds ago and none of it felt the same.
Eight teams.
She should have hugged him. She should have told him how great it was, how proud she was.
"You could've led with that."
His smile dropped. What replaced it wasn't anger, wasn't confusion. Something quieter. She'd surprised him. His hand was still holding hers on the step between them and she felt his fingers loosen, not let go, just loosen, and that small retreat told her she'd already done damage.
"Yeah," he said. "I guess I could have."
"Then why didn't you?"
She was standing. She didn't remember getting up. Her hand was empty now and the air where his fingers had been felt wrong.
"I was more concerned with you."
She laughed. One syllable. No warmth in it. "Okay."
"What?"
"Beck, seriously." She was moving toward the door. "You're a professional baseball player. You got hurt, but you can still play, and there was always going to be another offer. A multimillion-dollar contract versus my birthday. The priority isn't hard to sort."
She opened the front door. Hudson started to follow her.
"Come on, boy," Beck said. Quiet. Not to her.
Hudson stopped. He turned back to Beck. His tail dropped and his ears went flat and he stood between the door and the steps with his head turning from one to the other, caught between two people who were supposed to be in the same place.
She let the door close behind her.
Through the wood she heard Beck say something else to Hudson, low and gentle. She heard the dog's nails on the porch steps. She heard the Range Rover door open and close. She heard the engine start.
She heard the gravel.
Steady. Even. The same speed leaving as arriving.
The kitchen was finished.
Nate had done the last of the countertops two weeks ago.
New cabinets, white, clean hardware. The backsplash she'd picked in February, a soft gray-blue that caught the morning light.
The island she'd drawn on a napkin at Jon's bar and handed to Nate and said "can you do this?
" and Nate had said "Kirstin, I can build anything, you just have to ask. "
She'd started this the night of the release. The night she'd sat in this room after Jon drove her home and texted Nate two words. Do it. The kitchen had been wrong for years. Too dark. Too small. Unchanged because changing something meant admitting something needed changing.
She put her back against the new cabinets and slid down to the floor.
The tile was cold through her jeans. Her hands were on her knees.
The house was quiet. The house was always quiet but tonight the quiet was different, thinner, the kind that comes when you've just removed the only noise that mattered.
She pressed her palms against her eyes.
Eight teams. Eight organizations calling Addison and Morgan about the man who'd just kissed her on the porch and put her birthday before all of it. And she'd walked inside and closed the door on him.
She knew what she'd done. She knew it while she was doing it.
The bartender who reads everyone, who sees the lie before the liar finishes telling it, who can map a room in thirty seconds.
She'd read Beck perfectly. He'd led with the birthday because the birthday mattered more to him.
That was real. That was true. And she'd punished him for it because the scouts were real too and the scouts meant someone was going to offer him a life that didn't include this kitchen or this island or this porch.
She dropped her hands. The kitchen was still there. New and clean and exactly what she'd asked for. Evidence that she could want something and build it and sit inside it.
She just couldn't sit inside it with him on the other side of a closed door.
The light through the kitchen window had gone from amber to gray.
She sat on the floor and let the minutes pass.
She thought about calling Morgan. She thought about driving to Jon's.
She thought about the six years behind that bar where she'd watched other people make mistakes and told herself she'd never be the one sitting on a floor replaying something she couldn't take back.
She stood up. She washed her face at the new sink. She dried it with a towel that was hanging on the oven handle. She took a breath.
She picked up her phone.
You meant it, didn't you? You thought of me first.
The response was immediate.
Yes.
Where are you?
On the point walking Hudson.
Stay there.
She grabbed her keys from the counter. She didn't check her hair. She didn't change her clothes. She walked out to the 4Runner and pulled out of the circular drive and drove across the island toward the lighthouse.
The point road was empty. Late October, a weeknight, the island quiet with the season winding down and the tourists thinning and the people who remained being the ones who lived here.
She parked in the small lot by the Outpost. The restaurant was closed for the night.
The patio chairs were stacked. The lighthouse threw its beam across the water in a slow rotation that she'd been watching since she was a child.
She walked down the path toward the beach. The sand was cool under her shoes. The wrong shoes for this. She didn't care.
She saw him before he saw her. Fifty yards out, near the waterline, Hudson running ahead and circling back, running ahead and circling back, the golden shape of him catching the last of the light.
Beck was walking with his hands in his pockets.
No hat. The curls moving in the wind off the water.
He was just a man on a beach with his dog and the ocean and whatever she'd left him with an hour ago.
He turned when Hudson did. Hudson had spotted her. The dog broke from Beck and came across the sand at a full sprint and hit her at the knees and she caught her balance and put her hands on his head and his fur was cool and damp from the water and his tail was going so hard his whole body shook.
"Hey, buddy. I know. I'm sorry. I'm here."
Beck hadn't moved. He was standing at the waterline, hands still in his pockets, watching her walk toward him. His face from thirty feet wasn't angry and it wasn't hurt and it wasn't closed. It was waiting. Open and waiting.
She stopped in front of him. Close enough to see the salt on his shirt from the spray. Close enough to see the line where the sun had been on his neck all day. Close enough that if she reached for him she wouldn't have to extend her arm.
"I didn't believe you could put me over your career," she said. "That's not your problem, Ethan. That's mine. I'm sorry."
"You still think I'm going to disappear and never come back."
"Yeah. I do."
"How do I fix that?"
She let him see the tear. One. The first one she'd given anyone in longer than she could remember. It came down her cheek and she didn't wipe it. The wind off the water was cold on the wet line it left.
"You can't." Her voice caught. "I mean, that's something I have to fix."
She watched his head drop. His chin went to his chest and his hands stayed in his pockets and he stood there at the waterline with the lighthouse beam sweeping the water behind him and he absorbed it.
He didn't argue. He didn't offer a solution.
He took it in. The waves came up and touched his shoes and retreated and came back and he didn't move.
"That doesn't mean I'm giving up," she said.
His head came up.
"That doesn't mean I'm running. It means I got scared and I handled it badly and I'm standing on this beach right now because you deserve better than a closed door."
Hudson was between them, sitting in the sand, his head turning from one to the other. The water lapped at the shore. The lighthouse turned. The beam passed over them once and moved on and the dark came back and stayed.
Beck took his hands out of his pockets. He reached for her and she let him pull her in and his arms went around her and her face went into his chest and she stood there and breathed.
His shirt smelled like salt and the facility and the cologne he put on before he drove to her house and she breathed all of it in and held it.
"I led with the birthday because that's what I cared about," he said. Into her hair. Quiet. "The rest is just baseball."
"I know," she said. "I know that now."
They stood there. The water came up around their shoes and neither of them stepped back.
Hudson pressed against their legs, warm and solid, his tail moving slowly in the sand.
The lighthouse beam came around again and this time she watched it sweep across the water and disappear and she didn't let go.
She pulled back. She wiped her face with the back of her hand. The tear was dry but the salt was still on her skin.
"Beck."
"Yeah."
"I want to drive the Range Rover."
He took the key out of his pocket and handed it to her. No hesitation. No joke about being careful.
"You're not afraid I'll mess it up?"
He laughed. "Nah."
She took the key. Silver fob, heavier than she expected. She closed her hand around it.
They walked back across the sand. Hudson ran ahead, nose down, investigating something at the edge of the dunes that turned out to be a piece of driftwood he picked up and carried proudly. The Outpost was dark. The parking lot held her 4Runner and his Range Rover and nothing else.
She clicked the fob. The lights flashed.
"You're riding shotgun," she said. "And Hudson sits in the back. I don't need dog hair on my outfit."
"Your outfit?"
"Shut up, Beck."
He put Hudson in the back. Hudson circled the seat once, lay down, and put his chin on the armrest between them.
Beck got in the passenger side. She adjusted the mirrors and the seat because he was six inches taller and everything was wrong and she spent longer on it than she needed to because she was enjoying the fact of sitting in his car, in his seat, with his dog behind her and his cologne still on her shirt from the beach.
She pulled out of the lot. The point road was still empty. The headlights cut through the oaks and the windows were down and the night air came through warm and salt-heavy and Hudson's ears were blowing in the wind from the back seat.
She didn't turn toward his rental. She didn't turn toward her house. She drove past both turnoffs and kept going, following the island road as it curved along the water, the marsh on one side and the sound on the other, the headlights reaching into the dark ahead of them.
Beck didn't ask where they were going.
She drove until the road ran out at the north end of the island where the pavement gave way to sand and the dunes rose up on both sides and the water was everywhere.
She parked. She cut the engine. The waves were close and loud and the dashboard lights faded and the dark came in and it was just the two of them and the dog and the car and the ocean.
She reached across the console and took his hand.
They sat there until the moon came up.