5. Nolan
Chapter Five
NOLAN
Ishould not still be looking at my phone.
That is the first thought I have after telling Hadley good night.
The second is worse.
I want her to answer again.
Which is exactly why I set the phone face down on the scarred wooden desk inside the marina office and force myself to study the inspection report spread in front of me like I am a competent adult man with self-control and a newly purchased business that might collapse into Back Bay if I don’t pay attention.
The report is less romantic than Hadley Wright.
Also less dangerous.
Mostly.
Water damage. Electrical concerns. Structural instability in the west dock. Fuel pump upgrades. Storm-mitigation needs. Recommended replacement of pilings along slips eight through fifteen.
The kind of problems I understand.
Problems with clean lines and repair estimates. Problems that can be solved with contractors, permits, budgets, and a hard enough work ethic. I have spent most of my life becoming fluent in things that break in measurable ways.
Rotten wood.
Faulty wiring.
Cracked concrete.
Failed drainage.
People are harder.
Hadley is impossible.
Outside the office windows, the marina settles into night in slow, weathered breaths.
The last of the sunset has bled out over Back Bay, leaving the water dark and glossy beneath a scatter of dock lights that flicker more than they should.
Somewhere near the bait shop, loose metal taps in the wind.
A boat shifts in its slip, rope creaking against a cleat, while the bay laps against old pilings with a steady patience I envy.
This place should not feel peaceful.
It is a disaster.
A beautiful disaster, maybe, but still a disaster.
Half the dock boards need replacing, the old restaurant building smells like mildew, and the office ceiling has a leak someone attempted to fix with duct tape.
Yet sitting here, surrounded by salt-stained windows and outdated maps pinned crookedly to the wall, I reach for the inspection report again. Twenty minutes pass before I realize I haven’t looked at my phone once.
I drag a hand over my jaw and stare at the face-down phone as if it personally wronged me.
For the record, I wasn’t warning you away from the marina.
I’m warning myself.
There are moments in a man’s life when he should keep his mouth shut. Apparently, I have decided to stop recognizing those moments entirely.
The phone buzzes once. My entire body reacts before my brain does.
Pathetic.
I reach for it too quickly, stop myself, then reach anyway because dignity is apparently no longer a priority.
Lark
Did you eat something besides coffee for dinner?
I exhale through my nose.
Of course.
Me
Define eat.
Her response comes.
Lark
Nolan.
I can hear the tone through the screen, dry and unimpressed.
Me
I had a burger.
Lark
One?
Me
It had meat.
Lark
That is not the argument you think it is.
A reluctant smile pulls at my mouth despite myself.
Six months ago, if someone had told me Lark Carrington, my platonic sister, would become one of the only people who regularly checked whether I was sleeping and eating, I would’ve assumed they were concussed.
Then the inn fire happened, and everything changed. The inn she purchased as a promise to her deceased father, the sole reason she moved to Coral Bell Cove, and I found myself following.
Lark
Also, don’t work all night.
Me
You realize you’re not my keeper.
Lark
Incorrect. I adopted you during a crisis, and there are no take-backs.
Something in my chest tightens unexpectedly.
Adopted.
A casual joke.
Still, I sit with the word longer than I should.
The marina office blurs around the edges while memory flickers—not a full vision, never a full one anymore, but fragments from childhood that surface unexpectedly when I’m tired.
The smell of bleach in a group home hallway.
A social worker’s perfume.
The scratch of a wool blanket at a foster house where I stayed for four months before another placement opened up somewhere else.
My name written on masking tape across a plastic bin because permanence was too much to ask of a dresser drawer.
I was eight when my parents died.
Old enough to remember being loved.
Young enough that parts of them have faded anyway.
Sometimes I can still hear my mother shrieking in delight if I catch the right scent in a bakery or hear an old song in a grocery store.
Sometimes I remember my father’s hands on the steering wheel while he drove us toward the coast every summer, one arm hooked casually over the window ledge while I talked too much in the back seat.
Then the memory fades again before I can hold on to it properly.
Every placement had rules taped somewhere.
Shoes here.
Towels there.
Don’t touch this.
Ask before opening that.
After a while, I stopped unpacking more than I needed. It made leaving easier.
The phone buzzes again.
Lark
Don’t ignore me.
Me
I’m literally answering you.
Lark
Emotionally? Debatable.
I exhale sharply with laughter.
Me
Good night, Lark.
Lark
Good night. And Nolan?
Me
What.
Lark
I’m glad you bought the marina.
The message hits somewhere in my solar plexus. I stare at it while something uncomfortable shifts low in my chest.
I lock the phone and set it aside before I can think too much about why that bothers me.
Outside, the marina groans in the wind.
I stand from the desk and step out onto the dock, letting the cooler night air move over my skin.
The tide has shifted higher since sunset, dark water curling around the weathered pilings beneath me.
Somewhere farther down the shoreline, music drifts faintly from a beach bar near downtown.
A guffaw follows it a second later, warm and distant.
I walk down the main dock with my hands in my pockets, boots creaking against old boards silvered by salt and weather. Several slips sit empty this time of year, though a handful of fishing boats rock gently farther out, their masts clicking in the breeze.
The marina should intimidate me more than it does.
Financially, this project is on the brink of irresponsibility.
The repair estimates alone are enough to make my accountant develop stress-related symptoms. The western dock needs major structural work before peak season. The restaurant building might need partial demolition. Half the electrical system predates common sense.
I stop beside slip twelve. One of the dock boards shifts beneath my boot.
I crouch and press my hand against the weathered wood.
Solid. Older than it looks. I make a mental note to replace the support underneath before summer.
Then I catch myself. I’ve already started thinking about the next season.
I hang around the far end of the dock and take a look back towards the shore.
The remains of the old Sweetspire Hotel sit farther up the coastline, little more than surviving stonework and warped foundation pieces now. Before the hurricane, the hotel had been the center of half the town’s summer traditions. Weddings. Fishing tournaments. Fourth of July parties.
Lark says people still talk about it as if they lost a relative.
The marina survived because it was built tougher. Or maybe just luckier.
The thought follows me longer than it should.
A truck rumbles past somewhere near the main road, headlights briefly sweeping across the water. Wind pushes harder through the docks, carrying the scent of salt, marsh grass, and distant smoke from someone’s firepit.
Hadley pops into my head again. Everything keeps circling back to her lately. The way she looked standing outside the marina office this afternoon. The soft blue sweater. The loose knot of hair already falling apart in the wind. The way her pulse jumped visibly when I stepped too close.
And that moment.
Jesus.
That almost-touch.
My hand had moved before I fully thought about it. One second, I was looking at strands of hair blowing across her cheek, and the next, every instinct in my body wanted to tuck them behind her ear, just to see what would happen.
I came within inches of touching her. Then I stopped because I remembered exactly what happens when I touch Hadley Wright.
I remember her melting against me in the dark.
I remember her fingers sliding through my hair while rain hammered the windows outside.
I remember how she’d laughed into my mouth at one point, breathless and warm and completely undoing.
And I remember waking up alone afterward.
The empty side of the bed still bothers me more than it should. Not because she owed me anything. We never made promises to each other.
Still, some ugly, honest part of me had wanted to wake up and find her there. Maybe barefoot in the kitchen and stealing my coffee. Maybe smiling at me in daylight like the night before hadn’t just been adrenaline and fear and bad timing.
Instead, there’d only been silence.
I had spent weeks afterward convincing myself it didn’t matter. Then I walked into Sweet Gum Café this morning and forgot every lie I’d told myself.
Tires crunching over gravel pull me from my thoughts. I glance toward shore. Walter Greene climbs out of an old truck carrying a paper bag and a flashlight.
“You still here?” he calls.
“Seems that way.”
“That doesn’t mean you gotta haunt it.”
“I’m not haunting it.”
Walter ambles down the dock with the confidence of a man who has never hurried for anyone in his life. “You’re standing alone staring awfully hard at dark water. That’s at least mild haunting.”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
“Good idea.”
He hands me the paper bag once he reaches me. “My wife sent food.”
I glance inside and peer at the plastic-wrapped dish.
Ham biscuits. And by the heat kissing my face as I open the bag, they’re still warm.
Something tightens unexpectedly beneath my ribs.
“She doesn’t know me.”
Walter snorts. “Folks around here don’t need to know you to feed you.”
That burger Holt gave me is on my mind. Mrs. Pace insisting on coffee. Hadley showing up with permits she could’ve emailed.
Apparently, feeding people isn’t the only way this town takes care of you.
I take the bag carefully. “Tell her thank you.”
“Tell her yourself tomorrow when she comes by to inspect you.”
I blink. “Inspect me?”
“Sure. You bought a community landmark. Now everybody’s emotionally invested.”
“That sounds threatening.”
“That’s because it is.”
A sudden, uncontrollable chuckle escapes my lips, surprising even myself.
Walter grins like he’s part of some inner joke. “There it is. Thought maybe you were physically incapable.”
“Careful. I’m trying to maintain a mysterious reputation.”
Walter leans against the railing beside me and looks out over the water. “You really think you can bring this place back?”
I follow his gaze toward the marina. The worn slips. The faded signs. The weathered buildings waiting stubbornly against the shoreline.
“No,” I say honestly.
Walter glances over.
“I think I can make it better.”
For a long moment, he says nothing, then he nods once, slow and thoughtful.
“Good answer.”
Walter’s truck heads into town, vanishing from sight. The paper bag is still warm in my hands. I stand here longer than necessary before realizing nobody has ever brought me dinner because they thought I might have forgotten to eat.
Back inside the office, I eat one biscuit standing over the desk while reviewing dock repair estimates. Then another because I can’t seem to help myself.
The inspection reports blur after a while. My attention keeps drifting toward my phone. Toward Hadley. Toward the ghost of a smile that touched her lips earlier when I admitted I already loved this place. She looked at me like she understood.
That’s the part I can’t stop thinking about. Most people hear ambition when I talk about projects. Business. Investment. Expansion. Hadley looked at me like she understood loneliness instead.
The phone buzzes.
This time, my mouth curves before I even pick it up.
Hadley
For the record, I’m excellent at permits. Terrible at warnings.
A soft chuckle drifts through the deserted office.
Me
That seems inconvenient.
Hadley
For who?
The answer rises immediately.
Me.
For me.
For every ounce of self-control I had before you walked back into my life wearing a blue sweater and looking at me like maybe I mattered.
I type it.
Delete it.
Then stare at the screen for several long seconds before settling on:
Me
Probably both of us.
Her response takes longer this time.
Long enough for me to imagine her reading the message somewhere cozy and warm. Maybe curled up on a couch. Maybe barefoot. Maybe biting the inside of her cheek while she decides how honest to be with me.
Hadley
That almost sounded like honesty, Pierce.
My chest tightens unexpectedly.
Me
Don’t get used to it.
Hadley
Too late. I’m filing it in the official town record.
Me
Please don’t.
Hadley
Marina owner admits emotional complexity.
Me
I regret asking you for permits.
Hadley
No, you don’t.
I should end the conversation there.
But I don’t.
Me
Tomorrow morning. Can you meet here to walk me through the event requirements?
Three dots appear.
Disappear.
Reappear.
I picture her smiling and regret having an imagination.
Hadley
Professionally?
The word lands exactly where she intends it to.
I lean back in the office chair and look out toward the dark water.
Me
Mostly.
Her response takes longer.
Hadley
Dangerous answer.
Me
I know.
Silence stretches afterward.
I tell myself that’s good. Mature, even. A natural stopping point before one of us says something impossible to take back.
Then the phone lights again.
Hadley
Nine?
I close my eyes briefly.
This woman is going to ruin every carefully ordered part of my life.
Me
Nine.
This time, I actually set the phone down afterward.
Outside, the dock lights shimmer across dark water. The whole place creaks and breathes around me like an old thing, carefully trying to trust new hands.
I set my phone beside the inspection report.
Tomorrow at nine, Hadley will walk back down these docks. I should be thinking about permits. Instead, I catch myself wondering whether she’ll take her coffee the same way she did this morning. It seems I’m excellent at priorities.