11. Never a Secret
Never a Secret
Piper
The filet knife came down through the frozen ballyhoo with a thwack, splitting bone against the stainless-steel prep table.
I slid the cut piece into the waiting flat, swept the scraps toward the chum bucket, and reached into the cooler for another fish.
Brine clung to everything in the shack—the table, the floor mats, my hands—and the bait aerators kept up their steady hum behind me.
After the last few days, I welcomed every repetitive second of it.
Fish. Knife. Flat. Scraps.
Nothing in here required an explanation.
I lined the next ballyhoo up on the cutting board and pressed the blade through the stiff flesh.
Nolan could scrape every hull on Skipper’s property if he wanted.
He could sleep at that miserable motel until his back gave out.
None of that mattered. The boats still needed bait before noon, the coolers still needed counting, and somebody had to hose the prep area before the afternoon charters came through.
The doorway creaked behind me.
“Don’t stack those finished flats that close to the cleaning side,” Skipper said. “You’ll end up spraying fish water over everything when you rinse the table.”
“They’re separated.” I nudged the nearest flat farther from the sink with my elbow, then set the knife down to shift the stack. “Blue labels are ready for pickup. The ones without labels are staying here until I finish the count.”
Skipper stayed in the doorway with one shoulder against the jamb. “You moved them six inches and called that a system.”
“It is a system. You just don’t like systems you didn’t invent.”
“I ran this place for thirty years before you wandered in here.”
“And you identified charter loads with boat names written on masking tape.”
He gave me a skeptical look. “Worked fine.”
“Until two captains had boats named after women.”
“That happened once.”
“It happened twice.”
I picked the knife back up before he could defend himself further and drew another fish from the cooler.
The freezer air rolling off the open lid gave me a brief break from the stuffy room, but it vanished as soon as I lowered the lid again.
Sweat had gathered at my hairline hours ago, and I had stopped caring somewhere around the first cooler.
Skipper watched me finish another cut.
“You’ve been going since the morning boats came in.”
“The morning boats needed bait.”
“They left.”
“The afternoon boats also need bait.”
“That doesn’t mean you have to process every damn fish in the county before lunch.”
I pushed the finished pieces into the flat and cleared the board with the back of the blade.
His concern would have bothered me once.
Months ago, I might have heard it as another person deciding what I could handle, another voice telling me where to stand and what version of my life would be more convenient for everyone else.
Skipper wasn’t Reid.
That distinction mattered.
He never took work out of my hands without asking. He never treated my pregnancy like an inconvenience that needed to be hidden or managed. When he told me to stop, it wasn’t because I looked wrong for somebody’s camera. It was because he had watched me work and decided I was being stubborn.
Unfortunately, he was also right often enough to be irritating.
“I need those flats prepped before noon, Piper. But you’ve been on your feet for three hours straight, so go sit in the office and drink some water.”
“I’m working my way through the second cooler right now.” I angled the next fish across the board and checked the cut before bringing the knife down. “I’ll have the section cleared out and hosed down before lunch.”
“You’ve also said that about three different jobs this morning.”
“Because I finished the first two.”
“And somehow decided that meant you deserved a third.”
I fought a smile, turning toward the cooler before he could catch it. “Skipper, I am cutting bait. I’m not hauling engines.”
“No, because Lawson would throw you over his shoulder and carry you inside if you tried.”
“Lawson enjoys remaining employed.”
“So do I, which is why I’d rather not explain to anybody why I let my six-month-pregnant bait manager work herself into the floor.”
I set the knife beside the board and moved the completed flat toward the others.
The shack seemed smaller whenever somebody reminded me how pregnant I was, as if that fact automatically shrank the boundaries of what I could still do.
Yet the work remained manageable. My hands worked.
My feet worked. The charters didn’t care about my personal life, and the fish certainly didn’t.
That ordinary indifference had become one of my favorite things about Osprey Bluff.
Skipper pointed toward the office with two fingers. “I am not driving you to the hospital because you pushed yourself too hard. Take a five-minute break when you finish that batch.”
“Five minutes.”
“With water.”
“You’re getting demanding.”
“I’m your boss. It’s one of the few pleasures I have left.”
I looked over at him. “Five minutes after this batch. Then I’m finishing the cooler.”
“Fine.”
“And don’t let Miller take the blue-tagged flat until I check the count.”
Skipper pushed away from the doorway. “See? You can sit down and still give orders.”
“That was never in question.”
He disappeared toward the docks, letting the door click shut behind him. The aerators filled the shack again, along with the scrape of a bucket shifting somewhere outside and the muted wash of water against the pilings.
Five minutes was reasonable.
After the batch.
I pulled another bait fish from the second cooler and lined it up on the board.
The blade came down through the flesh just as the shack door groaned open behind me. I slid the cut bait into the flat before looking up, unwilling to let whoever had walked in steal the rhythm I had spent the morning building.
Nolan stood just inside the doorway.
For a moment, I couldn’t reconcile the man standing there with the version I remembered. Blue bottom paint streaked one side of his shirt, grease marked his forearm, and sweat had flattened his hair against his forehead. His clothes looked like they had lost a fight with half the marina.
“Shut the door behind you,” I said. “You’re letting the heat in.”
He reached back and pulled it closed. “Piper, can we talk?”
“You can talk.”
I turned back to the table and reached for another fish. His boots squelched against the wet floor mat as he came farther into the shack, only to snag his shoulder on a cast net hanging from an overhead hook. He stopped to untangle himself before taking another step.
“Watch the nets,” I said. “And don’t step on the blue-tagged flats.”
He glanced down and shifted his foot away from the stack. “Right. Sorry.”
The word was so ordinary that I almost laughed.
Months ago, getting a simple apology out of him had required an argument, a closed bedroom door, and enough patience to make me question my own sanity.
Now he was standing in a bait shack, covered in boat paint, apologizing because his shoe had come too close to frozen fish.
That did not make the rest of it disappear.
I set the next ballyhoo onto the board.
“Piper, please just stop for a second. I was an arrogant idiot. I convinced myself that playing Reid’s PR game was the only way to secure our future, and I was wrong.”
I stopped the blade against the fish. There it was, the admission I had wanted from him months ago. Not Reid made me. Not you misunderstood. Not this is how the league works. He had finally put the blame where some of it belonged.
I squeezed the knife handle tighter. Then I finished the cut and pushed the pieces into the flat. I refused to give the sentence more room than that.
“You need to move,” I said.
He frowned. “What?”
“You’re standing in front of the cooler.”
Nolan stepped aside at once. I crossed behind him, lifted the lid, and reached inside for the next row of bait. Freezer air spilled across my arms before the lid came back down.
“Are you going to make me follow you around the shack while I try to apologize?”
“I didn’t ask you to come in here.”
“I know.”
“And I didn’t schedule this conversation.”
“I know that too.”
I carried the bait back to the table. Nolan followed, only to stop short when he caught his shoulder on another hanging net. I almost smiled, and this time he caught me.
“You think this is funny.”
“I think you have no idea how to move around a bait shack.”
“That is becoming obvious.”
“You nearly walked into six hundred dollars of rigged bait.”
His gaze dropped toward the flats. “Then I am very glad you stopped me.”
I picked up the knife again. He stayed on the other side of the table this time, leaving enough room for me to work. Grease had collected around his knuckles and beneath his nails, the kind that did not come off with one quick rinse.
Nolan Callahan used to have people whose jobs existed solely to keep him camera-ready between games and sponsor appearances.
A dirty shirt was not redemption, and ruined hands did not erase four months of silence.
Still, I could not remember the last time he had stood in front of me without a phone buzzing in his pocket or Reid waiting somewhere nearby to tell him what came next.
“I am working, Nolan, and these boats are on a strict schedule. If you want to talk, you can do it while I finish this cooler.”
“I can do that.”
“Then stop trying to make me stand still.”
He looked at the knife, then back up at my face. “Fair.”
I slid another finished piece into the flat and moved to the sink to rinse the fish slime from my fingers. Nolan shifted out of the aisle before I had to ask—a small act that irritated me more than it should have. It meant he was finally paying attention, after four months of choosing not to.
“I know saying Reid’s name doesn’t get me off the hook,” he said.
I turned the water off. “Good.”
“I let him make every bad decision sound reasonable.”
“You still made them.”
“I know.”
“You lied to me.”
“I know.”