Page 51 of Everything You Hate
But it wasn’t the reason.
The reason is simpler and it sits in my chest like a stone. I wanted to take her to the island.
I wanted to load her onto my boat and point it toward Gull Shit Rock and spend the day with her, the two of us with the water between us and the world. I wanted to watch her face when we rounded the point and the island came into view. I wanted whatever theory she’d cooked up from that journal, wanted to watch her mind work the way it does when she’s onto something real. I wanted the version of her that exists when the camera’s off and the performance drops. The woman who chops potatoes because Shea asked her to, who follows a five-year-old around a dinner table without being asked, who kissed me on a porch like she was trying to start a fire.
I wanted that. Badly enough that the want itself terrified me.
Because wanting things is how you lose them. My mother wanted to live. The Coast Guard wanted me whole. My father wanted to die in his own bed with his hands still useful. None of those things happened the way they were supposed to. Want something enough and the universe finds a way to take it.
I chose those words. Every one of them. I didn’t stumble into cruelty. I mapped it. I targeted her career because it’s the thing she rebuilt from ash. I mentioned the clip because it’s the wound that hasn’t healed. I told her she doesn’t belong here because I know, with the same certainty I know the sound of fog moving over water, that part of her wants to.
I wanted to hurt her enough that she wouldn’t come back. I wanted a door I could close permanently, because every time she walks through it, the room gets harder to leave.
“Fuck me sideways,” Captain says from his perch.
“Yeah.” I hold the wheel and keep the bow pointed at nothing. “You got it.”
Port Haven is a smudge behind us by the time I let myself think the rest of it. She didn’t argue. She’s argued with me every single day since the ferry, and today she nodded and got off my boat.
I’ll turn us around eventually. I have to.
But for now, I need to be on the water.
Chapter Thirteen
Scarlett
I walk.
I want to run, but I will not give that man the satisfaction.
So I walk. Shoulders back. Head up. Tourists bump past me with their maps and their metal detectors and their excited chatter about where to dig. None of them look at me. I’m wallpaper. I’m part of the scenery. A woman with a journal under her arm and nowhere to go.
Dean’s words follow me. They’ve taken up residence somewhere behind my sternum, and they’re not leaving.
You don’t belong here. You never will.
He’s right. That’s what kills me. He’s right about all of it.
I duck behind the marina office where the dumpsters smell of bait and oil. The wall is cool against my back. I press my palm flat against the weathered wood and breathe.
Eight years in television. Five on a nationally syndicated morning show. A name on the marquee. A following. A life built on being liked. And none of it survived three minutes of footage of the worst day of my life.
So, yes, Dean’s right. My careerisbuilt on turning real people into content. I stood in front of a camera every morning and smiled at America like nothing was eating me alive because that’s what they paid me for. The performance. The version of me that could carry three segments and a cooking demo without cracking.
And now I’m doing it again. Different setting. Same job. Malcolm handed me a story and I took it because I needed the work and I was too proud to admit I had no other options. I came to Port Haven to film a documentary to help relaunch my career beyond Instagram, and leave.
That was the plan.
Then I met the Havens. Then I sat at their table. Then Dean Kinsella kissed me on a porch in the dark like he was trying to start a fire, and I kissed him back like I wanted to burn.
And for one stupid, delusional week, I let myself believe I might belong here.
I push off the wall. My hands are shaking. I tuck them into my jacket pockets and walk.
Main Street is worse than the marina. Every storefront has a cluster of tourists. Brine and Bean has a line out the door. The Tangled Net has doubled its outdoor seating and still doesn’t have enough chairs. A drone buzzes overhead, low and civilian, the sound setting my teeth on edge the same way it set Dean’s.
I’m halfway past Old Salt’s when I hear it.
