I shifted my bag over my shoulder. “Go on, I’m listening.”
Kane grinned. “Well, I wanted to make it up to you.”
“Are you typically theact-first-and-ask-for-forgiveness-laterguy?”
“Honestly, yes. But I’m moving toward theI-like-this-girl-but-I’m-so-in-over-my-headguy.”
“That’s no excuse,” I pointed out.
“I know, but it’s the only one I got. Well, that and my immaturity.” He shrugged, looking down at me with faux innocence.
I bit my lip, shaking my head. “I guess I can forgivethatguy then. You know, for his honesty.”
Kane released a relieved breath with his hand over his chest. It wasn’t like we were on a date anyway. We were just friends, and perhaps I’d overacted, being theexpecting-more-when-I-shouldn’t-havegirl.
“Good because …” he popped the trunk to reveal a cooler, then lifted the lid, “I got us sandwiches and drinks and thought we could eat lunch on the pier. You in?”
After the night I had last night, and the wild morning, I agreed. Kane was trying, and as long as he wasn’t drinking, he was bearable. Pleasant, even.
I followed him on my scooter toward the pier, which was located near Gramps’ house. At the front end of Weeping Hollow, the Pruitt’s owned a small seafood restaurant and bait shop sitting right on the coast. Kane led me down the steep wooden steps over the cliff to the dock where boats lined both sides of the deck behind a boathouse. He held the cooler in one hand as he walked in front of me, leading the way down the stretched length of the pier. Shorebirds scurried along the planked wood as gulls circled above, fishermen unloaded their boats from their morning excursions, and salt stuck to the crisp September air as waves slapped against the dock.
When we reached the end, Kane took a seat along the edge and set the cooler beside him. “Hope you like Italian.” He tossed the sub up to me.
“Love Italian.” I caught it mid-air and took a seat beside him, both of us looking out into the choppy waters.
I’d seen the ocean in so many different ways since arriving: smooth as a love song, restless as my nights, impatient as my mind, alive as my heart whenever Julian was in the same room. But at this very moment, the ocean was as adamant and confused as my soul, the greatest distraction and buffer for Kane, me, and my troubled mind as we ate in comfortable silence.
Sitting beside me was a different man than the one from the bar the night before. Kane was relaxed, tired, almost as if keeping up with a charade was exhausting.
“You see that, the lighthouse a few miles out?” Kane pointed off to the right. In the distance, a black and white spiral lighthouse sat in the middle of the Atlantic, rising to the midday sky.
I wiped the corner of my mouth with my thumb. “Yeah.”
“That’s Bone Island. It’s been abandoned for twenty years now. The lighthouse keeper who used to live out there died when I was five. Body washed up on the rocks. One time, my father said he sent three men to go and check out the island, but they never returned. He hasn’t sent another man since, and that was, I think,” he squinted one eye, “eighteen years ago. Want to know the creepiest part about it all?”
“What?”
“The lighthouse still fucking works.”
“How?”
“No one knows, but some say the island is haunted.”
“What do you think?”
He shrugged, then his throat bobbed as he swallowed his food down. “I think we should check it out sometime. You scared of ghosts, Fallon Morgan?” I laughed. If only he knew. Kane raised a brow, and my eyes narrowed to slits. He grinned and said, “Come on, I want to introduce you to someone.” He jumped to his feet, swiped the back of his pants, then held his hand out to me, offering to help me up.
The sky was sunless, a subdued pastel gray stretching above our heads. Kane nodded to a few men as they unloaded their anchored boats, one hosing down the slight fishy smell from the pier. White birds hopped down the dock, scavenging for leftovers, and water sprayed our ankles as we walked around them.
“When you comin’ out with us, Kos?” a fisherman asked Kane. He had crystal blue eyes, a scruffy beard, wearing overalls and black rubber boots. Both of his hands carried large buckets filled with something that looked like fish guts.
“When the boss gives me a morning off,” Kane joked with a crooked smile. “You’re getting in pretty late there, Chap. If you leave earlier, you’ll have better luck.”
Smiling, the older man nodded and dropped the pails onto the dock. The water splashed over and seeped through the cracks of the planks. “That’s why we need yah!”
“Did he call you Kos?” I asked as we reached the staircase leading up to the restaurant.
Kane took my hand and pulled me in front, making me go ahead of him. “Yeah, it’s my middle name.”
