“I want Mummy,” she sobbed.
“Then why don’t we go down to her?” Flynn patted her back and nodded to Jessie. She slipped the still-yapping dog into her windbreaker, left its head stuck out resentfully over the zipper, and started down ahead of him.
It was slower going back than it had been coming up. Flynn could feel the throb of the hangover that lingered at the base of his skull. It ached every time he had to put weight on his split and bruised knuckles. Responsibility always made mistakes feel heavier. That was why he’d always dodged it.
Gwennie’s mother was crying nearly as hard as her daughter when they finally reached the ground. “Thank you,” she said as he deposited Gwennie in her lap. “Oh God. Thank you so. Gwennie. Gwen, what were you doing? You know you’re not meant to go up the cliffs. What if—”
Her voice cracked and she couldn’t get the words out past the fear of how bad a “what if” could have been. She hugged Gwennie so tightly that it made her squeak and squirm, and she buried her face in her curls until she had her composure back. “What if these nice people hadn’t been here to get you down?”
“It wasn’t my fault,” Gwennie said, her voice high in protest. “I told Bobby not to go, but he went anyhow. He never listens, Mum.”
“You are inso muchtrouble,” her mother said as she hugged her again. “I was so worried.”
By the time they got Gwennie, her mother, and the troublemaking Jack Russell back to the trailer park down the road, it still wasn’t quite eight o’clock. Apparently Gwennie liked to get started early. Flynn left the family to recuperate and gave Jessie a lift back to the cliff’s edge.
“Did you hurt your hand?” she asked.
Flynn stretched his fingers out and grimaced at the spreading bruise. “Max St. John’s got more chin than you’d expect from a spoiled brat.”
She pulled a surprised face in the periphery of his vision. “Decided not to take Teddy’s check, then?”
“Kinda the opposite,” Flynn said. He paused and swallowed. The sour taste in his mouth could have been regret or the aftertaste of last night’s whiskey. “Kinda didn’t leave myself any other choice.”
Despite what a massive fuckup it had been, it didn’t actually take that long to fill Jessie in on what had happened the night before. He wrapped it up with letting Nate just walk away, and there was still a minute to go before he turned in toward the parking.
“Holy crap,” Jessie said. “I wish I’d been there to see it. Damn. Teddy must have been… incandescent.”
“I’ve seen him happier.”
Jessie shook her head and chuckled at the scenario. Flynn supposed he should be glad someone could see the humor in it. He didn’t bother to pull into one of the outlined bays, but just veered into the side and stopped to let her jump out. Her jeep was still sitting where she’d left it with the door hanging open and a gull perched on the roof. He waited, but Jessie didn’t move.
“What?” he said.
“Look. You know I’d take the money and run,” Jessie said. She shoved her hand through her hair and absently scratched the back of her neck. “But… you don’t have to leave it like this with Nate.”
Flynn grimaced ruefully. “I think he was pretty clear that he wants it left like this.”
“And since when is he the boss of you?” she asked archly. “What was it you told Gwennie? We all fuck up, but the people we love deserve a chance to forgive us. Or not.”
“That’s not even close to what I said.”
“It’s the drift.” Jessie popped the door open and swung one long leg out. “Do what you like, Flynn, but the guy makes you happy. Maybe it’s not worth flushing that down the toilet just to avoid apologizing.”
She jumped out before Flynn could answer and slammed the door behind her. Flynn scowled through the windshield as she walked away with her hand lifted in a casual goodbye. It wasn’t as though she knew the full story, anyhow. The whole relationship that had made him so “happy” had been a con. There wasn’t anything real to flush down the toilet.
If there had been….
Flynn rubbed his hand roughly over his face. Who was he kidding? Because it hadn’t fooled Jessie, and it wasn’t fooling him. Sure it had started off as a lie—a fingers up to the island that was only too happy to think the worst of him—but who had they been lying for when they were alone? Who was supposed to disapprove of Nate’s smirk under Flynn’s kiss or of his body tucked against Flynn’s as he slept?
Yeah. It might not be real enough to last, but did Flynn really want to end things like that—like he had with his dad all those years ago, with punches thrown and everything unsaid festering until it was too late? The old man died without ever answering the questions Flynn had been afraid to ask—before either of them had been able to say “sorry.”
And after last night, Flynn supposed he owed Nate a “sorry.”
FLYNN REGULARLYthrew himself into ice-cold, raging seas and down cliff faces without a second thought. He used to runintoburning buildings, so it was particularly pathetic to have lost his courage on his… on Nate’s doorstep. He stood for a moment with his wrist cocked back to knock on the door, but his chest was squeezed tight with nerves, and he did nothing.
He finally dropped his arm and muttered, “Fuck.”
What was he going to even say? “I know everyone on the island hates me, and I punched your boss’s son in the face and put your job at risk, but no hard feelings, eh?” Because no matter what it had been like in the lighthouse the other night, there was the rest of the world to deal with.
