No, I wasn’t going to take that away from Ocean. Not when she was moving through the toughest years of life. As mature as she was, teenage years were no picnic.
I’d always worked to give her something stable, something solid. I’d worked hard to provide the kind of life I had only dreamed of, a two-parent family I’d once only been able to imagine. I wouldn’t be the one to tear that life apart.
Our life wasn’t picture-perfect, that’s for sure. And Ocean was old enough to see the cracks, alert enough to hear the stones Rhys and I pelted at each other.
Ocean needed her father. I needed to know if my marriage was worth saving.
Rhys and I had settled on two weeks.
Two weeks to plan a memorial and a burial.
Two weeks to sort through a lifetime in the barn, sell off the antiques, and get the house ready for market.
Two weeks to say goodbye.
My fingers tightened around the wheel as the ‘Welcome to Harbor View Borough’ sign loomed into view.
Two weeks. That’s all we had.
Chapter Two
Ocean
* * *
The Welcome to Historic Harbor View Borough sign flashed past, but Ocean barely noticed. Her brain was elsewhere.
She was doing what she always did, running pros and cons. Classic Ocean.
She’d basically been a list-maker since she could hold a pencil. According to her mom, it started when she was a toddler, separating alphabet noodles on her plate and lining them up in rows. One day she’d eat only A’s. No B’s. The next day, different letter. Totally random toddler logic.
By four, it was crayon sorting before coloring. Warm colors on one side, cool on the other. By five, she was listing pros and cons for playground activities. Swings? High and fun = pro. Waiting your turn = solid con. At six, she moved on to bedtime stories. Talking animals? Obvious pro. Monsters? Massive con. So many reasons.
Now, at fifteen, the habit had just...stuck. Like breathing.
Every decision needed a list. Even little stuff. Should she take AP History in the fall? Should she study while scrolling TikTok, or like, actually study? Soccer or debate? Those super cute boots she loved? or the ‘more practical’ ones her mom kept nudging? And, most recently, whether she should flirt with the hot new guy in English who just moved to town.
That one was still open. Potential romance vs. potential humiliation. A very tight race.
For Ocean, making lists was basically a reflex. Like breathing, but with bullet points. No decision was too big or too small. And it wasn’t just in her head, either. Nothing beat actual paper, a good pencil, and two well-organized columns to make everything feel a little less chaotic.
Right now, the stakes felt higher than usual. She was mentally deep in a pros and cons list about California.
The pro side? Honestly, kind of dreamy: blue skies, palm trees, year-round sunshine, the Pacific Ocean, and obviously her friends.
But the con side? Yeah, it had weight too. Their North Hollywood apartment where the AC wheezed like it had asthma, the windows were painted shut, and the “luxury courtyard pool” looked more like a biohazard than a place to swim. Her best friend Ivy wasn’t even in L.A. anymore. She was ping-ponging between Utah and Arizona, thanks to her parents’ divorce.
Sure, they still talked, but California didn’t feel like home without her.
As for the rest of Ocean’s social life? Meh. She wasn’t the popular girl. Not the queen bee, not even one of the worker bees. She had people to sit with at lunch, but no deep friendships that made leaving L.A. feel like an emotional cliff dive.
Which brought her back to the list.
There was one person messing things up: her dad.
He definitely belonged on the pro side. She loved him. He was handsome (Ivy swore Rhys was the hottest old guy alive), and when he was around, he could be warm, almost affectionate.
But he also belonged firmly on the con side.
