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“Nor mine,” says Richard, who’s straighter than a flagpole. “And stop flirting with my baby brother,” he scowls, but Robbie doesn’t look put off.

Before he can say anything else, Theo appears at the table—alone.

“Where’s Bailey?” I demand.

“Jesus, Theo, please tell me you haven’t hit him again.” Isla jumps out of her seat. “Is he unconscious in there?” she squeaks.

“No. I haven’t touched him,” Theo replies coolly, picking up his keys from the table. “But he did punch a mirror.” He turns to look at me. “He’s bleeding, you might want to check on him.”

He barely finishes his sentence before I’m crawling over Robbie’s lap to get to the bathroom.

“Bay?” I call out, rushing through the door.

Blood is splattered across the floor, and there are shards of glass everywhere. Bailey’s hunched over, blonde curls hiding his face, shoulders heaving as he sobs.

“What the fuck happened?”

“He said he never loved me,” he chokes out.

Okay, I definitely missed something important earlier.

“Tell me what happened,” I demand, pulling a bunch of paper towels from the dispenser. Crouching in front of Bailey, I take his hand in mine, carefully cleaning the blood from his knuckles.

As I check thoroughly for glass, he tells me that he and Theo dated when they were in school, and that after he dumped Theo, Theo ran away. He winces when I pick out a sliver from between his knuckles.

“He said what we had was nothing to him, but he’s lying,” Bailey huffs, drying his eyes with his good hand. “I fucked up, Noah—I keep fucking up. I wanted answers from him so badly, I didn’t listen when he told me to move, and … and I lost it.” He examines the cut on his hand. “I punched the stupid mirror, and it scared him.”

“I’m sure you didn’t scare him. He punched you in the face like two weeks ago.”

“He cowered on the ground.”

“Well, you didn’t hit him, so he should count himself lucky.” I grab the bin from the corner and bend down to pick up the glass shards.

“I should help you clean up,” Bailey mutters, getting to his feet.

When I glance over at him, he’s trying to pick up glass with a trembling hand. “No. I got it, just wait a minute.”

Once I finish cleaning up what I can, we leave the bathroom. Bailey heads back to the table.

Robbie and Theo aren’t there.

Good.

I leave Bailey with Richard and Isla, then go to the bar. “There’s been a slight accident in the bathroom. I cleaned up most of it, but it’s still a mess,” I say to the barman, sliding a business card for my uncle’s landscaping company over to him. “Send the invoice for the damage to that email. Sorry for the inconvenience.”

The barman looks confused, then grunts in agreement.

I turn around and nod to Bailey. “Let’s go.”

ROBBIE

Leaning over the side of the boat, I grab the buoy, tugging it until I can get hold of the rope and feed it through the hauler. It whirs as it brings up the first creel pot, and a few crabs scuttle about inside, along with one large lobster. I open the top and pull out the lobster first, pressing the gauge to its shell, making sure it’s the legal size before using my pliers to slide a band over each claw. I drop it into the keep box, then sort through the crabs.

The hauler is loud, as is the boat engine. The two combined become the soundtrack to my working day, because Luke’s decided he’s not in the mood for talking. I put bait back in the creel pot, then pass it to him to stack on the other side of the boat before moving on to the next pot that the hauler pulls up.

“Why are you quiet today?”

“Just thinking,” he grunts.