Page 104 of Endless Depths

“Well, alright, then,” Wes says. “Sign me the hell up.”

“We also want to bring another person on,” I say. “Kent.”

Lawrence slaps the dashboard. “Hell yeah! Let’s bring Kent aboard.”

“Calm down, Lawless,” I say. “We all have to agree.”

Javi’s forehead wrinkles. “I don’t know about Kent.”

Lawrence turns toward him. “Why? Is it because of?—”

“No.”

“You don’t know what I was going to ask,” Lawrence says.

“Is Luke okay with it?” Javi asks.

“He doesn’t know,” I say.

“Fucking over Luke is going to start a war,” Javi says.

Lawrence scowls at Javi. “What is this, the boat mafia?”

“Is he bringing quota?” Wes asks with a casual sip of coffee from his mug.

“He wants a break, not to leave completely,”Morgan says.

“Can’t blame the guy for wanting a break from those assholes,” Wes says.

Javi rolls his eyes. “You mean the racist, homophobic family that raised him?”

“Kent’s not like them,” Lawrence says. “You can’t hold that against him.”

“Listen,” Morgan says. “We’re hoping if we take on Kent, and maybe train another person next year, we can rotate out one person each season so no one has to fish year-round unless they want to.”

“Which brings us to our next point,” I say. “Morgan and I are going to take bairdi crab off to spend time with Finn.”

“Then I’ll come back in January for opilio crab,” Morgan says.

“And I’ll stay home with Finn.” I can’t wait to spend all that quality time with him, and I’m hoping if I rest my back and restart physical therapy, I’ll be in a better position to captain next year.

“Wow. The end of an era,” Lawrence says.

“We’re trying it out,” Morgan says. “We can’t predict the future. People get hurt. Things change. We need to have other people already trained before that happens.”

“If that’s the case, then Kent is a bad choice anyway,” Javi says.

“Kent is having a really hard time on theUnfathomable,” Lawrence says.

Javi rakes his hair back from his face and looks at Lawrence for a tense second. “Fine.”

“Are you sure?” I ask.

He nods.

“Great. Okay. We’ll let him know then.”

“Who’s going to skipper for bairdi?” Javi asks.