Page 189 of At First Catch

Disappear.

Reappear.

Hadley

Thank God.

Two words. That’s all. Still enough to knock the air from my chest.

I stare at the screen while rain drips from my hair onto the cracked glass protector.

Hadley

Come home when you can.

Home.

A word that used to feel theoretical, now is wrapped around her voice.

My chest tightens painfully.

Miguel watches me from a few feet away.

“You gonna keep bleeding, or are you going?”

I laugh once under my breath.

“Yeah,” I say. “I’m going.”

But as I walk back across the soaked docks toward the marina office, the investor folder still sits lead-loaded in my truck.

The storm has passed.

The marina survived.

Hadley continues to wait.

And instead of relief, fear sinks heavier beneath my ribs than before. Now I know exactly how close everything came to breaking tonight.

One formidable truth settles fully into place beneath the fading storm.

If I lose Hadley trying to save the marina, none of this will feel worth it anymore.

Chapter Twenty-Three

HADLEY

The problem with loving someone who survives by carrying everything alone is that eventually you start feeling helpless standing beside them.

And helplessness? Helplessness turns into resentment far easier than I ever understood before. As I stand in Nolan’s marina apartment on Friday morning, the realization hits me, ugly and strange, while I look at the coffee I made him forty minutes ago, untouched.

Cold now.

Just like breakfast.

Just like the dinner he promised he’d be upstairs for last night before falling asleep at his desk downstairs instead.

My stomach twists painfully.