Total pages in book: 90
Estimated words: 86450 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 432(@200wpm)___ 346(@250wpm)___ 288(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 86450 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 432(@200wpm)___ 346(@250wpm)___ 288(@300wpm)
The long exhale of pent-up breath almost makes me dizzy when I release it. I can’t help but smile. “He’s the best person I’ve ever known. He’d love to have a beer with you, I’m sure.”
I don’t know how long we wait after that. Time has gone strange. The TV silently plays the news. Malik makes calls in the corner in a low voice. The dawn comes up gray and then less gray through the window, and at some point, Cole presses a paper cup of terrible coffee into my bandaged hands. I hold it without drinking it, just for the warmth, and I keep my eyes on the double doors at the end of the hall.
And when the doors finally open and a woman in scrubs and a surgical cap comes through, I can’t even stand up. She pulls her mask down around her neck as she walks, and she’s scanning the room.
“Family for Finn Marlowe?” she asks.
It’s Cole who puts his hand to my elbow and lifts me from the chair. The doctor’s eyes lock on mine as she walks my way and a reassuring smile graces her face.
Without her saying a word, relief rushes through me so violently, I start to sag. Cole holds me up straight.
“He made it through,” she says first, the kindest thing she could possibly do, leading with the only words that matter. “He’s got a hard few days ahead and he’s going to be in the ICU for a while. But the round missed his heart and the major vessels. We repaired the lung, we stopped the bleeding, and his vitals stabilized at the end. He’s alive and he’s strong. Quite the fighter.”
The room tilts and I start crying. I’m crying so hard I can’t breathe through my crushed throat, ugly and loud and without a single ounce of composure left in me.
He made it through.
He’s alive.
“Can I see him?” I get out.
“Soon. He’s in recovery and then they’ll get him settled in the ICU. It’ll be a little while, and then family can go back, one at a time, briefly.”
“She’s family,” Cole says immediately, his hand still gripping my elbow.
The doctor smiles again and leaves, and then I collapse into Cole’s arms where he hugs me tight.
CHAPTER 26
Finn
Two weeks later…
The new boat sits in her slip, a big bright red bow attached at the gangplank leading on. I watch Marcus’s face the second he understands she’s his.
He stops dead on the dock, the wind off the Sound rattling the halyards into tinny music all up and down the marina. The gulls are working the breakwater, and Marcus just stands there with his good hand hanging at his side and his cast-covered wrist tucked against his stomach.
He looks at the boat, he looks at Josie who grins back at him, and then he looks at me.
“What is this?” he asks.
“She’s a forty-two-foot Grand Banks. Single diesel, low hours, surveyed clean. Galley’s been redone.” I keep my own voice easy because if I don’t, I’m going to lose it standing here on a dock in front of God, Josie and the gulls. “She’s yours, Marcus. Title’s in your name. It’s already done.”
He doesn’t move.
Josie’s hand is light at the small of my back, where she’s kept it for the last week every time she thinks I might be standing too long. The walk down from the lot left me a little more winded than I’d cop to, and there’s a long, tender scar under my shirt, tracing the ribs on my left side where they opened me up to fix what the round tore loose. It itches like hell as it continues to heal. It pulls when I reach or twist, and I’ve learned to move in a careful, deliberate way. Josie knows when I don’t. She doesn’t say anything now, though. She knows this moment isn’t hers.
“I can’t take a boat from you,” Marcus says.
“You can and you will.”
“Finn—”
“You pulled nine years with me. You sent every clean dollar you could to Lori and those kids, and you never once asked me for a thing beyond your cut.” I have to stop for a second. “You went over the side of a burning boat two weeks ago and you grabbed a buoy and you held on in forty-eight-degree water until your body gave out. You lived, and I’m not going to stand here and let you start over with nothing. So I bought you a boat. Run charters off her. Run dive trips. Run sightseeing for tourists who want to see orcas.” I pause and glance at Josie, who nods at me with a smile. “Or make midnight runs down from Vancouver if you want to keep at it.” My voice has gone rough. “Take the boat, Marcus. She’s yours.”
His eyes moisten and he grabs me with his one good arm around my waist to pull me into a hug. He squeezes a little too hard and the surgical scar lights up like a struck match. I grab him back anyway and hold on, because there’s too much to say and no working language for any of it.