by Aubrey Irons
I turn at movement, seeing the grizzled ferry captain grinning at me from the wheelhouse next to me. He adjusts the Red Sox cap on his head, scratching his silvered hair as he raises an eyebrow at the little bottle in my hand.
“I’m on vacation,” I lie, smiling.
“No judgment here, sweethawt,” he says, the thick, familiar Boston accent of home washing over me as he chuckles. “If I weren’t on the clock, I’d join ya.”
“I won’t tell if you don’t,” I mutter as he turns back to the wheel, taking another quick sip. We’re almost there.
“Are we there yet?”
Ainsley looks green as she comes up from below deck, her mouth a thin white line as she grips the railing tightly.
I raise the second little nip out of my shoulder bag at my assistant, which brings on a whole new color of chartreuse to her face as she quickly shakes her head.
“God, no.” She swallows queasily. “Remind me why we couldn’t take the train, or drive in like normal people?”
“Because this is way more fun.”
The boat crests another small wave, and Ainsley almost loses it.
“Thanks for coming, by the way.”
“I mean, it’s my job, Ivy.”
I roll my eyes. “Well, yeah, but coming back here is always….” I wave my hand distractedly.
I’m home for a week this visit, which is about three times longer than I’m ever home. And it’s not that I don’t like coming back here - I do, and I love my family - it’s just that I left the small town and all the baggage that came with it years ago. College in New York City, the fashion blog I’d started sophomore year took off, and then the age of Instagram launched me into the face of lifestyle and “fitspiration” that I am today.
“What’s our shoot schedule look like, by the way?”
It’s the other reason I’m home, aside from my dad’s dedication ceremony. All those Instagram stars with half a million followers who are always telling you about their favorite new cotton t-shirt, or sunscreen, or brand of sneaker?
Yeah, we get paid for that. And when Lori, my management liaison heard I was coming back to Shelter Harbor, she opted to turn my three-day visit into a week long “product exposure and brand expansion” business trip.
This really is what I do for work.
Ainsley pales. “There is no way I can look at my phone right now,” she croaks out.
I wink at her. “Yeah, but I’m sure you’ve got it all in your head. That’s why you’re the best assistant ever.”
She grins wryly. “Nike and Under Armour want ‘active’ shoots by the beach, so we could do those whenever. Bliss wants the new skin line on display somewhere ‘shady but quaint’, as they put it.” She frowns. “I guess like, a picnic table by the water or something would work.”
“I know a place.”
I know all the places. Even being away, I know nothing changes in Shelter Harbor. The same New England beach town north of Boston. The same tourist-filled summers, the same cold, snowy, empty winters. The same active harbor, the same lobster boats. The same knick-knack shops, lobster take-out places, and “dive” bars for tourists. The same actual dive bars for locals. The same historic house where George Washington allegedly camped, the same Congregationalists church up on the hill where my dad’s been giving sermons every Sunday since before my siblings and I were born.
“Oh, and Active wants the nail polish displayed by the water too, actually.” Ainsley frowns. “They actually all want that ‘New England chic’ look, come to think of it.”
“Well, Shelter Harbor has that by the shit-load,” I say, belting down the rest of the vodka.
“You sure?” I raise the second nip, and Ainsley goes green all over again.
She takes a shaky breath. “And then of course, management wants your new line in as many shots as we can get.”
I grin - the new yoga line. I actually worked my damn ass off to get to the point where I’m going to have my own line. I’ve spent years now pimping the latest green juice smoothie cleanse fads, and active wear, and sneakers, and no-mess makeup, and sports bras, and running shoes, and basically anything else that fits the “fitspiration” social media trend. Basically, if you’ve seen it marketed to you by a girl on Facebook or Instagram in sweatshop-free sportswear at some yoga retreat - and it is being marketed to you - I’ve probably sold it.
“And then when Blaine gets in, you’ll do some shots together of course.”
Right, for the high ratings. For the massive number of likes we get when my boyfriend - an Instagram star in his own right managed by the same agency - joins me in pictures. Blaine’s the outdoorsy type of product placement - hiking boots, surf boards, kayaks. And he’s been home with me to Shelter Harbor before, but it’s always strange, bringing him here.
Here where the history runs deep.
Here where the boy from my past - the ghost of my time in this town - still haunts my thoughts.
Silas Hart.
The boy that I fell for all those years ago, and the thief that stole my heart when he left.
The harbor is getting closer now. I can see the docks, the lobster boats, the crowds of tourists along the piers. The engine throttles as the boat starts to turn to make a backwards approach. Ainsley shuts her eyes, her knuckles white on the railing.
But I just take another big breath of sea air, letting the memory of home fill my lungs. And when I exhale, I let the last little thoughts of Silas Hart that come with being here out with my breath.
And at this point, that’s all they are - a lingering breath of sea air blowing out and away with the breeze.
The ferry clanks against the docking port, the engine throttles, and the gangway lowers, and once again, I’m back in Shelter Harbor.
Welcome home.
Chapter Two
Silas
Fucking tourists.
This town is exactly the same as it was. The same Main Street full of kitschy shops, the same Commercial Street down by the piers with the touristy shit, and the lobster roll joints, and the booth selling whale-watching tickets.
And of course, it’s summer, which means fucking yuppies and day-trippers choking the place up, out to see the “historic old port” of Shelter Harbor.
They can drink Guinness and wear fucking Celtics hats and see the house where Whitey Bulger allegedly killed someone back in the eighties. And they can slum it at a cheesy dive bars by piers and feel like a local, even though the actual locals wouldn’t be caught dead in those places, and are busy drinking Bud Lights up the hill at the actual dive bar for half the price.
I left this place for eight damn years, and even just being back a week, I can already see that it’s exactly the same.
Well, except now I’m a ghost. Eight years away from anywhere will do that, no matter who the hell you are.
Why the hell am I even back here.
Well, I know why I’m here. I’m here because the one person in this town who managed to remember I existed asked me to be here for the park dedication in honor of his dad.
The man that told me to leave all those years ago.
And as much as Jacob probably still hates me for the what happened back then, he’s still the closest thing to a father I ever had after my parents died. Certainly more than my uncle who watched me after.
Blood runs thick in Shelter Harbor.
Thick like these fucking tourists.
I growl as I shove past a middle-aged couple in matching fanny-packs with the Red Sox logo and t-shirts with a portrait of Benjamin Franklin and something about the fucking Freedom Trail on them.
Oh, you’ve been to Boston. Good thing you’ve decided to tell the entire fucking world about it.
I’m trying to make it to the steps to the lower docks to see old man Conlin about the rental, but a ferry’s just come in from Boston, vomiting tourists onto the pier. I’m muttering and grinding my teeth as I get shouldered by some idiot tourist for the tenth fucking time, when suddenly somethi
ng catches my eyes.
Something that looks fantastic in tight black leggings, heels, and that sleeveless top.
I stop for a moment, temporarily ignoring the flood of dumb yuppies swarming past me as I lock eyes on the girl with the soft golden hair tossed back over one shoulder.
She is every inch exactly the type of girl I make a point of avoiding. Fancy clothes, ridiculously nonfunctional shoes, hair that she’s clearly spent time on, and flashy, bangled jewelry.
And yet, I’m still looking at her, seemingly unable to look away.
She’s struggling with something, and I realize after a second that it’s her luggage, caught on the ramp from the ferry.
Her absurdly large, expensive looking baggage.
It looks genuinely stuck, too. She’s kicking it with her high-heeled toes, and yanking on the handle of the bag that doesn’t look like it’s going anywhere, all the while with her ear on her shoulder, yapping into her cell phone.
God, it’s like every tourist cliché I’ve ever seen rolled into one. Well, minus the fanny pack.
I roll my eyes at the city girl here with the rest of these stupid people, but for some reason, something stops me.
After all, I am here to try and at least start the process of making up for the crimes I’ve done and the hurt I’ve caused, right? I mean, that’s the entire reason I let Rowan talk me into coming to his father’s dedication ceremony.
I groan, glancing at the thinning crowd, and the steps to the lower docks that I can actually see now.
Oh, fuck it.
Might as well help.
I sigh as I move my way through the last of the crowds pouring up the pier from the ferry, until I’m right behind her.
“Yep, uh-huh, yeah. Nope, that shouldn’t be a problem.”
I roll my eyes again as she yaps into her phone, yanking fruitless on the suitcase, which I can now see has a wheel wedged into the side of the ramp.
“Hey, you need a hand?”
“Yeah, no, we can- hang on.” She half turns, flashing a frown I can’t even half-see behind those huge Hollywood sunglasses she’s wearing.
Of course she is.
“I’m good, thanks.”
She turns her back to me again as she kicks at the suitcase. “What? No, just some local.”
I frown, not sure if I should be more offended at being called “some local” like that, or at the fact that I’m not a fucking local. Not anymore.
“Look, do you want a hand with that bag?” I growl, stepping towards her.
“Ugh, hang on,” she mutters into the phone again. “I’m fine, okay?”
She puts her full weight into the handle as her body strains.
“Oh, this is fucking ridiculous, just let me get that for-”
“I said, I’ve got-”
I want to say it happens in slow motion, but it honestly happens so fast I don’t even have time to blink.
The handle on her fancy luggage gives way with a snapping sound, and before I can even move, her whole arm jerks back with the full weight of her pulling.
Right into my face.
I go sprawling backwards, knocked right off my feet onto my fucking ass right there on the pier, my hands clutching the elbow-mark on my cheek right below my eye.
“Oh shit!” she screams, gasping as she whirls. “Oh my God!” She drops to her knees right next to me. “Fuck, are you-”
And right then, she stops.
Because right then, two things happen. I pull my hands away from my face, because that tone in her voice has just changed, and she pulls her ridiculous sunglasses off.
And right then, we both know.
Oh what the fuck.
Somehow, I remember to breathe.
Somehow, I remember to grin as I look up into the face I haven’t seen in eight fucking years.
Ivy Hammond.
The girl I left behind.
The girl I’ve never managed to get out of my head or my damn heart.
Oh, right…
And the girl who’s my wife.
Chapter Three
Ivy
“What the fuck are you doing here?”
I can feel the pier itself swaying beneath my feet, my breath tight in my throat as I stare into the eyes of the last man on earth I ever expected to see again. Not outside my own head that is.
“I live here.” His voice is deeper than it was; older, more mature.
It has the same effect on me now that it did eight years before though. The same shivering tingle up my spine, the same tightness in my throat.
I quickly bury those thoughts deep as I frown at him. “No, you don’t.”
He grins, a flash of that gorgeous, roguish and cocky smile that hasn’t changed one bit from the boy I knew all those years before. The stubble on his jaw is a bit darker, the lines around his eyes a little deeper, but it’s like time and age have conspired to make him even hotter - even more attractive than he was even back then.
It’s unfair that he looks so good this many years later.
It’s unfair that he looks this good after what he pulled.
After he left.
He eyes me. “Well, do you?”
“Do I what,” I hiss, still blinking, still trying to process the ghost from my past standing in the flesh in front of me.
“Live here.”
“No,” I grumble.
“Well how do you know if I do, then?”
He’s goading me. Eight years after walking out of my life with my heart in his hand, he’s still teasing and needling me like we’re still kids - like nothing’s happened at all.
Like he didn’t destroy me when he walked away and never looked back.
This isn’t happening. I shake my head, sucking in a deep breath of air as I try and steady myself. This is the double vodka I had on the ferry, not reality. I’m not actually standing in front of Silas Hart on the piers of Shelter Harbor.
This is a hallucination brought on by being home. It’s an apparition, and I’m eighteen again, and standing on the pier with those same piercing blue eyes looking right into my heart, knowing everything I’m thinking and letting me fall right into them, however wrong.
But that was eight years ago.
That was before he broke my heart.
“I didn’t think you were coming in until tomorrow.”
I narrow my eyes at him, focusing on his words. “You knew I was coming home?”
He shrugs, bringing a hand up and raking his fingers through his mop of hair. “Well, yeah.”
He says it offhandedly, as if of course he’d know I was going to be here. As if he’d know anything at all about me eight years after walking away.
“How,” I spit out.
Silas grins. “Think I’m supposed to know when my wife is going to be in town-”
“Do not say that!” I snap, the heat rising in my cheeks as I jab a finger at him.
“Why? It’s true.”
I can feel my hands clench into fists. “It is not-”
“Oh I distinctly remember a priest and something about ‘having and holding’, and then there was this bit with the rings-”
“Shut up, just stop talking,” I hiss, my eyes darting around as if someone might overhear.
“You gave up that title when you left me.”
“I didn’t-” his eyes tighten before he scowls right back. “Didn’t take you too long to forget you had a husband, by the way.”
“Because I didn’t,” I snap back. “I had a criminal.”
“You knew exactly what I was when you said yes, sweetheart.”
I roll my eyes. “Nice, Silas.” I scowl at him, still standing there grinning at me, as if that fucking charm of his is going to fix this.
“I should have sued you for abandonment years ago.”
He barks out a laugh. “Never too late, darlin.”
I tighten my mouth, my gaze narrowed at him. “And by the way, were you just hitting on me?”
He snorts. “I wa
s, before I realized who it was.”
“Oh fuck you,” I spit.
“I didn’t recognize you, okay?” He shrugs again, raking his fingers across that distractingly attractive shadow on his cheek. “You got hot.”
My eyes go wide as I feel the indignation boil up inside. “Excuse me?!”
Silas laughs. “No-no, hang on, that came out wrong. I mean you got hotter.”
“Keep digging, douchebag.”
His eyes flare for a second as they hold my gaze, his lips tight.
“You changed your hair.”
Yeah and my direction in life, and everything else about me since you walked away from us.
But I don’t answer him. Instead, we stand in silence right there on the pier of our hometown, right where we used to stand staring at each other under totally different circumstances. Under totally different stars.
My mind reels, trying to take in this man from my past - the man from my past. And I don’t know whether I want to beg him to kiss me the way he used to where my damn toes would curl, or if I want to shove him right off the end of the pier.
Or worse.
“You didn’t answer the question,” I finally say quietly.
“Which one is that.”
I suppress the growl in my throat. “What are you doing here, Silas.”
He shrugs. “It’s not every day Jacob Hammond gets a park named after him.”
I stare at him. “You came back for my dad?”
“Rowan invited me.”
I make a mental note to bury my older brother. Alive. In a very deep hole.
God he’s more attractive than he ever was. The boy I once loved became a man over the last eight years. He’s bigger all over - thicker chest, broader shoulders, more muscle on his arms. The smattering of teenage tattoos from when we were young have grown to full sleeves, and the smooth chin I used to kiss is now scuffed with a five o’clock shadow that was never there when we were young.
When I was eighteen and madly in love.
When we got married.
When he left.
“I thought you were in Ireland.”
I say it quietly. I don’t actually know that he was, just rumors and conversations overheard. I never wanted to know for sure where he’d gone off to, because it made it easier to stomach that he’d left. He wasn’t somewhere else –somewhere tangible - instead of next to me, he’d just disappeared.