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 something 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."