His father shrugged, what was left of his former vibrancy draining away as Marcus watched. “I don’t see that I have any choice.”
“I can help,” Marcus said. “I want to help.” He was stunned to discover it was even true. “I’ve got plenty of money saved up from when I was in the Marines. Nothing to spend it on in the desert, after all. Let me buy you a new net.”
His father shook his head. “My boat. My problem. I don’t need your help.”
Marcus could feel the rage rising up like bile in his throat, choking and fiery, as if he’d swallowed some circus performer’s flaming baton.
“You never change, do you?” he said, the words forcing themselves out through his clenched teeth. “You would never listen to anyone else. You’d sure as hell never listen to me. I told you that Kyle was too young to be working the boat. I told you that the new guy you’d signed on was a stoned-out flake who was going to get someone hurt. But you couldn’t find anyone else willing to work for you, because you’d alienated every damned sailor in the port with your lousy temper and bad attitude, and so you let him stay anyway, and Kyle died. Because heaven forbid you actually ever listen to a word I said.”
His father’s face turned red, and then white, but Marcus couldn’t seem to stop himself from shouting. “Now I come halfway across the world to help you when you’re sick, and you’ll let me haul in fish with the hired help, but you won’t let me actually do anything to make this easier on you. I could fix up the boat, but you won’t let me. I could buy you a new net, but then you’d have to admit you needed me for something, and you’d rather go broke and give it all up than take anything from me.”
He kicked the net, causing more bits and pieces to subside into ruin. “Did you really think I didn’t realize you were broke? The harbormaster came to me days ago, asking for his back docking fees.”
“Well, I hope you didn’t pay them,” his da shouted back. “Them’s my debts, and I’ll pay them myself.”
“How?” Marcus asked. “Beka’s not coming back to give you any more bags of salvaged coins. Your net is in shreds. How do you expect to pay your debts if you can’t fish?”
“Beka’s not coming back?” his father said, looking shocked, and surprisingly unhappy. “What did you do, boy?”
Marcus felt a sudden desire to revert to childhood and stamp his feet on the worn deck. “What makes you think it was me that did something? Did it not occur to you that maybe your precious Beka was the one at fault?”
Across the way, Chico and Kenny exchanged glances.
“She lied to me,” Marcus said stubbornly, as though someone were arguing with him. “She wasn’t who she said she was at all.” He wasn’t going to mention that his da had been right about mystical creatures actually existing—not only would that give the old man something more to feel superior about, but Marcus was still doing his best to pretend he’d never learned the truth about dragons and Selkies and Mermaids. Oh my.
Marcus Senior shook his head. “You’re as big a fool as I am, boy,” he said in a marginally quieter voice. “I lost your mother because I was too prideful to go after her when she left. Don’t you make the same mistake I did. That Beka, she’s one in a million. Even I like her, and that’s saying something.”
Chico snorted into his mustache. Marcus glared at them both.
“She’s gone, and she’s not coming back. You’d better just get used to the idea.” Like he would—any day now. “And in the meantime, you still need a new net, and I’m going to go get you one. So you’d better get used to that idea too.”
The old man opened his mouth, but Marcus didn’t wait around to see what he had to say, striding off to the front of the boat and taking the wheel to steer them back into shore. The sooner he got off this boat and away from his father, the better. There was a beer at the Cranky Seagull with his name on it. And if there was any luck left in his life at all, it would have brought plenty of its relatives.
TWENTY
“BEKA. BEKA. YOU should get up and see this.”
Chewie’s voice was like a hammer beating against the anvil of her headache. The sun peeking through the blinds provided the flames for the forge. She wasn’t asleep; hadn’t slept much at all, lately. Some of it was worry, of course. And feeling like crap. But most of it was missing Marcus like crazy.
You would think they’d been together forever, the way she missed him, instead of just spending a couple of weeks on the same boat, and one brief moment of passion together. Before it all blew up in her face. And yet, she ached for him. Half a dozen times in the last couple of days, she’d almost swallowed her pride and gone to him. Begged him to listen. To understand. But what was the point? They came from two different worlds. There was no way their separate stories could share the same ending.