Chapter 13

CHAPTER 13

Brandon

I left Marathon Key with seething emotions bubbling beneath the surface of my skin.

She called me a coward.

No one has ever called me a coward before—not even Damon.

Steering the boat away from the island towards the next challenge, her voice played on repeat inside my head. I never thought you were a coward, Brandon .

I don’t even know why it stung so much. But even that’s a lie.

My entire life I’ve been groomed to be a winner, a fighter, someone born to succeed, and cowards have no place in the life of a Weiss.

So, I turned around and came back for her. To prove a point. To prove that I’m not a coward and I never walk away from an argument. Not that it even felt like an argument. More a disagreement over the way we each choose to play a game. I’d bet she never cheated at Monopoly either.

On the boat, Rose is quiet, but I sense something has shifted between us. Perhaps I’ve gained a notch in her estimation of me, become less ‘coward’ and more ‘used to getting his own way’. If that’s the case, I’ll take it.

“Did you find it?” Georgie asks, joining me at the steering wheel.

“Find what?” I ask.

“The thing you lost.” She holds onto the bottom of the wheel and cranes her neck to peer over the top of the control panel.

I pull a metal box out from underneath the seating area and lift her onto it so that she can see. “What thing I lost?”

“You went back to the boat to find it.”

Rose joins us, standing behind the child ready to catch her if she topples backwards.

“’Member,” Georgie says.

“Oh, the thing ,” I say, catching Rose’s raised eyebrows.

“Was it your marbles?” Georgie’s eyes are wide and innocent.

Rose giggles, and the sound is musical over the hum of the engine. “Did you lose your marbles, Brandon?”

“I don’t think so.” I can’t help grinning, even though Georgie is trying to move the wheel in the wrong direction. “Where did she even get that from?”

“Ask her.” Rose shrugs.

It doesn’t seem like the kind of question to ask a three-year-old, but I’m trusting Rose’s judgment in this instance. She’s the one with a degree in early child education.

“Who told you about losing marbles?” I ask.

“Grandma.” Georgie peers up at me with those wide brown eyes. “She said Billy lost his marbles a long while ago.”

“Billy?” Rose’s eyebrows slide upwards. She has caught the sun on her face today, and her nose is pink. Rather than making her look like Rudolph, it’s giving her a healthy glow.

“She must mean Uncle Bill. It wouldn’t surprise me with Aunt April’s alcohol consumption.”

I tell myself that I’m not divulging any family secrets for Rose to use against us in the future. I’m simply making conversation. It’s what people do. I’m not trying to change her opinion of me and convince her that I’m not the asshole she thinks I am.

Absolutely not.

There’s a sign outside our next destination that reads:

No Name Pub

You found it.

It’s an unremarkable yellow building with some wooden tables and benches outside offering shaded seating, the same low-key, shambling vibe that can be found throughout the Keys. The tourists buy into it. Even my mom was lured into buying Ruby Island because of it.

It has charm, I guess. For the first time in a long while, I don’t feel as if I need a massage to drag my shoulders down from my neck.

“I’m hungry,” Georgie says.

Rose has something to add, but instead, she chews her bottom lip and keeps her eyes on the pub sign.

I study the small groups of tourists milling around outside for a glimpse of someone from Ruby Island. Someone I need to beat. Other than Damon, we haven’t seen anyone else from my parent’s guest list, and I’m struggling to believe that they’ve all completed the challenges in order—at this rate, we’ll be home, showered, and enjoying cocktails before they even collect their slice of pie.

I’ll be enjoying cocktails. I remind myself that Rose will be on the other side of the drinks trolley.

“Maybe we’ll grab some food while we’re here,” I say.

Rose’s face lights up and she squeezes Georgie’s shoulders.

“I said maybe ,” I add, because why let that sunshine flow when you can contain it and keep people in their place?

I don’t look at her as we enter the pub. Her smile is contagious, and it feels like I’m fighting the urge to drop my shoulders further and try to see the last two challenges from her perspective.

Fun. That’s how she sees them. I can even picture her and Kelly giggling over them while the rest of us were getting sloshed on bubbly down at the beach, making polite small talk about stuff no one is interested in.

I stare at the walls inside the pub covered in dollar bills, and all I can think is that I haven’t thought about Kelly since we left Ruby Island this morning. That’s a first.

“Hi.” Rose takes control, approaching the bartender with her easy smile. “I guess you get a lot of folks come in here to take selfies, but we’re on a family treasure hunt, and one of our challenges is to take a selfie and guess the total amount of money pinned to the walls.”

“Sounds like fun.” The bartender’s gaze drifts to me and Georgie while he polishes a glass with a towel. “What can I get you guys to drink? On the house if it’ll help you win.”

Rose’s face beams up at him, and I can’t help wondering how it would feel to be on the receiving end of that smile. Then the image distorts into one of Rose and Damon. They’re lying on a beach, their skin slick with coconut oil and sprinkled with sand, and Damon rolls over, pinning Rose underneath him.

My fists clench and unclench. Rose turns to look at me in slow motion, the smile fading as it always does when she’s trying to preempt my next asshole comment.

“That’s very kind of you,” Rose says. “Thank you. We’ll take two sodas and a fruit juice for Georgie, outside if that’s okay?”

“Sure thing.”

I need to clear the images from my head. Need to get my brain back into gear, finish the challenges, and head back to Ruby Island, shower, and drown them in my father’s best whiskey.

“Do you know how much money is on the walls?” I ask.

Rose’s eyes narrow, and she appears to visibly shrink away from me like a dog sensing danger. For some reason, this makes me even angrier than the vision of my brother mauling her to prove a point and win a few bucks.

“We have a rough guesstimate.” The bartender—whose name badge says STEVE—pours two sodas at once, as comfortable in his role behind the bar as I am following the NYSE.

“Will you tell us what it is?” I ask.

“Brandon!” Rose sucks in a deep breath and shakes her head at the bartender. “Don’t tell him. It’s cheating.”

Steve grins at her and runs a finger across his mouth. “My lips are sealed.”

“Even for fifty bucks?” I wave my credit card at him across the bar.

“More than my life is worth.” Steve winks at Rose, then directs his question to me. “Want to take a punt?”

I turn away from the bar, sensing their eyes on me, and focus on the dollar bills covering every inch of the walls. The logical way to work it out would be to take a square foot, count the number of bills in that section and multiply it by the size of the room. But some parts of the walls have bills triple-stacked, while others have not so many.

I’m not accustomed to guesswork, but it’s the lesser of two evils. Pluck a figure out of the sky or waste time trying to count them. Steve said that they only have a rough estimate, so I can round it up to the nearest thousand, or potentially the nearest five thousand.

“A hundred grand,” I say. It sounds like the kind of figure that would look good on their website.

Steve’s expression is giving nothing away. “How about you?” he says to Rose. “Any guesses?”

“Hmm.” Rose taps her lips with her index finger and turns three-sixty slowly, as if she has her own personal guaranteed method of calculating the correct answer. “I think it’s lower. I’m going to say, eighty-five thousand.”

“So, what do you guys win if you get it right?” Steve asks, leaning over the bar to hand Georgie a fruit juice.

“No one knows yet,” Rose says.

Steve winks at her again, deliberately, even though he knows I’m watching. “What about between the two of you? You got a private bet going on?”

Rose watches me with a lopsided smile. “I don’t know. Do we?”

“I’m not a betting man.” So, why did I allow Damon to up the stakes on his silly little game?

“Maybe now is the time to start.” Steve moves along the bar to serve another customer, and we take our drinks outside.

“Thanks, Steve!” Rose calls out, raising her glass to him.

We sit under a large, faded umbrella overlooking the ocean and check out the food menu. It’s regular diner food: burgers, grilled chicken, pizza. We order a couple of burgers and a kids’ meal for Georgie, and Rose sits back in her seat as if this is where she belongs.

“Why did you leave us on Sombrero Beach?” she asks.

The tension in my neck and shoulders is back, and I realize that it has become such a way of life that I barely even notice it these days. I try—and fail—to emulate her casual stance.

“You wanted to stay and build sandcastles. I wanted to move on to the next challenge.”

She nods and wipes the condensation from her glass with her thumb. “What’s the real reason, Brandon?” she asks softly.

I swallow. Now’s my chance to open up, bare my soul, lower the barriers as Jennifer put it. If I tell her the truth, she’ll always have that hold over me, that sliver of me that I’ve never shared with anyone else apart from Kelly. But then again, in a few days’ time, she’ll be on her way home, and I’ll never have to see her again.

“You called me a coward,” I say before I can talk myself out of it.

“Yeah.” She scrunches up her face, the freckles across her nose and cheeks dancing with the movement. “Sorry about that.”

I study her face, the huge eyes, smooth skin, and soft lips. She’s nothing like Kelly, and I can’t even remember what it was about Rose that made me think that in the beginning. Being thrown together today has narrowed the boundary separating us, placed us on the same level, and I can almost forget that my mother hired her to look after her guests.

I can almost imagine that she is someone I met through work, someone I’d buy a drink for if we ever met socially.

“You’re not though, are you?”

Her expression goes through a transformation while she processes my reaction, and then she tips her head back and laughs out loud. “I just…” She shakes her head and stares out across the turquoise water. “I wanted you to be honest with me for once, and you couldn’t even do that.”

“For once?”

I can see it in her eyes that she isn’t sure how far she can push with this conversation. After all, I’m still her dad’s boss, and she’s only my mother’s temporary housekeeper. But more importantly, I get the impression that she doesn’t want to cause a scene in front of Georgie.

“Forget it,” I say, sipping my soda.

“No.” She shakes her head. “You deserve an explanation.”

Do I? I’m not sure anyone has ever said that about me before.

“The truth is, I don’t understand why you don’t like me, and don’t pretend that you do, Brandon.” She raises her finger, a warning for me to let her finish. “I get that Izzie ruined your pants, and maybe I shouldn’t have been in the building, but it’s more than that. I’m pretty sure that even you could move on from sticky handprints on your pants.”

It’s my turn to laugh now. “Even me?”

She smiles at me and sips her soda. “You know what I mean.”

“Because I’m stuffy.”

Rose’s eyes widen, and she blinks at me. “Oh, gosh, I said that didn’t I? Sorry… Again.” She’s quiet for several moments, no doubt psyching herself up to continue. “I called you a coward because you couldn’t even tell me why you don’t like me.” She shrugs. “That’s it.”

I watch Georgie drinking her fruit juice and cuddling the ragdoll, and for the first time—probably because I spend so little time in their company, and when I do, I’m trying to get drunk—I can see a little of my brother in her. I hope she grows up to be like her mom. Nurture over nature. Kelly won’t allow her daughters to become rivals like me and Damon.

I hope.

“You’re wrong,” I say, surprising myself. “I don’t dislike you, Rose.”

I hadn’t realized until I said the words out loud that I’m going to call off the wager with Damon when I get back to the island. Rose deserves better. Sure, she makes me angry, but I’m not so blinkered that I haven’t noticed my anger only ever appears when she calls me out on something she feels is inherently wrong.

Cheating.

Bribery.

Corruption.

They might be a standard part of the Weiss vocabulary, but to someone like Rose, they’re wrong. Good versus evil. Heroes and monsters. Right and wrong.

Steve appears with our food on a tray. I watch Rose as he sets the baskets on the table, her smile that should be a permanent fixture and not something that I can destroy with a casual, selfish put-down. Is the smile for the bartender’s benefit or for me?

Why does it suddenly feel important for me to find out?

“Don’t forget to come back in and take your selfie when you’ve eaten, folks,” Steve says. Looking directly at Rose, he adds, “My advice, for what it’s worth: set the terms of your bet before he can backtrack on his guess.”