Chapter 19

19

HAWK

W hen I got home after dinner, Emery was folding laundry in the living room. Judging by the sounds of laughter filtering down from upstairs, the boys were playing and I was guessing my dad had already gone to bed.

“Hey,” she said.

I joined her, picking up a tiny sweater and folding it against my chest. “Hi.”

My sister’s eyes came up to meet mine, her head tilting as she held my gaze. “What were you up to today? I was surprised you weren’t here when I got home.”

“I went down to the port to see what Dad does with his days,” I said, but my mind was on Sutton.

Why did hanging out with her and Winnie today feel like exactly what I need to be doing with my life?

I shook the thought away again, but it had been zapping across my mind every other minute since we’d left the restaurant.

Emery frowned at me. “Dad? Since when does Dad put a look like that on your face?”

“A look like what?” I laid the folded sweater on top of her pile and picked up a little pair of jeans. “The only look I’ve got on my face is one of a man in need of a beer. Can I get you one?”

She dropped her chin in a nod and flashed me a grateful smile. “Having you home isn’t so bad after all, big brother.”

I laughed, popping into the kitchen to grab two beers and uncapping them before I went back to her. “Does that mean you’ve forgiven me?”

She accepted the bottle when I handed it over and took a quick sip. Then her gaze swept across my face. “I’m getting there, but it would be really nice if we could count on you a little more in the future too.”

“Yeah, I’ve been thinking the same thing,” I confessed after a beat.

Emery’s eyebrows shot up and her eyes widened to saucers. “Okay, now I know for sure there’s something weird going on with you. Spill, Hawk. What on earth is happening right now? Did you knock your head on the boat?”

Instead of telling her about Sutton, I opened up about the other part of what had been on my mind all day. “I might be able to help get things solved around here No locals have the money to take over the port rentals, but I do.”

The port rentals were the places where tugs and fishing boats were kept, and it was also where they could get contracts with the shipping companies sending barges and cruise ships into the port.

“What are you saying?” she asked slowly, her brow furrowing as she stared at me. “Spell it out for me, Hawk. I can’t be hearing what I think I’m hearing.”

“You’re hearing exactly what you think you’re hearing,” I said, finally giving voice to the decision I’d already made about the idea that had been brewing at the back of my mind since my talk with David. “I could buy the family business and merge it with Gold Star. Then we could start buying up dock space and giving it back to the families who have been pushed out of business by those vultures at Meecham Maritime.”

Emery blinked hard a few times, not exactly looking relieved by my plan. “Forgive me if I’m not jumping for joy. In theory, that would definitely help, but I’ve got enough on my plate right now, Hawk. I can’t run Dad’s business and yours. Dad can’t do it either and the boys are too little to even think about helping, and there just isn’t anyone else.”

“There’s me,” I said, looking directly into her eyes. “I wasn’t going to ask you to run it, Em. I would never pile on like that. If I do this, you’d have so much more free time. It wouldn’t just be you doing everything by yourself anymore.”

Her eyebrows slowly rose. “Okay, sure. There is you, but you live in Los Angeles. Are you talking about opening up a formal branch of Gold Star here?”

“I’d relocate. At least part time. Gold Star doesn’t have to operate out of LA and neither do I. The reality is that we’ve grown past that. I’m not sure yet about what to do with our headquarters, but for now, I would be here, and in essence, yeah, that would mean opening up a formal branch of Gold Star.”

She swiped her tongue across her lips, blinking hard. When she finally managed to formulate more words, her voice was soft with shock. “You would relocate, but why? You jumped at the opportunity to leave Portsmouth. Worked your ass off after high school to make it happen.”

She inhaled a deep breath, sat down, and gulped her beer. She ran her free hand through her hair a few times. Leaving her to process, I kept folding the laundry but my heart was pounding.

Now that I’d said it out loud, I realized how much I wanted to follow through with this plan. Emery wasn’t wrong. I had worked my ass off to have the opportunity to leave Portsmouth, but that had only been because nothing had felt the same after my falling out with Sutton.

Since she had been a year behind me in school, she’d still had to do her senior year after I’d graduated. Living in the same town—on the same street—as her but not being able to see her, speak to her, or be around her at all nearly broke me.

I threw myself into work, practically living at the port rather than having to be in here, in this house, with the girl I loved but couldn’t be with just a couple houses away. Short of serenading her from street level with a boom-box, I couldn’t have done more than I had to get her attention, and it had taken me at least a year before I’d even started piecing together why she’d stopped talking to me.

Before that, I had been so fucking confused and so hurt that I hadn’t been thinking clearly at all. The only thing I’d known was that things had been amazing between us until prom, and then she’d been gone. A ghost.

My texts remained unread, my calls went unanswered, and any attempt I made to see her were simply thwarted. I’d waited for her outside the school a few times, but I’d long since suspected that she used to be on the lookout for me and that she’d gone out the back if I had been waiting at the front.

In a town the size of Portsmouth, I had thought I would run into her at some point, but I hadn’t. The only explanation had been that she was actively avoiding me, and it had been at that point that my ego had kicked in. I’d stopped chasing.

To my teenage mind, I’d done nothing wrong and she had been the coward who’d decided to ghost me instead of telling me to my face that things were over between us. In retrospect, I saw where I’d gone wrong but at the time? I’d been a fool.

I blinked away the memories and focused on my sister. She was still sitting on the couch, taking sip after sip of her beer and staring off into the distance while jamming her hand repeatedly through her hair. Obviously, she was having a hard time getting her head wrapped around my proposition. I wasn’t sure if it was because she didn’t trust me to actually step up or if she just didn’t understand why I’d be willing to do it.

“You’re right,” I said, leaving the laundry for a minute and going to sit down on the coffee table in front of her. With my knees now only a few inches from hers, I nudged her foot with my own and waited for her to look at me again.

Once she did, I tried to explain. “I did work my ass off to be given an opportunity to get out of here, but that was a long time ago. I don’t regret leaving, sis. If I’d never gone, I wouldn’t have had the ability to help the town now, but I do.”

I held her intent gaze, hoping like hell that she trusted me enough to believe what I was saying. “I know you’re scared that I’m going to disappear again. You have every reason to be, but I’m not going to let this fall on you. Gold Star is an international shipping company now, Em. I’ve got people whose people have people. There’s a whole army of ‘em. Frankly, I could retire today and the company could go on without me.”

Her head tilted slowly. “Do you want to retire?”

I chuckled. “No. I’m just trying to say that what I’m suggesting here isn’t impossible. I could relocate. It would probably be part-time at first. I haven’t worked out all the logistics yet and I’m not going to give up my lease where we’re headquartered right now on a whim, but I can do this. We can do this.”

“Dad isn’t just going to let you take over, Hawk,” she said quietly, but at least it finally looked like she was starting to come around to my plan. “It’s hard enough for him to give me even just the amount of control I need to make sure the business doesn’t sink immediately.”

“You do his books,” I said. “Can he afford not to let me take over?”

She hesitated for a beat. “No, not really. Neither can anyone else.”

“Exactly.” I inhaled through my nostrils. “Dad doesn’t have much choice anymore, Em. If he only has a few years left, he should be spending them in the retirement he’s been wanting for so long instead of slaving away trying to keep his business afloat.”

“Let me think about it,” she said, finally even flashing me a smile. “What you’re suggesting is exactly what almost everyone in town has been praying for, but I’m not sure how Dad is going to react. I need some time before I can give you an answer.”

I nodded slowly and went back to the laundry. Ultimately, there was nothing my dad could do to stop me from moving back to town and enacting my plan—with or without acquiring his company in the process. I just didn’t want to give my family even more of a reason to hate me by simply doing it.