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And I don't know if it's the fact that I'm exhausted from work, that Zander is making me laugh with his silly humor, or that for the first time since I've arrived to PineRidge Island, I don't want to head back to the heavy silence of an empty house, but his comment, his poking fun at himself, causes the guard I've been holding up so high to slip a little.

Laughter I haven't felt or heard in so very long bubbles out and over. Tears fill my eyes. The sound rings around us and melds with the soft crash of the waves on the shore. I hold my hands up as if I'm telling him to stop, but in reality I'm not sure what I'm doing other than making fun of his ludicrousness.

When I come back to myself, Zander is staring at me over the top of his can of beer. “You done yet?”

“Not hardly,
Mander
.”

A lopsided smirk tugs up the corner of his mouth. “You can't make fun of me and then not sit and have a beer with me. Mander rules.” He holds a can out to me and after I stare at it and then back at him, I relent.

“I don't really drink—” I stop myself when he gives me puppy dog eyes. “Fine. Just one.”

“That's what they all say.” He chuckles as I take a seat beside him on a boardwalk bench.

“And then what? They're wooed into telling you all of their deep, dark secrets and fall madly in love with you?”

“Something like that.” He nods his head and turns on the charm by flashing me a cocky grin.

“But I thought you were grumpy all the time. Do you get a lot of girls with your moody self?”

“And we're back to that again,” he counters, pushing his knee over so that it knocks against mine.

I open my beer and take a timid sip of the bitter ale,
trying to hide my innate dislike of it. And I think I've done a pretty good job of masking the look of disgust on my face, but when I glance over, Zander's head is angled and his eyes are on me.

“You work in a bar but don't like beer? How's that working for you?”

Ladies don't drink beer, Gertrude. It's classless and tacky.
My father's and Ethan's admonishments ghost through my mind unexpectedly. The chills that blanket my body have nothing to do with the spring storm moving in.

The memory, the constant refrain running through my mind, makes me want to chug this entire beer and wipe my mouth with the back of my hand in defiance. To reaffirm I'm no longer that woman.

“Fine. Good.” I take another sip for good measure to try to prove I'm unfazed by the taste I never was allowed the chance to acquire.

“So I take it you were a bartender elsewhere? Before you came to the island?”

“Yes. Yeah.” Old habits of grammar die hard, but I try to forget them as I focus on the fib at hand.

“And here come the bullshit lies I warned you about,” he says with a chuckle.

“Seriously, I was—”

“No need to explain or lie, Socks. I watched you work for a few hours. You did a fine job. Filled orders quickly. Know how to pull a draft without foam. It's sad to say that I may have spent a bit of time in bars and can tell a greenhorn from a pro, but I can.”

“Oh, so now you're a bartending expert?” It's a stupid comeback, but it's my only defense.

“I'm an expert at a lot of things, I assure you that. Most of which are ones I'm not proud of lately.” There's a tinge of discord in his voice that makes me want to be the one asking questions, but before I can get them out, he shifts the topic of conversation. “What was so bad in your life that you ran here to escape from it?”

Hello, curveball.
We went from bartending to invasion of my privacy. His question puts every part of me on edge. And it's not just his question but also the impenetrable
stare through the darkness that unnerves me. The one that tells me he knows I am in fact hiding something.

My mind runs a million miles an hour. Did Smitty tell him the details? Did Zander search through my stuff in the house while I was at work and find something? Did my dad or Ethan send him to track me down and bring me back, even though there is nothing left to go back to?

“I'm not running from anything,” I state with as much certainty as I can. His expression tells me he's not buying it, so I try to explain without going into detail. “I'm starting a new chapter in my life. It's so different here from where I used to live, and I needed that. A change of pace, I guess. But running, no.” I nod my head to put the emphasis on my statement and yet he doesn't look away.

I'm the first to avert my eyes. I need to in order to prevent him from seeing things I don't want him to see. But even when I do, I can still feel the weight of his stare as I look out to the darkness beyond where we sit. To the ocean I can hear but not see.

The crack of a new beer can opening startles me, but I keep my gaze straight ahead, hope that by focusing there, the sting of tears on the backs of my eyelids will abate.

“I'll accept that answer for now, but I've gotta tell you something, Getty—I don't buy it. Sure, all of that might be true in a loose sense, but there's more there.”

“You don't know anything about me.”

“True. I don't. But I've seen a lot of shit in my life . . . more than you could probably imagine. So phrase it any way you want to, deny it every which way from Sunday, but until you face whatever it is, nothing's going to get fixed.”

“You're overstepping boundaries for someone I've known only twenty-four hours.” I try to play off the comment like I'm not irritated but can't quite pull it off.

“You're right.
I am.
” His admission is quiet, contrite, and so very unexpected after his dogged assumptions.

Silence descends on us as he lets it go, leaving me to dwell on the truth to his words that I'd like to pretend I didn't hear. Lightning flashes far off the coast, a subtle reminder that I'm actually on an island in the ocean, completely vulnerable.

Kind of like I was before I came here. No wonder when I first stepped foot on the wharf, I felt like I belonged instantly. And maybe, possibly hoped that the small-town atmosphere would mean that I'd be the outsider whom everyone left alone until I figured out if I wanted to stay or move on.

Of course, now that I know I want to stay, he's here. And while it seems he may have his moments of kindness, it doesn't mean I want a roommate. At all. I just want to be left alone in this place I've grown to call home. Where I can paint in private so that no one knows or can scrutinize my art and demean it. Where the last name Caster is like Smith or Jones and doesn't mean anything to anyone.

“What about you?” I ask, assuming the question isn't welcome but indulging my curiosity.

A heavy sigh in response. The sound of aluminum hitting against the edge of the trash bin near us rings out as he throws his empty can into it. Actions to buy him some time on an imaginary clock no one's watching.

“Everybody's running from something, Getty.” His words startle me, unexpected honesty that hits home. A part of me wonders if he's telling me this to get me to talk or if he really means it. And as much as I want to ask more, get lost in his troubles instead of my own, I let it go, let us sink into the silence milling around us.

The cool ocean breeze. The warmth of a body next to me. The notion that someone understands when he really has no clue what I'm going through or have been through, but understands in his own way nonetheless. This is new to me. Welcome and unwelcome at the same time.

Because I'm supposed to be figuring myself out. Supposed to be dealing with this all on my own. Determined to prove to myself that I don't need anyone. That I can do this.

“There's a storm rolling in.” Zander's quiet murmur beside me breaks the silence. How long have we been sitting here? I've lost track of time, absorbed in my own thoughts.

“I love sitting on the back patio and watching them move across the sea.” Listening to the roar of thunder and the pelting sound of the rain. Then after the light
show is over, I'll sit in my bedroom with the window cracked so I can smell the distinct scent of the rain.

“Please tell me you don't actually sit on that death trap of a deck?”

My wide eyes meet his raised eyebrows. “
Maybe.
Is it that bad?”

“
Rickety
is a compliment for that hazard.”

“And so what, you're a carpenter? You're trading your skills for room and board?” Time to turn the tables on him. Put him in the hot seat for a bit, since I know he's still curious about why I'm here.

The laugh I get in response to my question is cynical at best. “No. Not a carpenter whatsoever. I'm the farthest thing from it.”

My mind flashes back to earlier today and the constant pounding of the hammer. On how much time it took to replace the broken step.

“How do you plan on fixing the house up if you don't know what you're doing?”

“The same way you're being a bartender, I suppose,” he says with a purse of his lips and a resolute nod of his head. “Figure it out as I go.”

“Does Smitty know you're not a carpenter?” I wonder if I'm asking for fuel to add to my argument as to why I should stay and he should go, or because I just want him to keep talking. To help not make the silence seem so lonely tonight.

His laugh in response is genuine and rich and wholehearted and brings a soft smile to my lips at the sound. “Yeah. I'm pretty positive he knows who and what I am.”

“Then why . . . ?” There are so many ways I can end the sentence and yet I'm not sure which one I want an answer to the most: 
. . . are you here? . . . are you sitting with me on a bench after apologizing when I never asked you to? . . . are you making me want to tell you things when I don't like to talk to anyone?

“Because I owe him big-time. He, uh . . . helped me out with a few things. Kept me from getting in trouble in a sense when I didn't deserve his help.” He shrugs, eyes trained to the darkness beyond as he absently reaches
into the bag and pulls out another can of beer. “I needed a place off the beaten path to go to deal with some shit and he needed someone to repair this place, so we both agreed to help each other.”

“A few weeks ago Darcy told me they'd finally decided on which carpenter to hire. I was going to help facilitate—”

“Yeah, they did. Then Smitty found out that he and every other carpenter who works here on the island is booked solid through the end of the year. He wanted to get the repairs going sooner than that so they can flip the house and get it back on the market before next tourist season starts. So . . .” He shrugs with a sheepish smile. “Me.”

“And what if you're in over your head?”

He shrugs his shoulders at my comment, a forced smile on his face as if I've just touched a nerve somehow. “We're all in over our heads at some point, aren't we?” he says cryptically before lifting his hat, running his hand through his hair, and putting it back down. And for some reason I don't think he expects a response to his question, so I just remain quiet and study him out of the corner of my eye. “I'll figure it out. Can't be that hard. I promised him I'd get the job done, and I'll get the job done. Prove to him that my word is good again.”

“Again? Did something happen that—”

“Boundaries, Getty.” His voice is an even warning that I'm pushing him too hard when he backed off from asking me questions. And I know there is more hidden in his words, an underlying meaning I don't understand, and yet, I give him the same respect he did me.

I shift back to neutral ground: the repair issues. “So you just plan on wielding a hammer and winging it?”

“It's better I wield a hammer than a mini-blind wand,” he deadpans, and then snickers.

“Touché,” I laugh with a roll of my eyes, already knowing it was not one of my prouder moments. “But being a bartender and making a deck so it doesn't crash to the ground when you walk on it are slightly different skill sets. At least I can't kill someone if I mix a drink wrong.”

“Oh, I've been killed plenty of times at the hands of a bartender,” he says with a chuckle.

“I have a feeling that was your own fault.”

“God yes, it was, but damn, the parts I remember were well worth it.”

The suggestion in his tone is loud and clear. I hate the creative images that fill my mind of him in a bar: loud music, a slew of women surrounding him hanging on his every word in the hopes that they can get him to buy them a drink. Stake a claim. Even if just for the night.

Because he's that type of guy—by no fault of his own other than the good looks he was born with and that subtle charm that wiggles its way into your resolve not to like him. The type that a woman would gladly accept a one-night stand with, knowing ahead of time the hurt that would come when he'd walk out in the morning wanting nothing more.

Without knowing anything else about him, I already know he'd be
worth the hurt
.

I shake away the thought instantly, seeing as I'm not looking for that from him or from anyone. I've had enough pain to last a lifetime.

And yet images from earlier tonight in the bar flash back in my mind. How even though he had been here less than a day, he already had townspeople approaching him, talking to him, and not treating him like an outsider like they did me for a good few weeks.

“Did I lose you?” Zander's words pull me from my errant train of thought. A train that needs to derail and not fill my head with notions about what exactly he'd be like in any situation.

“No. Yes. Sorry.” Why do I feel so rattled?

“Getty?” The way he says my name—part question, part concern—causes that panic to reemerge, because I don't want to turn this discussion back on me.

“It's nothing. What were we talking about?” He narrows his eyes and studies me for a moment. Asking without asking.
Can I help? Do you want to talk about it?
And I don't want to do any more talking right now. It's overrated.
“Don't.”