Page 158 of Forget Me Not

“I’m sure you’re a good dad,” I murmur, scrubbing a hand over my mouth so he can’t see the emotions rattling through my brain. I’ve remained a statue on this ship. If the men notice you’re going through shit, they’ll take advantage of that.

“I want to be a great dad,” he grunts quietly. “My son, Elias, is three. I want to show him how you should care for your woman. Your family. Never thought I’d have a son, but here I am.”

“Scared?”

“Of dying? Sinking?” he asks.

“Not going home.”

He pauses for a long moment. He looks out over the water to the ship down below where the guys are hauling crab pots out of the water and sorting through the catch.

“If I think about it too much, I’ll scare myself into wanting to go home. If I focus on what’s important—for them, I can do anything.” He leans forward, reaching out to shake my hand. “Jack, by the way. But everyone calls me Trout.”

“Reid,” I murmur, shaking his hand and trying to shake off the eerie, unsettling feeling I get as that name hits my ears.

Jack. Fucking Jack.

“Well, Reid. I’m glad you’re here. No matter what you’re running from.”

I almost tell him I’m not running from shit, but then I realize, there’s no point. I’ve been running my whole fucking life.

“Just so you know,” he starts when I get up to go lay down and stare at the fucking ceiling in my cabin for the next six hours when I should be asleep. “Everyone here has been where you’re at. You’ve just got to decide if you can live without her.”

I don’t respond because there’s nothing to say.

We’re both in the same boat, literally and figuratively. He’s got a family waiting at home. I walked away from the best fucking thing that’s ever happened to me to chase a pipe dream.

Somehow, though, we both fall asleep staring at a picture at the end of the day.

That night, I find myself sitting out on the deck, out of view of the wheelhouse while I smoke a cigarette. A habit I picked up on the full hours spent in the captain’s chair.

Every time I light one, I think about how Nova would hate it and something about that amuses me.

I’ve got the suit on and it keeps me relatively warm despite the frigid cold waters splashing around me. I don’t mind the cold, though, because it reminds me I’m still alive, regardless of how this place feels like purgatory.

It’s where I come when I can’t sleep and tonight is no exception.

I keep replaying what the kid said over and over and try to come up with a logical plan for the rest of my life.

I’ve never had a fucking plan before, so I have no idea what I’m doing.

The stars overhead don’t offer much comfort. You see that shit in the movies where they talk about no matter the distance between two people, they can look up and see the same stars.

Fucking bullshit.

Nova’s across the county, sleeping under a Maine sky in a warm bed. Probably cuddled up with Toast and Creamsicle. Probably settled into her new life without me.

Does she think of me? Have I carved out a little spot in her mind where she wonders what it would have been like if I would have stayed? Does she hate me for everything I couldn’t be?

She deserves better than me, for what it’s worth. The way she would look at me, you would have thought I hung the fucking moon. I didn’t deserve her. Not in the way she gave herself to me. Not in the way she gave herself to Jack.

Two men, in love with the same woman, but neither able to give her the life she deserves. One dead, one above despite the cavity in my chest.

It’s a fucking joke, isn’t it?

Cold water splashes my face, but I don’t move. I’m too trapped in my own thoughts, wondering what she’s been doing that it’s almost welcome. A jolt to bring me back to reality before I get lost in her for too long.

Do you love her?

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