Page 165 of Forget Me Not

“Well, when you know it’s time to go, it’s time to go.”

“What am I going to do, Pap?”

“Well, the way I see it. You’ve only got one option . . . Wait.”

I don’t want to wait. I want to go find her. Fall to my knees and fucking grovel if that’s what it takes because I fucked up leaving this island.

I should have never left her.

“You owe me a ride on Hope’s Grace this next summer, by the way.”

Fuck. Hope’s Grace. I’ve been in such a hurry to get to Nova, I haven’t thought about the boat, at all.

“I sold her. She’s gone.”

“I know you did,” Pap says. He reaches into his pocket, producing the key and pulling it up by the old metal anchor that has always been attached.

“It was you.” Disbelief coils through me. Then shock. Then awe. Then a new type of love. Family. This is what family is supposed to be like.

When I sold the boat, Al took care of everything. Said he’d found a “real good home for her”.

Now, everything is starting to make sense.

“Yeah, well, I knew you’d need it when you got back home.”

“You old bastard,” I chuckle and he smirks, dropping the key in my palm. “You knew I’d come back. How?”

“I saw how you loved Nova. Saw how well you fit in around here.” He pauses, looking back toward the inn for a split second. “Love like that don’t come around too often. Especially not for dirty fishermen like us.”

He pats my knee and moves to stand, his cane wobbling under his weight. Toast jumps up, ready to follow him wherever they’re going.

“Now, go get your room back. You’ve got some thinking to do.”

“Thinking?”

I’ve already thought long and hard about this. There’s nothing left to think about.

“About how you’re going to live the rest of your life.”

Sometimes life has a real shitty way of making you feel like a failure.

Alaska was a bust. Finding Reid was a bust.

I showed up on the dock and thought it was divine intervention when I saw the Stargazer in port. Reid’s ship . . . like he was there because he knew I would be coming to find him.

I’ve really got to listen to my head more. My heart is going to get me killed.

When I asked the crew, they just told me he left a day before I got there.

A fucking day.

No one knew why or where he was going. Just that he left.

Coming home to the island empty handed . . . I can feel everyone staring at me, even if most people aren’t out. It’s cold here—nowhere near as cold as Alaska, but the wind coming off the Atlantic cuts through your clothing, slicing down to bone.

It’s snowed. Judging by the thick piling in front of the inn, a lot.

I pause at the front sidewalk, staring at the old building.

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