Page 69 of The Captain
“I listen to everything,” he said. “Even when you’re just counting breaths.”
The band by the door decided the room deserved three chords and a harmonica. A woman at a corner table laughed too loud.
I ate a fry and pretended to be casual when I said, “The bungalow isn’t permanent.”
He raised a brow. “No?”
“I was only supposed to be here a few months,” I said. “Fill a gap for the NOAA. Make Charleston’s chaos someone else’s problem again.” I picked up a napkin, folded it into a neat square, unfolded it, annoyed myself by needing my hands to be busy. “My parents would love it if I made up my mind and stayed. They pretend they want me to go where the work is. They also fill my fridge when I’m not home and leave Tupperware like a breadcrumb trail.”
He smiled, soft at the edges. “Your dad hums to whales and shows up to carry things. Your mom texts you about roux. Yeah. They want you here.”
“They do,” I said, and let the longing sit.
He tipped his bottle, took a slow drink like he was buying time to say the right thing. “If you wanted to stay,” he said, casual, “I bet the Charleston Danes could find a way to keep me in town.” He shrugged. “They’re good at inventing jobs.”
“You’re going to become a Charleston problem, too,” I said, because my heart did the trick again. “My mother will start feeding you before she remembers to feed my father.”
He grinned. “I’m charming to mothers. Daughters, I have to work for. I like the work.”
I looked at the shape of his mouth and let my own soften. “This thing we’re doing,” I said. “It feels like a tide. Not a wave.”
“Good,” he said, not missing that I meant it as a compliment. “I don’t want to be done with you when the weather changes.” He tilted his head, pretend-absent. “Might even need to buy a ring and make an honest woman out of you.”
My body did three things at once—braced, laughed, and reached. “That’s a lot of nouns in one sentence,” I said lightly. “Ring. Honest. Woman.”
He didn’t backpedal the way lesser men do when they realize they’ve spoken aloud. He let it sit between us. “Someday,” he said, the word not heavy. “If you want.”
“If you keep using the right pronunciation of my name,” I said, mocking him to hide the way the idea warmed everything. “Maybe.”
He leaned in and said it quick and right into my neck. “Camille.”
I was about to say something utterly unserious and ruin the sweetness on purpose when my phone buzzed on the bar. McGuire’s name lit the screen.
“Leanne,” I said, already standing. Jacob’s hand left my thigh and went to his wallet on pure muscle memory. He threw bills on the bar without looking.
“Doctor,” she said. No preamble. “It’s go time. We’ve got movement in your corridor that fits the profile. Same water. We need you at your facility now. Dominion Hall is staging. Keep your radio on.”
A slap of cold went through me that had nothing to do with fear. Relief wears that temperature, too.
“We’re on our way,” I said. “Ten minutes.”
“Make it eight,” she said, and hung up.
I turned. Jacob was already on his feet, pulling my bag off the brass hook under the bar without looking down, his eyes on mine.
“Well?” he asked, calm in that way that makes me reckless and good.
“Go,” I said. “Now.”
He took my hand for three steps—past Karl, past the men with the sunburn, past the harmonica that was trying to earn its keep—and then let it go to push the door with the back of his knuckles the way polite men do when they’re about to do something impolite to a problem.
The river air hit our faces like an answer. The world outside had shifted half a degree while we were laughing and it was time to see what it had moved toward.
30
JACOB
The Jeep’s tires spun on gravel as we pulled into the facility’s lot. We were greeted by the faint hum of machinery. Night had settled over Charleston, the sky a deep indigo, the facility’s lights casting sharp shadows across the concrete.
