Page 17 of His True North (Shattered Cove 5)

She pulled open the drawer of the bedside table and collected two aspirin before handing it to him with the bottle of water she kept on the nightstand.

He sat up and took them. “Thanks.”

“We need to talk about last night at some point.”

“What about it?” he grumbled.

“You need to let me know when you’re going out, where you’ll be, and when you plan to come home. Preferably at a reasonable hour.”

“You’re not my mother. And I’m a full-grown man, apparently. I don’t even know you. I shouldn’t be here,” he snapped.

She flinched and stumbled back a step as the blow of his words hit her with full force. Her own anger rose. “I’m your wife. And I deserve some common courtesy, so I don’t spend hours worrying that you’re hurt or lost or in some kind of trouble. So I don’t have to call everyone we know to find out if they’ve seen you.”

“Because my brain is fucked up and I can’t remember a god damned thing?” he barked. “I can handle getting around town. I can remember a lot of things. Just. Not. You. And I sure as fuck wonder why that is. Maybe old Finn was trying to tell me something. Maybe he wasn’t happy here.”

With you. The words he didn’t say echoed in her mind as the force of his voice shattered her hope and broke her heart. Painful chaos slammed into her chest, knocking the breath from her lungs.

She ignored the tears dripping down her cheeks as she got up and grabbed a dress and a clean pair of underwear from the pile before storming out of the room. She and Finn had had their fair share of spats in the thirteen years they’d been married. But he’d never treated her this way before. He’d always protected her, taken care of her. He’d loved her.

This Finn was not the man she married.

7

Finn

Finn wiped the bar top with the wet rag as a patron slid into the empty seat across from him. Music thumped in the background, an upbeat song that had several others grinding against one another on the dance floor. He scanned the room, noting the exits and the number of people inside. The Shipwreck hadn’t changed much since he last remembered it. His parents had bought it when he was fifteen. They’d turned the former hole-in-the-wall bar into a destination for the seacoast. It wasn’t every day you had a bar that looked like you were underwater.

“Finn?” the blonde across from him asked, tapping her fingers impatiently. Another person who knew his name, and another face he had no memory of.

“What can I get ya?” he asked.

“An apple martini, please.”

Shit. Of course, she wanted something he had no fucking clue how to make. He turned his back, trying to look busy as he pulled out his phone and googled the recipe.

“One and a half vodka, one schnapps, and half calvados with a peel of apple to garnish,” Charli whispered only loud enough for him to hear as she passed by him.

He tucked the phone into his pocket and filled the mixer with ice. Heat flamed his cheeks. Finn didn’t like being caught lacking. But she’d saved his pride by not insisting on making it for him. It was one of the few sentences they’d exchanged this week since he’d picked a fight after waking in her bed, in his underwear, with a pounding headache.

She’d walked in naked, water dripping over the most gorgeous figure he’d ever laid eyes on. He hated that his body reacted so strongly to her, like she had more power over him than he did. Couldn’t he have anything he controlled anymore? When she’d tried to tell him what he could and couldn’t do, that had been the last straw.

He let out a sigh as he shook the ingredients in the steel mixer. The hurt that had reflected back in her eyes had torn him apart. He’d felt her pain as if it was his own. But where did they go from here? Should he apologize? His parents usually pretended like nothing happened and eventually things were right again. But it had been a week and nothing was okay.

Finn poured the cocktail into a martini glass and added an apple peel before sliding it over to the woman.

“Thanks. Just put it on my tab.” She grabbed the drink and turned away before he could ask her name.

“Shit.”

“Tina Romm,” an old man at the corner of the bar who looked vaguely familiar said with a heavy Ghanaian accent.

“Excuse me?”

The man nodded his bald, brown head towards the blonde, now laughing with a group of other women. “That’s Tina Romm.”

“Oh, th—thanks.” Finn was able to find her tab easily enough and added the drink.

Finn studied the man out of the corner of his eye. His leathery hand wrapped around a local beer as he wrote in a book with a pencil.

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