“I want that too.” The tears are full-on coming down her cheeks.
“Fuck, yes!” I jump up and punch the sky. But this isn’t some sort of alternate universe of a Brat Pack movie. There’s no credits running with us huddled behind that white picket fence. There’s a tender full of fruit and a WaveRunner that needs to be hauled onto the shore and hidden with brown palm fronds.
But I don’t care. I pick Haley up and twirl her around. Her shoes go flying, and her arms are scrunched below my life vest. I gaze down at her. My girl. She’s mine. And that’s how I always want it to be. This moment will live frozen in time for me. “I love you, Haley Brewster.”
“I love you too.”
A peep comes from between us, and I pull back. “Oh, shit.”
“Violet’s good.” She holds the chick up and then gently places it back with the others.
“Well, alright then. We should have a ‘welcome to the family’ party. When’s Thanksgiving, anyway?”
Chapter 17
Recruit
Haley
“Iforgot about Thanksgiving. And Halloween! We forgot about Halloween?”
The little chicks’ peeps are louder than the waves. And it brings me back to when Steven brought Ginger home for the first time. She was such a little ball of fur. I was in love—with more than the puppy. At least, I thought I was. I thought he was too.
I glance back at Zane. His big brown eyes are glowing at me. Glowing with love. The chicks aren’t puppies, and he’s not Steven.
I’m going to have to trust that each of them are telling me the truth. Bring it back into my broken heart. Hell, I should know better than the average person that nothing is guaranteed. Not time, people, or money. We have it all right now. And it’s amazing. My life right now can be amazing if I want it to be.
Yes, the Rock Candy being gone is horrible. But three weeks, a month, have gone by and there’s no sign of us being in more danger. There’s no sign that we need to panic.
I glance over at the guys hauling fruit out of the bottom of the tender. We’ve got enough food for weeks, and sure, eventually we’ll run out of gas to use the tender or the WaveRunner, but if we use the path and avoid the bamboo, it’s not so bad to hike to the other side of the island. It’s... gut-wrenching and sad. But the people who lived there would want us to use what they planted. I would at least want to know that I’d helped people survive.
“How could I have forgotten about Halloween?” I say.
Zane’s taken off his life vest. He leans over me and kisses me. “We were busy?” He shrugs. “We’ll talk more about this later. I should help.” He cocks his thumb at the tender.
“I should too.” I reach for my shoes that fell off when he spun me around.
“Do you mind watching our new charges? I don’t want Penny or Pepper getting too nosy with them.” He squeezes my hand.
I’m nodding with wild abandon. Zane’s good. I’m good. He’s fine. I’m fine. We’re good. The little peeps hammer into my brain. “Oh, yes. I think I can manage that.”
I’m getting spoiled with letting them do all the physical work. But then, there’s five of them and only one of me. There’s also a lot of stomping going on, and there are sand flies around Calvin’s ankles.
They’ve got to be done with the fruit. I take a step away from the box and the chicks, and the peeping gets louder. There’s a few clucks thrown in too. I pick it up but then quickly put it down. It’s heavy. Instead, I drag it a few feet back to a rock to sit on.
“You guys doing okay?” I put my hand into the box. A chick runs over and plops down on my palm. I hold her up to my face. Her white eyelids close.
“Last one.” Easton tosses a fruit over to Sam and jumps out of the tender.
Sam makes a detour from carrying a bin of fruit, heading over to me. “What did you say a little bit ago, Sugar?”
It does something to me when he calls me Sugar. As much as yesterday was, I’m ready to go again. I hold Violet the chick up for him to see. Sam winks at me, kisses the top of my head, and then plants a kiss on top of Violet’s little head too.
My mouth dries, and there’s a twitch in my nether regions. “I said we forgot about Thanksgiving and Halloween.”
“We had a lot going on then.” Sam holds up a Pepperfruit to Violet. She pecks at the lemon-colored skin. It’s driving me crazy that I don’t know the real name of the tree or fruit. Would I have known it if I’d finished my last year of school? Probably not. Maybe. It doesn’t make the fruit taste any different.
“That’s a lot of fruit,” I say. Dante’s got a large container and is heading up the trail. He wiggles his eyebrows at me.
