Page 4 of Third Time's the Charm
I held on to my present. No,my future.“Let’s walk along the water.” I kissed Ryker’s cheek.
He patted my hand. “Whatever you want, my love.”
Chapter 1
How it started
Mistletoe Key
December 23rd
Jack
It was a mistake to come home for Christmas. Of course it was also a mistake to agree to a divorce I didn’t want and to intentionally leave behind the place I loved. I was good at making mistakes.
I managed to deal with the ache of leaving most of the time because I was too busy working my tail off to dwell, and it was what she wanted. I might not like Berlin very much right now, but I’d always love her, and if this was what she wanted, then it was what I was going to do.
No matter how incredible it felt when my feet sank below the surface of the soft sand, the chilly brown water rushing over them again and again as the tide sucked everything out to sea, leaving the weak, the old and the discarded, stuck and festering in the afternoon sun.
That was me. I was that jellyfish, stuck in the wrong place at the wrong time, lured in by the soft sands and clear water only to be captured by a piece of driftwood, unable to save myself when the tide I called Berlin Anderson left me behind.
Also, apparently, making me into a philosopher of Mistletoe Key’s tidal symbology.Fuck.This is what coming home at Christmas did to me. It turned me into a sad, sappy sucker, wishing for a life he willfully left behind.
My feet sank a little deeper and a part of my soul came back to life. The beach always fixed me. I thought for a while it would magically fix my marriage.
No such luck there.
“Jack! You dipshit! When did you get in?” The deep baritone of my ex-brother-in-law, Harrison, hit me just at the break between waves. Otherwise I might not have heard him. With the tide on the way out I’d wandered almost a quarter mile across the mudflats.
I turned and braced my hand over my brow to cut out the glare of the sun. Harrison stood on a crumbling shell midden, barefoot—because no one ever wore shoes—and clutching a bucket. Probably had a couple fish in there.
My stomach growled. I apparently missed the fresh seafood as much as I missed everything else.
I carefully unsealed my feet from the mud crypt, shaking the sludge free before beginning the walk back to shore. Harrison waited patiently, setting the bucket aside for a big hug when I finally made it to him.
“Christmas with your mom?” He cracked my back with his big paw.
I nodded. When I’d married Berlin it meant spending part of my life on Mistletoe Key. Her’s was an old Florida family, having settled several different areas around the peninsula including this island. They’d owned her house forever, her aunt being the most recent resident before Berlin inherited the house.
She loved it here. I fell for it hard too, and with my job coaching the Miami Pythons hockey team, it wasn’t too painful of a commute. My mom came to visit, fell in love with a bungalow on the town’s main square, and it was all over. The Cassidys officially became Mistletoe Key transplants, given extra rank because of my marriage to a legacy family.
Then Berlin and I divorced, and everyone got the island except me.
“I’m just here for three days. We’ve got a home game day after Christmas.”
Harrison grunted, grabbing the bucket and turning toward the house. “She know you’re out here?”
I nodded again. “I texted her this morning asking permission. She said it was fine.”
Our house—herhouse—stood a good ten feet higher than we were now, built on top of a shell midden before the religious group that settled the island in the late nineteenth century realized that what they were essentially destroying was a mound built by the real first settlers of Mistletoe Key centuries earlier. The sun setting behind it made the old house little more than a shadow.
Probably better that way.
“I miss you, brother,” Harrison said, a bit more wistfully than I expected. “Her new man, Ryker—who the fuck has a name like Ryker? Anyway, he’s a total bro. No fun at all.”
Harrison was reserved on the outside, but he loved to get into trouble on the sly. He was a sneaky bastard and really great friend. I could only imagine how big he rolled his eyes when this Ryker asshole wasn’t looking.
“Let me guess, he wears shoes?”
