Tattered Innocence (15 page)

Jake dipped his mouth close to her ear.
“Doing my part for the cause.”

The warmth from Jake’s breath in her ear
crept through Rachel. He was playing a cameo to help her out of a
tough spot. She willed this fact to talk sense to her emotions.

She took a deep breath and looked at Jake’s
hand, dangling casually over her shoulder. A pink scar laced across
his thumb. No telltale tan line showed on his ring finger.

Her gaze swept across the cockpit and landed
on Bret. He held a cracker and talked to Ginger. She let out her
breath.

They docked tomorrow, so Jake’s “help” would
be short-lived.

The body heat of his arm branded her back.
She didn’t want to move. Dropping the thread of the story, she
concentrated on laughing when the others did.

Jake shifted and broke the spell woven
around her.

Her eyes followed him as he went below and
restocked the soda chest.

He glanced up and tossed a box of crackers
through the hatch into her hands.

She shook the crackers onto the cheese tray
and took the empty spot between Ginger and the
Queen
’
s
wheel. No need for Jake to think she was
eager for Act Two. She launched into her woman overboard tale.

Bret sat across from her, eyes glued to her
face, his mouth turning up at the corners.

But his attention failed to touch her.
Jake’s “help” had flipped off the switch of attraction. She glanced
at Bret, testing herself. No response in any part of her mind or
body.
Thank You, God.

Rachel glanced at Jake as he stepped through
the companionway. An obnoxious morning person, he would probably
turn in for the night.

Instead, Jake scooted against the coaming
behind Rachel, one leg on either side of her. She darted a glance
at Jake’s bare feet and avoided Bret’s eyes. Maybe Bret wouldn’t
notice her blush in the lantern light.

“…so, Jake hauled me into the dinghy like a
hundred and twenty-five pound sea cow.”

Jake laughed behind her. She twisted to look
over her shoulder. Did he really find it funny the fifth time he’d
heard it—and after having been there in the first place? But the
lantern light picked up the sparkle of merriment in his eyes.

Somewhere in the middle of Bret’s recap of
their swim season, Jake’s hands settled on her shoulders. She
tensed. He kneaded her back through Sassy McQuen’s completing the
twenty laps of the Five Hundred Free and Alex Tremain earning the
Most Valuable Swimmer trophy.

In spite of the weirdness of the charade,
she began to relax. Bret’s smooth voice droned on. But she could
only think of Jake’s thumbs pressing the tension out of the muscles
between her shoulder blades.

Bret stared at her as he recounted the State
meet, as though willing her to remember their first kiss in front
of her apartment.

Jake’s hand slipped under her hair and
rubbed her neck until it turned to Silly Putty. Blessedly, she
forgot about State, about the shame. Her muscles went limp, and she
felt like she might slide into a puddle in the cockpit foot well.
Jake tugged her boneless shoulders against his chest.

Bret must have finished the season because
Clive’s raspy voice launched into a joke about three guys playing
golf in Heaven. Rachel turned her head toward Clive.

Jake’s heart beat in her ear. Her eyes
drifted shut as she listened to the sound. Every once in a while,
words rumbled in his chest.

Voices pirouetted and dipped around her.

The next thing she knew, Jake said her name.
“Rae….”

Even half awake, Rachel heard the shortening
of her name. No one called her Rae but Jake. She smiled sleepily. A
couple drops of rain splatted against her arm and she snuggled into
the warmth of his body and sleep.

“Rae… Wake up.”

Rain sheeted against her skin, rousting the
last of sleep’s Novocain from her body, and she scrambled for the
aft cabin.

Jake propped his feet on his desk in the
darkened engine room and listened to rain patter on the deck above
his head. Rachel had fallen asleep in his arms, and she still
filled his senses. He wouldn’t be catching Z’s anytime soon.

Posing as her boyfriend seemed like a
no-brainer to help her out, but it got complicated about point five
seconds after he hooked a wrist over her bare shoulder. The
skin-on-skin felt nothing like pretending, nothing like the handful
of times they’d touched this summer.

He’d felt Rachel’s discomfort in the way she
held herself so still, the muffled sigh of relief when he went
below for soda. He would have left her alone, but Bret’s Matthew
McConaughey-gazing-at-his-lover act changed his mind.

Bret would never have bought them as a
couple if Rachel sat there all evening like the
Queen’s
third mast. He’d rubbed her neck and shoulders till she finally
gave up and relaxed against him. He’d held her for an hour,
breathing in her trust with the pine scent of her shampoo. He
shouldn’t have been surprised since she’d already trusted him with
her secrets.

He hated to admit it, but he and Gabrielle
had never been this close. Gabs held him off physically because she
wanted to wait for marriage. But she’d locked him out emotionally,
too. He only realized it now because of Rachel’s openness.

He smiled, picturing Bret’s exit from the
cockpit. Bret had stretched and raked his gaze over a sleeping
Rachel. His jaw clenched, eyes narrowed to slits, hands dropping
into fists at his sides. He didn’t so much as look at Jake before
he stormed down the companionway, leaving a huff of disgust in his
wake.

Rachel’s splash of freckles across her
cheeks had seared into Jake in the lantern light and robbed his
sleep. But those thirty seconds of Bret’s reaction were more than
payback.

The steady rain blowing in gentle sheets
across the deck lulled him. He stood, felt for the bungee cord, and
anchored the chair into his desk. He wasn’t going to figure out
what he felt for Rachel—or Gabs, for that matter—tonight.

He eased open the door to the aft cabin and
shut it after he passed through.

“
I’m in love with someone else… with
Jake
.” Rachel’s words swam in his head.

He slid under his sheet and lay back on the
cool pillow. The sway of the
Queen
and the drone of the rain
weighted his eyelids.

He’d never known Rachel to tell a lie.

Rachel watched Jake load Clive and Connie’s
luggage into a waiting cab at the end of the pier.

“Alone for once.”

Rachel turned at the sound of Bret’s taut
voice.

He stood in the cockpit, shoulders rigid,
sunglasses hiding his eyes.

The deck swayed.

Rachel dropped her gaze to the murky green
water between the boat and the pier where a redfish carcass
floated.

“It’s over.” She lifted her eyes to the
mirrored lenses.

“You made your point last night.” Disgust
thickened his voice. He heaved his duffle over his shoulder and
cleared the coaming inches from her. “This—” he waved his hand
between them, “—dance with desire would have been more satisfying
for both of us if you—”

“Did you ever really love me?”

“I wish I could forget you.”

“So, that would be a
n
o.” Seconds
ticked by while she stared at double images of her face in his
glasses.

“I was ready to choose you over my kids.” He
stalked across the gangplank to the finger pier.

“Get over it, Bret. I will.” She shot ice
into the words, the performance of her life.

His step hitched, then he kept walking.

Inside, she blubbered.

Rachel touched a match to the page she’d
ripped from the New Smyrna Beach High Yearbook. A corner turned
black. The flame ate the words lettered in Bret’s neat script.
Thanks, Rachel, for being my assistant coach and friend. I’ll
never forget State.
She dropped it into the empty hibachi she’d
lugged onto the afterdeck. The page burned to ash.

She struck another match and cupped her
hands around the flame until it lit the card he’d laid on her desk
one day in May. The watercolor greens and blues dissolved into
black and gray. But the words were carved in her memory.

You hear my heart when no one’s listening. I
tried to forget you. But you’re so beautiful. Tell me I’ll hold you
again.

Rachel yanked the delicate chain from her
neck. She sifted the heart and chain back and forth in her palms,
balled her fist around them, and heaved. The necklace sailed a few
yards and slipped under the green water.

Color caught the corner of her eye, and she
saw Jake sitting on the main cabin, elbows draped over his
knees.

“You watched?” Her voice weighed sixty
pounds.

Jake squinted against the sunlight. “I
wasn’t going to let you burn the
Queen
down to her
waterline.” He stood and walked over to her, offering a hand. He
tugged her to her feet and wrapped his arms around her. “I’m proud
of you.”

She slumped against the sun-warmed cotton of
his T-shirt. “I only wish I could get rid of my regrets as
easily.”

Leaf chuckled, and Jake pulled his eyes from
Rachel’s form as she walked down the dock toward the street, the
long, leather fringe of her purse swaying beside her.

“Caught you wrapped in a clinch earlier. A
mighty good cruise, I’ll wager.”

“Come on, Leaf, she was having a
moment.”

“Looked like you got your moment, too.”

Jake grinned. “Yeah, I guess I did.” More
than one.

“Beat out the competition, eh?”

“I’ve got more important things to worry
about—like how I’m going to keep the
Queen
out of dry dock.”
Jake squatted on the finger pier and squinted at the waterline
where the fiberglass had begun to buckle.

“That guy had a tongue smoother than a
lizard’s. Should have heard him when he came aboard.”

Jake looked over his shoulder at Leaf
perched against the
Escape’s
cabin and shook his head. “You
need to get a life.”

“I got a life. You’re the one who got tossed
on your head. You need a girl who won’t jerk you around. Rachel’s
sweet on you.”

Jake laughed. “Yeah, she loves me, you old
busybody.”

Leaf shot him a thumbs-up. “Try Down the
Hatch in Ponce Inlet if you need hull work. Tell Barry I sent you,
and he’ll knock off some of the price.”

Jake searched the pier for Rachel. She’d
left five minutes ago for the weekend, and it felt… wrong.

Rachel stood in the gazebo watching Hall
flow out of the camp dining hall with the tide of campers. She
wanted to see him and dreaded it. The cacophony of two hundred
voices mingled with the clink of silverware and scrape of chair
legs across the wood floor.

She hadn’t contacted Hall since they spoke
last week. Bret’s reappearance had knocked everything out of her
head for five days. But as soon as she stowed the hibachi, she
couldn’t mow through her chores fast enough to track down her
brother.

Even signing up for Early Childhood
Development at Daytona State College would have to wait. The
six-week, all-day Saturday classes worked perfectly with her
schedule. She was hardly in a position to ask Hall to read her
textbook onto her iPod, but she’d enroll anyway.

She waved and Hall jerked his chin toward
her in recognition. He hollered to a counselor with a sleeve tattoo
running from shoulder to elbow and motioned Rachel toward the snack
bar. Her stomach quivered. She and Hall had never been so
disconnected.

She ducked behind the building into the
grassy parking lot, away from the noise. She darted a glance at
Hall, trying to measure his mood.

Please, let him forgive me.

Foreignness pinged between them. She
swallowed hard. “What went on last semester?”

Hall stopped, facing an ancient, souped-up
VW Beetle. The afternoon sun beat on biceps thicker than she
remembered. Hall was a man now. She needed to quit seeing him as a
child.

He turned toward her, anger and hurt warring
in his eyes. “I got into a yell-fest in the locker room. Coach
Putnam threatened me with in-school suspension. People talked about
you all semester. It was humiliating.”

“You didn’t punch anybody did you?”

“Should have.”

“Why didn’t you come to me?”

“One look at your face when Coach Rustin
walked across the gym during pep rally told me the truth—and
anybody else watching.”

Rachel’s head drooped. “I promise you, I
will never do anything this stupid again.” She lifted her chin.

Hall pulled out his phone to check the time.
“I have to cover for Cody so he can teach his class.”

He would leave just like that with nothing
resolved? The weirdness made her want to scream. She wanted to grab
him in a fierce hug, but a hardness she’d never seen in Hall stared
back at her.

“I gotta go.”

Tears gathered in the corners of her eyes,
but she didn’t care. He’d become a man all right—one who didn’t
need or want her in his life.

He turned and jogged between the hedge and
the snack bar. He strode alongside the softball diamond and turned
in at the first cabin.

Her heart lay like road kill in her
chest.

Rachel fanned herself with the clipboard, a
useless gesture in the ninety-two degree end-of-August morning. The
Queen
rolled in the wake of a passing boat and seemed to
moan her discomfort, too.

A woman in white Capri’s and a periwinkle
silk blouse eyed the
Queen
from the dock, probably the first
of this week’s guests. She marched down the finger pier, over the
gangplank, and into the cockpit, her eyes honed onto Jake. The
strap from her overnight bag slipped from her shoulder, and slid to
her feet beside a burgundy leather laptop case. Had the woman even
noticed her sitting five feet away on the main cabin?