“Where’s Sanford and Son? I thought you two had a date?”
She glares at me and shakes her head. “Is anything in this town private? And stop calling him names, it’s juvenile.”
“Did you really just ask if anything in this town is private? Are you new here?” I ask with a chuckle.
A laugh bursts out of her mouth and she finally smiles at me. Fuck the sun shining down on us right now, this is a thousand times better.
“Yeah, you’re right, silly me. Welcome to Fisher’s Island, where everything is everyone’s business and if you didn’t already know that, you haven’t been talking to the right people,” she says with another laugh.
After a few quiet seconds she answers my initial question. “Stanford got called away to a meeting. We were already finished with lunch, so it’s fine.”
Fucking Sand-In-My-Crack-Ford. Who the hell leaves someone like Lucy in the middle of a date to go to a stupid meeting? I think back to all the times I left her over the years and it makes me feel like an asshole.
“So, how’s the inn?” I ask nonchalantly.
She looks away from me to stare out at the ocean again. “It’s fine, you know, the usual.”
That’s not really what I wanted to hear, so I try again.
“Everything good? You know, moneywise and shit?”
She purses her lips and looks back at me again.
“It’s fine,” she says through clenched teeth.
“I just…you know if you need any help, you can always ask, right? That place was as much a part of my life as it was yours for a lot of years. I care about it and I don’t want to see anything happen to it.”
She laughs cynically, shaking her head back and forth. “You are a real piece of work, you know that? You don’t care about Butler House, so stop trying to feed me that bullshit. You hated everything that place represented and you hated that you were stuck here with me taking care of it. Give it a rest, Fisher.”
“I never hated it, and I never felt like I was stuck here,” I argue.
“Jesus, you just don’t quit, do you? What do you want from me? Why are you even back here?”
I sigh, realizing quickly that this conversation is not going in the direction I wanted it to.
“I heard some things about you not being able to afford it and I’m concerned, okay? I mean, what happened to all the money I sent you? Why didn’t you use it for that place?”
She pushes herself up from the blanket and snatches up her purse angrily. “Screw you AND your fucking money, Fisher. I got your money and it made me sick. Every Goddamn month for thirteen months, I got another bank statement in the mail about those stupid automatic deposits. It’s bad enough your father always made me feel like the whore who took advantage of his son’s money, I never thought you would stoop so low. I don’t want your money. I NEVER wanted your money. You can take your money and shove it up your ass. Why don’t you concentrate on making things right with the people on this island who still love you and care about you? You know, the ones that you went ballistic on before you left? Do something constructive while you’re here and stop pissing me off.”
She turns and storms off across the beach, leaving me there with my mouth wide open. What the hell was she even talking about? Monthly deposits? Jesus, this is not good. Not only is it glaringly obvious that she still hates me, I have to worry about trying to hide a fucking hard-on when I get up from this blanket and retrieve my clothes from the hut, since I didn’t change out of my wet suit before I walked over here. Fucking hell…she’s never spoken to me like that before. Never really raised her voice and certainly never cursed a blue streak like that. My Lucy has gotten herself a backbone and it’s the hottest fucking thing I’ve ever seen.
Getting up from the blanket, I yank it up from the ground and shake off the sand. Not only do I have to figure out a way to get Lucy to forgive me and fall in love with me again, now I have to figure out what the hell she was talking about and try to smooth things over with that. I’ve got some serious questions for my grandfather right now. I have a strange suspicion he’s behind the deposits Lucy was talking about and I might just kick his ass. She had a good point, though, in the middle of her tirade. I need to make things right with the other people in this place I screwed over a year ago. In order for her to see that I’ve changed, I need to fix everything I messed up.
Not just with her, but with everyone.
Chapter 15
Fisher’s Therapy Journal
Memory Date: April 8, 2014 – 9:12 PM
Bobby is yelling at me, but I have no idea what he’s saying. I can see his mouth moving, his arms flailing all over the place, but the only thing I hear is the sound of Lucy’s cries from this afternoon. They echo through my brain, piercing my skull and forcing me take another drink just to try and quiet them. Everything is fuzzy and the room spins so quickly I don’t know how I haven’t fallen off the fucking chair I’m sitting on. I just want to go home. I want to go to our little yellow house on the water and tell her it was all lies. I want to crawl into bed with her and touch her face and tell her I didn’t mean any of it. Then I look over Bobby’s shoulder and see a group of insurgents holding their guns at us and I realize I can never do that.
“Go away. Just go the fuck away and leave me alone!” I shout.
I’m talking to the assholes standing behind Bobby with guns pointed as us, but Bobby thinks I’m talking to him and he walks away.
I need another drink. The drunker I get, the harder it is to focus on the swirling images around the bar that keep morphing into the enemy.
“You look like you could use another drink.”
I sway a little to the side when I hear a female voice right in my ear. Maybe it’s Lucy. Maybe she ignored everything I said to her and came back to me. I know it’s wrong and she shouldn’t be here, but I just need her right now. I can see her one more time and then I’ll walk away.
Looking down at the table, I watch as a glass of whiskey is placed in front of me. I grab it before someone takes it away and chug the entire thing, slamming the glass back down on the table.
“I’m sorry, I love you,” I slur as I reach my hands out to Lucy, grab onto her hips and pull her onto my lap.
She doesn’t feel the same and she doesn’t smell the same, but none of that matters. Her legs straddle my thighs and I clutch onto her ass, pulling her closer so she doesn’t change her mind and leave me.
“Please don’t go, I’m sorry,” I mumble brokenly as I rest my head on her shoulder.
“I’m not going anywhere, sugar, don’t you worry.”
I don’t like her voice. It’s not the same soft, sweet cadence that always makes my ears tingle and my heart beat fast. It’s probably because my heart died and there’s nothing inside my chest but a shriveled up, useless organ. This voice is shrill and annoying. Lucy is changing right before me, but I don’t care. It’s my fault, anyway. It’s my fault she’s different and doesn’t feel the same or smell the same. I changed her, I hurt her…all my fault.
I lift my head and try to focus on her eyes, but all I see are blurry images and swirling faces.
She rocks her hips against me and my dick is instantly hard for her, just like it always is. I want to be inside of her. It’s the only place where I truly exist and can forget about the things I’ve done.
I feel her tongue trace against my bottom lip and something makes me want to pull away. She doesn’t taste the same and I hate it. I want my Lucy, not this drunken, morphed version of her.
I hear a strangled cry from somewhere in the distance and I turn my head towards the sound. I have no idea what it was or where it came from. Maybe it’s the enemy trying to trick me. They’re probably here right now, just waiting to take me down. I don’t care anymore, they can have me. They can shoot my body full of bullets and it would probably be a relief at this point. It would stop the pounding headache, put an end to the shakes wracking my body and make it all go away. I don’t want to hurt anymo
re, I don’t want to be confused anymore, I don’t want any of it. I want to die from the pain and I want to scream at them to just do it already, just end it. I try to open my mouth to let the screams and the shouts empty out, but I feel Lucy’s tongue against my lips again and I focus on that instead. I turn my head away from whoever is standing next to us and squeeze my eyes open and closed to try and see her. She’s in my lap, in my arms where she belongs, and I never want to let her go. I tell the person standing there to go away because I’m busy with Lucy and they need to leave me the hell alone.
I hear angry shouts and the shuffling of feet and the Lucy on my lap speaks again and it makes me wince. I want to tell her to stop talking like that. Stop talking in a different voice, stop smelling different, stop feeling different…just stop it. Be MY Lucy. I need MY Lucy.
Someone calls me an asshole and I can’t help but laugh. I am an asshole. And a monster and a fuck up and a nightmare all rolled into one piece of shit package and I’m glad they finally noticed, so I tell them that. I’m not a hero, I’m not a good man, I’m not a good husband…I am none of those things and they need to see that.
I need another drink. I push Lucy off of my lap and stumble up from the chair. Her hands wrap around my arms to steady me, but I push her away. I don’t want her to see me like this. She’s not even supposed to be here.
Shoving my way through the crowd of people, I head towards the door and smack my hands against the wood to open it. I step outside and nothing but the hot, dry desert stretches out in front of me. I start walking, knowing I need to make it back to camp. I shouldn’t be out here alone. Why in the fuck am I out here alone? A Marine should always be with his platoon in case the enemy ambushes us. I can feel sweat dripping down my back and my legs start to ache the further I walk through the unforgiving desert sand. I just have to make it back to camp. As long as there aren’t any surprise attacks, I’ll be fine.
A man suddenly appears in front of me and I’m so startled at the sight of someone else out here in the lonely desert with me that I pull my arm back and let my fist fly right into his face.
“DO NOT GET IN MY WAY! I NEED TO GET BACK TO CAMP!”
I start running then, but it’s like trying to run through quicksand. Each time my foot hits the ground it sinks deeper and deeper into the sand until my legs start to burn with the effort of moving. I stop suddenly when I see an IED sitting on the ground right at my feet. I quickly scan the area and, when I don’t see anything or anyone, I snatch it up in my hands and throw it as hard as I can. I hear a crash and the sound of glass breaking. It doesn’t make sense. There isn’t any glass in the desert. The IED should have exploded as soon as I threw it. I don’t care; I did what I was supposed to. I got that damn thing out of the way so the rest of my team won’t happen upon it by mistake. I can’t lose anyone else on my team, I can’t.
It’s a long, tireless walk back to camp and I happen upon quite a few enemies as I go, but I take them all out quickly and efficiently, just like I was taught. I can’t find my gun, but luckily, I’m just as good at hand-to-hand combat as I am with a firearm. I hear myself screaming and shouting as I go, especially when there are so many people suddenly cropping up in the desert with me. They look at me funny, they point and stare and I don’t understand what they’re doing. If they are on my side, they should be helping me, not standing there doing nothing.
I yell at all of them, tell them to get their asses moving. I shout so many obscenities and threats that it has all of them cowering in fear. Good! They should be afraid of me. I’m a motherfucking Marine in the middle of a war.
I turn away from them to keep moving and something as hard as a rock slams into my face. I try to shake away the pain, but it just makes the world around me tilt on its axis. I sway to the side and my feet stumble. I feel myself falling, down, down, down, and right when I think I’m going to hit the ground, arms wrap around me to keep me from crashing. I close my eyes and let the world fade away, saying Lucy’s name over and over, hoping that she hears me.
Chapter 16
Lucy
Present Day
“Stupid, pompous asshole,” I mutter angrily to myself as I stomp along the sidewalk through town.
I don’t even care if people are sitting outside watching me talk to myself. Let them look, let them see the shit that they are constantly talking about behind my back. If they see that I am irritated beyond belief at my ex-husband, maybe they’ll get it through their heads that I don’t want anything to do with him. I cannot believe he had the nerve to bring up the fucking money. He makes me let my guard down by getting me to laugh and then he throws that shit in my face. And really, why in the hell does he have to look so good? He distracted me wearing that damn wet suit, rolled down to his waist with his bare chest hanging out for the whole world to see. I can’t walk around with my shirt off, and it should be illegal for Fisher to do so, as well. Sweet Jesus, that man is hot. He was always in good shape because of the Marines, but I swear to God, he must have done nothing but crunches and drink protein shakes for the last thirteen months. Where he used to be bulky and huge, now he’s lean and cut. His bare chest is nothing short of a miracle and it took everything in me not to lick his abs and the indents at his waist when he sat down next to me. I hate myself for staring at him when he walked over and blocked my sun, but good Lord, I felt like a dying woman in the middle of the desert and he was the only glass of cold water left on earth.
It’s not fair. It is so not fair that he can look so good and piss me off so much at the same time.
I’m so lost in my own irritation, staring at my feet and cursing Fisher as I walk, that I don’t pay attention to what’s in front of me until I slam into someone and stumble backwards. Hands come out to grab my arms and steady me and, when I look up to apologize, I let out an audible sigh.
“Ms. Butler, how nice to see you.”
Jefferson Fisher, Jr., my ex-father-in-law and the bane of my existence for fourteen years, towers over me, smoothing down the front of his navy blue three-piece suit like a brush with me just made him dirty. He looks the same as he always does, and it surprises me that this man never seems to age. As tall as Fisher and just as good looking, but with salt and pepper hair and more creases around his forehead and eyes, Jefferson Fisher, Jr. looks like George Clooney. You know, if George Clooney never smiled and always spoke to you in a condescending manner and gave backhanded compliments out like they were cookies.
“How are you doing, Ms. Butler?”
The way he annunciates my maiden name with a touch of a smirk makes me want to punch him in the mouth, right here on Main Street. The day my divorce from his son was final and I went back to my maiden name was probably the happiest day of his life. God forbid someone like me continue walking around, tainting the Fisher name.
“I’m fine, Mr. Fisher, how about yourself?” I ask politely. Politely only because I’m not about to make a scene in the middle of town and further validate his theory that I’m poor white trash who only latched onto his son for the last name and money.
“Very well, very well,” he replies distractedly, still trying to brush off the imaginary dirt on his suit coat. “I’m actually glad we ran into each other. I’ve been meaning to speak to you about Butler House.”
Pulling the strap of my purser higher on my shoulder, I paste on a fake smile and nod for him to continue. He’s always made it more than clear at town meetings that he thinks the inn is outdated and an eyesore on the island. He’s been wanting to either tear it down completely or sell it off to someone else who can update it and turn it into something more worthy of his vision of Fisher Island. I’ve told him several times that he can shove his opinion up his arrogant ass, nicely of course. It’s not very easy when Fisher’s Bank and Trust holds the mortgage for Butler House Inn. If I have another round of problems at the inn like the ones I had this winter, problems that emptied out my savings account and then some, causing me to fall behind on the mortgage, they are going to s
woop in like a pack of vultures and take it right out of my hands.
“As you know, we’ve had several interested buyers for that property over the years and you’ve never expressed any interest in working with them before. I know you’ve met Stanford Wallis and I’ve heard that you two have been spending time together lately.”
The disapproval is loud and clear in his voice. He almost sounds more irritated that I’m with Stanford than he was when I was with his son, and that just pisses me off for Fisher. His father never appreciated him, never saw the passion behind the choices he made for his life and did nothing but badger him about not following in his footsteps.
“Stanford is a very intelligent young man with a good head for business. I’m quite proud of the work he’s been doing for me lately, and he’s shared with me that he’s been doing some consulting with you on the side. The ideas he has for Butler House and its future on this island are nothing short of amazing. We need to step it up into the next century, give it an update, make it more appealing to the young people who frequent the island looking for the newest trends, the hottest nightspots and the most stylish décor,” he explains.
What he’s saying isn’t news to me. Stanford has been completely open and honest since day one about his desire to buy Butler House from me and turn the place into an elaborate resort, complete with waterpark, nightclub and day spa. He knows how much I adore my family’s inn and how I can’t imagine changing anything about it, so he doesn’t push it. That doesn’t stop him from throwing out ideas now and then and attempting to change my mind, but at least he’s not rude or pushy about it like Mr. Fisher.
“As you are aware, Fisher Bank and Trust holds the mortgage to Butler House and I’ve been reviewing the data Stanford has been compiling regarding your financial situation and putting into a spreadsheet for you. Let’s be honest here, Ms. Butler. The inn is not doing as well as it should. As well as it could. You’re sinking, and you’re sinking fast. You may well have lost the inn to foreclosure had spring weather not come early this year and brought vacationers to the island before summer season. You’re a young woman, and you could potentially make hundreds of thousands of dollars on the sale of this property. It’s in a prime location right by the ferry and it’s the first thing people see when they step off the boat and onto the dock. You could retire at the age of thirty and live a life of relative leisure. The business is struggling and you’re in over your head. I think it’s high time you reconsider the ideas that Stanford has, especially if the two of you are seriously going to make a go at this relationship.”