He moved to block her view of Warren and JoEllen. “It doesn’t matter, Louisa. You’re doing exactly what you’re supposed to be doing in exactly the right place to do it. Of course you struck out on your own—you wanted to do work that mattered.” He paused until he was sure he had her full attention. “And I believe in you. Maybe that can be enough for a while?”
Her lower lip trembled and her eyes filled with tears. She wrapped her arms around him and hugged him tightly. “Thank you.”
He inhaled the smell of sunshine in her hair and vowed to find ways to show her how special she was.
Letter in Louisa’s mailbox the day after the regatta:
Louisa,
Thanks for sailing with me. Turns out we still make a pretty great team. Enclosed is a check for half of what you paid at the Coastie auction. I know you won’t want to take it, but I want to contribute to Jackson’s fundraiser. Let me, okay?
PS—I’m on the way to the station, but I hardly slept last night. Couldn’t stop thinking about that kiss. When can we do it again?
Love,
Cody
Jackson Wirth died on Tuesday night. His parents made the hardest decision of their lives and took him off life support. His body lasted twenty-two minutes on its own, and then the boy was gone.
The funeral was two days later, and Louisa accompanied nearly all of the Coast Guardsmen who were stationed at Brant Point. That night, the whole of Nantucket launched paper lanterns over the ocean in his honor, an idea spearheaded by Louisa Chambers.
And Cody fell even more in love with her.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
OVER THE NEXT TWO WEEKS, Cody spent as much time with Louisa as his schedule would allow. The awkwardness between them had dwindled, and while they’d settled into a rhythm, the air between them was still charged with the newness of their mutual attraction.
He liked that he had the right to reach over and take her hand. He liked being welcomed into her house. He loved that she kissed him good night and that she still seemed shy about it. He might’ve known Louisa his entire life, but it was as if they were becoming reacquainted.
It excited him.
His first year in the Coast Guard, it became pretty clear that his lifestyle didn’t lend itself to a relationship, and frankly, he’d never met anyone who made him want to change that. Until now.
Cody happily helped her prepare for Maggie’s party, awed, as usual, by watching her work. She was so good at her job—how could that jerk ex-boyfriend of hers make her think otherwise?
Perfect strangers hired her—a moonlight picnic on the beach or a personal tour of the island—and it didn’t matter what they wanted her to do; she did it with her whole heart.
It inspired him. Had he ever cared about anyone that completely before? Maybe not until now.
Every single detail of Maggie’s party mattered to Louisa. Food, decorations, party favors, location, guest list—she left nothing out. And while it mattered to her for all the right reasons, Cody feared there was a lot of weight on this party’s success for other reasons too. As if it were the magical cure for healing a past so broken anyone else would’ve deemed it beyond repair.
One evening, when they were supposed to be on their way to dinner, he found her stressing about tablecloths, as if choosing the wrong ones would have tragic results. He gave her hand a tug and pulled her up from the chair behind her desk, where she’d likely been sitting since early that morning. She sighed as she looked at him, and he waited for her to give him her full attention.
“Hey,” he said.
She smiled. “Hey.”
“You’re putting a lot of importance on these tablecloths.”
“I just want everything to be perfect,” she said.
He wrapped his arms around her waist, drawing her body closer to his and inhaling the scent of her. “Perfect is boring.”
She shook her head.
“Lou, I just don’t want you to be disappointed.”
Her body stiffened underneath his fingers, and she inched back. “What do you mean?”
“Nothing, forget it.”
“No, not nothing.” She was fully out of his arms now. He shouldn’t have brought it up. “You still think it’s a bad idea.”
“I think you’ve got the biggest heart of anyone I know,” he said. “And I don’t want to see it broken because our parents are stubborn.” His mom could carry a grudge like a treasure chest. How could he prepare Louisa for that?
She frowned as if she hadn’t considered her plan would go any other way than the way she’d played it out in her head.
“Have you told her about us?” she asked.
He sighed. “Not yet.”
“You think she’ll be upset?”
“Yes,” he said simply. “But she’ll have to deal with it.” He grabbed her arm and gave her a tug toward him. “Because this is what I want.” He leaned in and kissed her, softly at first because she seemed preoccupied, but after a beat, she finally kissed him back as if she didn’t have a care in the world. And that was a beautiful thing.
He liked it better this way, in their little bubble where everything was new and exciting. As it was, that meant a lot of kissing—on the beach after a picnic packed with Bartlett’s Farm sandwiches, on her couch while ignoring the movie they were supposed to be watching, even on Seaside’s back deck, which had started to feel less like his old house and more like their special place. He would’ve invited her to his place, but it wasn’t presentable. And he didn’t want to waste time he could be spending with her to make it so. And he still had only one chair.
He loved that he was still discovering things about her. Like the fact that she regularly sang the wrong lyrics to well-known songs. And she talked to herself when she cooked. And she couldn’t drive by a yard sale without stopping to at least see if there was anything worth buying.
He wouldn’t deny his feelings for her—he couldn’t. She made him want to get up in the morning and be a better person. He loved her. He’d almost told her twice now, but it felt too soon—too vulnerable. Once he said it, he couldn’t take it back.
Last night after she met him at the station, they went for a walk, which led them to the memorial on the beach. It was surreal, standing there with her. His mind easily wandered back to the last time they were in that exact spot, twelve years ago. Somehow, as she reached down and took his hand, some of the pain of that night slipped silently away.
She leaned into him, and he felt the warmth from her body, noticed the way it filled him up, and he wondered if her love for him would be enough to calm the angry demons that still haunted him at times.
“Still no idea who put this here?” Her question was quiet, as if she didn’t want to remind him. But he didn’t need the reminder. He routinely spent sleepless nights trying to figure it out—a mystery worth solving.
What difference did it make, really? So someone wanted to remember his dad. That was great—he should be thankful. But the not knowing nagged him. He kept replaying the seemingly disconnected details he did know, rolling them over in his mind along with Ted’s comments about Warren and his affinity for high-stakes poker. None of it seemed to fit together.