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Laura frowned, looking worried. “How often do hurricanes hit?”
“Not often. But sometimes. We had a big one about ten years ago. Lots of flooding, a bit of damage. The Rusted Anchor survived, but some of the shops on the strip here had to be rebuilt.”
Laura held Mark’s hand a little tighter as a family with four kids surged past them, all wearing neon-colored baseball caps and shirts advertising other Caribbean islands.
“Anyone hurt?” she asked.
“No, thank goodness. And the tourists came back right away, so that was good. The winds blew pretty fierce then.”
“You stayed?” Laura asked, amazed. “Why didn’t you leave? Did you not have warning?”
“No, we did.” Mark remembered that time. It had been rough for those who chose to stay on the island. Many evacuated under orders by local police, but Mark had stayed. He’d boarded up his windows and he’d waited it out. He had just gotten Tanner Boating off the ground then, and he’d be damned if he’d let the winds rip apart his boats while he was safely snuggled somewhere in Florida.
“I had just started Tanner Boating. I wasn’t married then, so why not?”
“You could’ve been killed.” She sounded so concerned. He kind of liked that.
“I wasn’t.” He pulled Laura close, putting his arm around her shoulders. “I’m hard to kill,” he joked, and then instantly felt an inward cringe as he remembered trying to walk into the ocean just weeks ago. Too hard to kill, probably. He couldn’t even manage to do it himself.
He shook off the morbid thoughts, and that’s when he realized that since he’d been with Laura, he hadn’t really thought of killing himself or of sailing off to sea and never coming back. He knew on some level that was a fantasy. He doubted he could actually pull it off. Like the last time he tried and his body took over. He knew it was just his way of not thinking about the future without Timothy.
But the romanticism of leaving this world, of returning to Timothy beneath the waves, had faded to the back of his mind. When had that happened? he wondered. Instead, he found himself just looking forward to seeing Laura every day, with her beautiful smile and bright green eyes.
“You’ve changed my life for the better,” he told her, pulling her close. “You might have even saved…my life.”
“Saved your life!” she cried. “I doubt that.”
How little she knew.
“Laura,” he said, stopping her in the street, crowds of tourists streaming by them. He wanted badly to tell her how much she’d grown to mean to him in such a short time, how she had changed him irrevocably.
“Yes?”
“I…”
Her eyes looked so hopeful then. Was he going to tell her he loved her? Did he? How could he love her? They’d only just met. And he still planned to sail around the world or die in the attempt, didn’t he? Had his feelings about that really changed so much? Would it be fair to her to declare his love and then leave her?
“I am grateful for you. More grateful than you’ll ever know,” he managed, and even though the sentiment was real, the fact that he didn’t say I love you made him feel like he’d chickened out.
She smiled. “Aw, well, I’m grateful for you, too. You’ve really helped me see my problems differently, and made this…time-out I gave myself well worth it.”
“It is worth it,” Mark said. “I would’ve never met you if you hadn’t given yourself a time-out.”
Laura slipped her hand in his and they continued walking down the street. All the while, Mark wished he’d said more but was afraid to. Afraid of what it would mean if he actually said I love you out loud. He wondered if she felt the same or if, like she’d said, men fall in love sooner. Harder.
She glanced up at him and he smiled down at her, giving her hand a little squeeze. For now, they had the race to focus on. He could worry about his feelings—and hers—later.
The sky really opened up just as they got to the end of the storefronts and to his truck parked on the street. They ran the last few steps and Laura hopped in the cab as the rain started to flow.
“Wow, that came fast,” she said, shaking raindrops from her hair as Mark slid into the cab and turned the ignition.
“Better get used to it,” he said. “Hurricane season brings the rainy season, too. And with climate change…well, it seems that the season starts earlier and the storms are worse. Bigger. We’ll have lots more of this, maybe even more than sunshine.”
“Great. What about race day?”
“It’s been clear almost 70 percent of the time somehow. The organizers keep threatening to change the date, but so far, nobody wants to mess with tradition.” Mark steered the truck down the lane and onto the narrow two-lane highway, the rain pelting down now. He squinted through the window as his headlights barely made a dent in the sudden downpour. His windshield wipers batted back and forth urgently but hardly made a dent.
