Hook, Line, and Sinker (Bellinger Sisters)

“Oh, you trust me now? You trust me to captain the boat, but not with Hannah. Right?” His bitter laughter burned a path up his chest. “I’m all good to take the lives of five people in my hands. But I better keep my filthy hands off your future sister-in-law. I’ll break her heart. I’ll go behind her back. Which is it, Brendan? Do you trust me or not? Or is your trust just selective?”

Until Fox asked the question out loud, his voice absorbed by the mist around them, he didn’t realize how heavy the weight of that worry, that distinction had been. Just perched on his shoulders like twin stacks of bibles.

For once, Brendan seemed at a total loss, some of the color leaving his face. “I don’t . . . I never would have thought of it that way. I didn’t realize how much it bothered you. The whole Hannah thing.”

“The whole Hannah thing.” He snorted. What a paltry description for being so in love with her, he didn’t know what to do with himself. “Yeah, well. Maybe if you paid a little closer attention, you’d realize I haven’t been to Seattle since last summer. There’s been no one else. There will never be anyone else.” He pointed back at his apartment. “I’ve been sitting there for months, thinking about her, buying records, and texting her like a lovesick asshole.”

He closed his fist around the keys until they dug into his palm.

Was this what it would be like if he was with Hannah?

Constantly trying to convince everyone he wasn’t the careless tramp he’d once been? Even the people who were supposed to love him—Brendan, Kirk and Melinda, his own mother—had looked at him and seen a character beyond repair.

Hannah has faith in you. Hannah believes in you.

Fox was caught off guard by the hesitant vote of confidence that came from within, but it made him think maybe . . . just maybe there was a chance he wasn’t a lost cause.

Still, he allowed the thought to germinate. To grow.

If he could be a worthwhile friend to Hannah, if he could make that tremendous girl stick around and value him, his opinion and company, maybe he could do this, too. Be a leader. Captain a boat. Inspire the respect and consideration of the crew. After all, he had changed. He’d changed for the girl who was lying drowsy in his bed. In the beginning, she’d made some of the same assumptions about him that other people did. But he’d shifted her opinion, hadn’t he?

Could he do it with the crew? Could he be the more that Hannah deserved?

He’d never know unless he tried.

And when he thought of Hannah in the recording studio the day before, bravely voicing her opinion—taking chances and succeeding—he found the courage to reach down and tap into an undiscovered reserve of strength. Strength he’d gotten from her.

Fox forced a patient smile onto his face, even though his insides had the consistency of jelly. “All right, Cap. You win. I guess . . . I’ve got the wheel on this trip.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

Hannah stood outside Opal’s apartment, waiting for her grandmother to reach the door. The last time she was here, just over a week ago, she’d been filled with dread over going inside. Talking about her father. Feeling totally disconnected from Opal and Piper in the process. Now, though, her shoulders were firm instead of slumped. She didn’t feel like an imposter or like she was faking it until she made it. She belonged here.

She was Opal’s granddaughter.

Finally the main character of her own life.

Youngest daughter of Henry Cross.

They’d come to an understanding through his music. Once, a long time ago, he’d loved her. He’d held her in his arms in a hospital room, taught her how to toddle, and gotten up with her in the middle of the night. He’d gone off to sea thinking he would see her again. And Hannah liked to think, maybe in a way that only she could understand, they’d had a nice, long visit through his songs, given each other a sense of closure. It was quite possible she’d even been given some fatherly advice in a roundabout way, because she’d woken up on Monday morning, the final day of shooting, with an idea. A place to go from here.

A place that would mean continuing to work in music . . . and be near Fox.

If that’s what he wanted.

A knot that had grown familiar over the last five days grew taut in her belly, agitating the coffee she’d drunk this morning. If she went back to LA as originally planned, it would be with a heart broken beyond repair. Being without Fox since he’d left only cemented that belief. She missed him so much she ached with it. Missed the way he frowned and parted his lips slightly when she talked, like he was concentrating hard on what she was saying. She missed the way he tucked both hands under his armpits in the cold. Missed his devilish laugh, the stroke of his palm down her hair, the halting way he spoke when he was about to drop some honesty.