Page 3 of Nights at Seaside
“She’smooningagain,” Jenna teased. “Blue, take that away from her. She’ll never meet a guy if she’smooning.” Jenna always teased her aboutmooningover C. J. Moon’s poems.
Blue leaned closer to Sky. “You seem a little out of sorts. Is it the renovations? They shouldn’t take much longer.”
Sky was renting a cottage from Amy down at the Seaside community, where Bella, Jenna, and Amy all lived. Blue had found a leak in the apartment pipes a few weeks ago, and it seemed easier for her to rent there rather than be in his way on a daily basis. She loved staying at Seaside, and she loved Blue for caring enough to ask.
“You really are a great friend, Blue. It’s not that. You’re doing a great job. I don’t know what it is.”
Sky dropped her eyes to the book and began to read her favorite poem.
A moment later, a deep, impassioned voice filled the room, bringing Sky’s eyes up to the man it had come from. Sawyer sat on the stool, eyes closed, strumming his guitar and singing with an intensity that sent a shiver of seduction rippling through the room. Sky watched his fingers move confidently over the strings. His brows knitted together on the longer notes, he bowed his head as the words turned sad, and the muscles in his neck grew thicker. Passion poured out of him with every verse.
“What song is this?” Sky asked, the lyrics settling into her bones like a lonely ache.Darkness isn’t enough. Miles are too close. Nothing can erase you, wipe you clean, take away the pain you’re leaving behind.
“No idea,” Blue answered.
“Never heard it before.” Hunter’s eyes were locked on a blonde across the room.
Sky shifted her gaze back to Sawyer. His voice was getting softer as he came to the end of the song, and it drew her in deeper with every second he held that note.
THE LAST NOTE lingered in Sawyer’s lungs, weighing heavily on his heart and in his mind. He didn’t want to stop strumming his guitar or open his eyes. He needed this release—to live in the center of this dusky bar, surrounded by people who didn’t know him and who didn’t know what had led him there. But when he’d sung his last note, he had no choice but to end the song and open his eyes to a loud round of applause. Still thinking of the meaning behind the words, he looked past the tables to the window across the front of the restaurant, which looked out over Commercial Street. People walked by outside, oblivious to the storm brewing inside him, like everyone else in this place.
He’d found himself looking for answers—more so in recent months as his father’s illness progressed. And in that moment, as the crowd clapped, he conjured up the image of his father’s face from his childhood, before the remnants of the war had claimed him. His lips curved up at the memory of his father’s bright eyes smiling upon him—that was the part he still couldn’t accept. He’d never again see his father smile. Parkinson’s had stolen so much of his father’s abilities to be the man he once was, it seemed unreal to Sawyer. Even though the illness had taken root several years earlier, the loss of those pieces of his father that he’d taken for granted for so long still haunted Sawyer on a daily basis. And now, looking at his father was like looking into a mirror of what his future might hold. Sawyer was running from that truth, trying to dodge it like a bullet, because it wasn’t Agent Orange that might steal Sawyer’s cognition like a thief in the night. Sawyer’s fate wasn’t being driven by the country he served. Sawyer’s nemesis was the one thing that he’d lived and breathed since he was thirteen years old. It was his chosen career.
Sawyer had boxed competitively since he was eighteen. He was a formidable competitor, a monster in the ring, and boxing was the perfect outlet for his anger toward the disease that was stealing more of the man he loved each and every day. Boxing had not only been his emotional savior on too many occasions to count, but now it was going to be his parents’ financial savior as well. Sawyer was challenging the current Northeast Boxing Association champion for the title, and the match carried a seven-hundred-thousand-dollar purse—enough money to pay for in-home health care for his father for the next thirty years. That goal kept Sawyer training harder than ever before and had him even more fiercely determined to win.
After a grueling training session for his upcoming title fight, he’d gone to see Dr. Malen, his physician, for his quarterly checkup. Stupid doctors. They were always covering their butts, warning about worst-case scenarios.Brains weren’t meant to take beatings, the doc had told him. He’d painted the grimmest picture—one or two more blows and Sawyer could sustain permanent brain damage. Sure, he’d had a few concussions, but didn’t every fighter? They’d been giving him the same warning since he was a teenager, and he knew from his boxing buddies that they’d all received similar warnings, too. But this time the doc told him something that he’d never said before—Think about it. This is your future. You’ve only got one.
How could one sentence pack more power than an uppercut to the jaw?
Even if the doc was right, how was he supposed to decide between ensuring his father’s financial future and well-being and his own?
As the applause died down, Sawyer pushed those agonizing thoughts aside. He was invincible. Too good of a fighter to end up with a head injury. He looked out at the crowd and held up a hand in gratitude as he rose to his feet. His eyes shifted to the dark-haired beauty sitting off to his left. He’d seen her looking at him from across the room earlier, and now her eyes were on him again even though the guy beside her had his arm around her. Sawyer disliked people who disrespected those who cared for them and to do it in plain sight rubbed him the wrong way. But something in the way she was looking at him made it impossible for him to look away.
The exotic-looking woman with olive skin and long, windblown dark hair intrigued him. So much so that words sailed through his mind—languid, peaceful, wounded. Words were as much an outlet for Sawyer as boxing was. He poured his emotions into songs, scribbling them on whatever he could get his hands on when the feeling hit. And now, as he drank in her mismatched necklaces, the wordenchantingsounded in his mind. She had the look and presence of someone who was comfortable in her own skin, and that was something Sawyer had always been attracted to. In the space of a breath, he took in her almond-shaped eyes, the slight uptilt to her nose, and the sweet bow of her lips. He’d been watching her for only a few seconds, though it felt like several minutes had passed, and her eyes were now focused on a book, making him even more curious. Who read a book at open mic night?
Sawyer felt his muse pulling, taunting, vying for his attention, and the songwriter in him began putting a song about the woman together in his mind.
He’d come to the bar tonight because life was pressing in on him and he’d desperately needed to get out of his own head. The song he’d just played had practically exploded from his fingertips earlier in the evening, and the longer he’d played it in his house on the dunes, the worse the ache that had accompanied it had become. He’d moved outside, but even the sounds of the bay, which usually soothed the chaos in his mind, were no match for the doctor’s warning and the other pressures whirling around inside him.
Being out tonight should have calmed his thoughts, but now his mind was racing again. Only this time, bits and pieces of the beautiful woman’s fictional life were tumbling into verses hehadto write.
He picked up his guitar and headed to the bar as the host announced the next act. Sawyer pulled a pen from his shirt pocket, grabbed a stack of napkins, and climbed atop a barstool to let the words flow.
Chapter Two
SKY CONCENTRATED ON tattooing the Gothic font that the girl lying on her table had chosen for the line she’d found scribbled on a piece of paper andhadto have etched into her skin.In your eyes I found myself.Sky had done all sorts of tattoos over the last few years, and some of the most beautiful were the lines of text that people found lying around Provincetown, like this one. Obviously someone hadn’t been careful with their poetry to continually leave pieces all over town. Customers came in with poetic lines written on napkins, crumpled receipts, and one girl even had a picture of something written in the sand. Of all the tattoos Sky had done, it was the sayings that touched her the deepest.
She thought about the song Sawyer Bass had sung last night, of the passion in his voice. Each word sounded as if it had been drawn straight from the blood in his veins.Darkness isn’t enough. Miles are too close. Nothing can erase you, wipe you clean, take away the pain you left behind.The way he’d closed his eyes during the entire song made her wonder if he was hoping the words would wipe his memories clean or bring back whomever he was singing about. A woman, she imagined.
She’d watched his eyes before he’d left the stage. He didn’t look to see who was watching him or try to catch the eyes of the prettiest girls. For a brief moment he’d looked as if he wasn’t seeing anything at all. And then his eyes had shifted to her, and she’d quickly averted her gaze back to her poetry book. She wondered what he’d seen when he’d looked at her. Sky was a free spirit, and she’d learned over the years to love herself for who she was, rather than comparing herself to others. She rarely gave too much importance to what people thought about her, but something about his voice, his eyes, and the song he’d sung had spoken to her, and she wondered…Did he see what she felt? That the girl who used to be happy to go to open mic night and sing and dance with anyone who asked had taken some strange turn over the last year, seeking something more? Or did he see the girl she’d been? Or someone different altogether? She’d changed so much over the last few months—finally spreading her wings, moving out from her brothers’ houses, where she was living to save money while she ran her father’s shop, and finally buying her own shop. She’d also noticed other changes in herself, like a feeling of restlessness. Loneliness? She didn’t think so, but maybe. Seeing her best friends fall in love, get married, and now start their families had definitely affected her.
How could someone with so many friends be lonely?
She let that thought fall away to focus on the tattoo again, taking comfort in the hum of the tattoo gun and the beauty of each line she created. When she finished, she cleaned up the customer’s newly inked area and helped the raven-haired girl off the table.
“I think I saw you the other night. Do you work at the Governor Bradford’s?”
“Yeah, nights. Did I wait on you? I usually remember my customers, but I don’t remember you.”
