The Fall We Fell: A Small Town Friends-to-Lovers Romance (Ocean Pines Series Book 1)

by Victoria Denault

  “Yeah. He’ll be here for the party actually,” I say and shutdown my computer, giving up on doing the schedule today. I scribble a note on a post-it and stick it to the corner of the screen with the other To-Do reminders I have stuck there.

  “Has he been tested yet?” Nova asks, her tone judgy. I’m running out of excuses to call her on it.

  “He was supposed to go this week now that he’s got the clear from his insurance company and his college faculty,” I reply and keep my eyes focused on my desk, absently tidying up the papers strewn there instead of meeting her eye. She is less than impressed that Tom’s first thought about becoming a living kidney donor was how that worked for insurance purposes rather than how it would be giving me my life back. “I’ll find out how it went tonight when he gets in.”

  “Cool,” Nova says lightly. She opens the door as I grab my purse and make my way around my desk. “See you and Tom tonight.”

  I nod and blow her an air kiss. “Hasta luego, hermana.”

  “Ugh. Your Spanish is horrible,” Nova moans. “Es doloroso para mis oídos.”

  “That’s because I took French in high school,” I remind her.

  “I’ve been your sister-in-law for four years and worked here for four before that, you’d think you’d pick something up by now,” Nova complains as we walk through the kitchen. I cut right while she cuts left to head into the restaurant again. “Leaving through the back door? Chicken!”

  “Pollo!” I yell back and grin. “See you are rubbing off on me.”

  I’m making my way through our small parking lot, the building and the ocean and dock beyond at my back when I hear him call my name. “Terra!”

  I pretend I don’t hear but then he yells. “Tink!”

  I stop and turn around because I am helpless against that nickname. It takes my eyes a minute to find him, but when they land on him my heart skips. On the right side of Hawkins Lobster Shack is a flight of stairs that lead to the two bedroom apartment above the restaurant where Finn lives. Jake is on the tiny landing in bare feet, a wetsuit covering him up to the waist, but rest of it hangs off his body leaving his upper body completely exposed. And what an upper body it is. Muscle ripples his stomach. His broad chest is well-developed and bronzed because clearly he hasn’t spent this glorious Maine summer at the dialysis center in Casco Bay Memorial Hospital.

  “Wanna come surfing with us?”

  “No. I’ve got plans.”

  He smirks at that. Oh lord how I’ve missed that smirk. It’s easy, lazy, and somehow just a little bit sweet. “You used to love to surf with us, Tink.”

  “Been three years, Jake. Things change,” I say, and it’s true but I actually am too tired and rundown lately to get my butt out on my board. “But I’ve gotta get ready for tonight. I don’t know if you’ve heard but there’s an award-winning firefighter who just moved back to town.”

  “You mean that scrawny foster kid who failed outta high school, got his GED and stumbled his way through the fire academy?” Still same old Jake. He’ll never forget where he’s from, so he’s not going to let you do it.

  “Like I said, things change.” I smile. He smiles back. Everything inside me warms like it’s been laying out on the sandy beach in a cloudless July sky.

  “Tonight then, Tink,” he points to me with a perfectly sculpted arm. “I wanna hang out and catch up.”

  I wave and get in my truck. Boy, that’s going to be a fun conversation. Hey Jake. Yeah I’m good. Managing the restaurant now and met this guy who’s nice and cute. I got my degree in social work and I almost finished my second degree in addiction therapy but had to take my last semester off when my kidneys dropped dead. I’m shopping for a new one. Turns out they aren’t one-size-fits-all so it’s taking a while, but yeah, I’m good. How about you?

  Yeah, can’t wait for that.

  2

  Jake

  It’s not good to be home. It’s great. The second the posting came up for a Lieutenant position at Ocean Pines Fire Station, I wanted it. Because I wanted a second chance to prove to everyone in this town I’d turned out better than they’d expected. Because I missed my friends. Because even though there were a lot of bad memories, there were some good ones too and like it or not, this tiny coastal town was home. And because… she was here.

  I had the qualifications and experience, but I applied without telling anyone. I was still in contact with Finn and Logan. We text each other all the time and video chat, and they both came up to King’s Rock a couple times a year to visit. In summer for the fishing and in winter for the skiing. But I hadn’t gone back to Ocean Pines once. Finn and Logan kept telling me how much I was missed, how the regulars at the restaurant asked about me. How their parents, Charlie and Lucy Hawkins, kept telling them to invite me back for Thanksgiving or Christmas or Easter or anything. But I just couldn’t bring myself to go back to visit. I hadn’t accomplished enough yet. I wanted to go back knowing that I was a better, different person. The town couldn’t see me as more than a foster fuck-up that depended on the Hawkins family for survival if I didn’t feel like I was more than that. It took three years, a promotion and a medal of valor, but I was finally ready.

  Ocean Pines was a seven hour drive from King’s Rock and a lot of the road was through some pretty hairy mountain passes. I wouldn’t recommend traveling them at night to my worst enemy. That meant I’d have to spend the night. Instead of staying with Finn, or anyone else, I booked a motel room outside of Ocean Pines. There was a chance I wouldn’t get the position and I didn’t want anyone to know about this if I failed to get it. Especially Terra. The next time I saw her I wanted to be confident and sure. The interview was in downtown Portland, at the Southern Maine Emergency Management office. Since there were applicants from all over the State, the decision was made by a board of battalion chiefs, so I didn’t have to set foot in Ocean Pines. But I did. And I shouldn’t have.

  It was after four when I got out of the interview and after checking into the hotel and changing out of my dress uniform, and into some jeans and a Henley, I threw on my leather jacket and drove to Hawkins Lobster Shack. The interview had gone well. Really well. The battalion chief for Ocean Pines stopped me afterward in the hallway and told me that the captain of Ocean Pines, D’Amato, remembered me from when I was a proby there and was adamant he wanted me back. So I felt like I had it in the bag and suddenly, all I wanted to do was see my unofficial adopted family, the Hawkins. Especially Terra.

  I had this overwhelming sudden need for her to know how accomplished I’d become. How worthy I was now of the attention and affection. I wanted to know if the cold indifference she’d shot my way since she was fourteen had thawed a little. And if it hadn’t, well for the first time in my life, I wanted to try and change that.

  I had no idea if Terra would be working but I would find her if she wasn’t. Lucy and Charlie would gladly tell me where she was. I didn’t exactly know where I would begin with her, but I wanted to begin… I mean, at least a friendship, which we’d lost. And hopefully a lot more.

  I pulled into that parking lot full of nervous energy and naive hope. But before I could even get out of the car, it was all gone. As I sat there, parked at the back of the lot, Terra walked out of the restaurant holding hands with a blond guy. He was well dressed, well built, and smiling at her with an ease and intimacy I could feel. And that hurt. He opened the door for her on a Range Rover and carefully helped her in even though she didn’t need it. Terra was tiny but she had always been able, even with her illness. Still I saw her pretty little mouth form the words ‘thank you’. If I’d tried to help her into a car like that, she’d swat at me in ire.

  And then they kissed. Just a lingering peck on the lips, but it was enough for my bubble of excitement to pop. I sunk lower in my seat and averted my eyes until they drove away. And then I drove back to my rundown motel and marched my ass over to the dingy little bar in the strip mall across the street and berated myself over four Moscow mules. What the hell
did I expect? That she’d be single for the rest of her life? That every guy she liked would be as stupid and as easily intimated by her over-protective brothers as I had been as a teen?

  Nah, this was what I deserved. I’d lost the girl because I was not good enough or smart enough. This guy wore expensive clothes and drove a Range Rover. Probably a doctor or a lawyer or some fancy shit. Terra didn’t give a rat’s ass about that kind of classism—and deep down I knew it—but I did. I never felt good enough, not even for the working-class Hawkins family.

  “Hello..?” Finn waves a hand in front of my face. I glance up and see him staring down at me, the beer bottle in his other hand half empty. “You need to do less day dreaming and more drinking. Logan will be home any minute and I don’t drink in the house when he’s home.”

  “He’s still on the wagon?” I ask, concerned that something has happened no one told me about. It wouldn’t be the first time. Just before I transferred to King’s Rock Logan was shipped off to a rehab in Florida before anyone even told me he had a drinking problem. He was my best friend as much as Finn was and I considered them my family, but they hadn’t included me in this huge family moment so I became acutely aware the feeling wasn’t mutual.

  “Oh yeah, straight and narrow,” Finn nods brings his beer bottle to his lips and tips it back to finish it and then continues. “He’s so straight and narrow you would swear there was a stick up his ass. The perma-scowl completes the look.”

  I swallow down a big gulp of my own beer, almost finishing it off. “So same as your last visit to King’s Rock. Since your face doesn’t know any other expression except goofy grin, it actually makes it easier to tell you two apart.”

  Finn lets out an incredibly fake laugh and flips me his middle finger. I grin back and finish my beer. He swipes the bottle from my hand and carries them into the small kitchen, shoving them deep into the recycling bin. This apartment above the restaurant is all too familiar because I called it home from age sixteen until twenty-three.

  “All joking aside, he’s been a model son, part-time fisherman, full-time paramedic, brother and father. But yet, that last role he still doesn’t get to do on a full-time basis.”

  “Bethany still not into shared custody?” I ask about Logan’s ex and the mother of his four year old son, River.

  “Nope. Ma finally convinced Logan to get the courts involved. There’s been a hearing and a social worker got assigned to assess the situation. He’s worked out a non-negotiable schedule where Logan picks up River after pre-school two days a week and gets him one day a weekend. It all fluctuates based on his work schedule. Still no overnights, but after the social worker gets a better look at everything I’m sure that’ll change.”

  I think of River. He was fifteen months old when I moved to King’s Rock. He wouldn’t remember me. Finn scrubs at the short beard on his face. And then motions for me to stand. “Get up. If we don’t get downstairs soon, Ma is going to come up here and drag us down. You are, after all, the belle of the ball.”

  I roll my eyes. “Please don’t say this is a big thing. I’m not ready for a big thing. I just want to hang with Hawkins and Hawkins-adjacent crew.”

  “That’s who we invited,” Finn says as we leave the apartment. He doesn’t bother to lock the door, just swings it shut and starts down the stairs. I follow. “But you know Ocean Pines. Word gets out. People want to see the new and improved Jake Maverick.”

  “I’m not improved,” I reply and grin. “Because you simply can’t improve on perfection.”

  “Someone got cocky living in the middle of nowhere, huh?” Finn chirps, his blue eyes twinkling. “FYI hot shot, there’s some real competition for attention—and women—in Ocean Pines. Not like King’s Rock where your only competition for the six available women were mountain men who don’t shower and geriatric fisherman.”

  “There were only four single women near my age and I never hooked up with any of them,” I clarify and Finn stops so abruptly I bang into him.

  “Wait… so you never had sex in King’s Rock? For three whole years?” He looks like he might faint. I laugh.

  “I did, just not there,” I pause. Should I tell him? I know I can trust him. “I came back down south for my interview for this position and… I got some then.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me when you were in town?”

  “I hadn’t even told you guys I was applying for the job yet,” I explain with a shrug. “I didn’t want to jinx it I guess.”

  “So instead you snuck into town and had sex with a stranger,” Finn grins. “I would have picked that over hanging out with me too, I guess.”

  “Not a stranger. Aspen.”

  His jaw slowly descends, leaving his mouth wide open in shock. “What. The. Fuck.”

  “I know. I just happened to run into her and we were both just… desperate, I guess,” I think about that night with my ex. It was truly just two people who needed a fix. “It was fun, but not anything more than that. We’re on the same page.”

  “If you say so,” Finn says clearly not believing me. “Ex sex has a way of biting you in the ass, my friend.”

  “Not this. I mean it was over two months ago and knowing Aspen, she doesn’t even remember,” I say.

  “So you’re that good in bed, huh?” Finn jokes, and I flip him off this time.

  We round the corner of the restaurant to the front door. “I take it you’re still single.”

  “Happily,” Finn replies. Unless there’s something I don’t know about that occurred in the last three years, Finn Hawkins has never had a long-term girlfriend. He has semi-long-term arrangements, with willing bed buddies, but that’s about it.

  “Logan?” I question.

  “No one since Bethany,” Finn replies. “For a while there I thought Declan would be the only Hawkins to give wedded bliss a shot, but Terra—”

  “She’s married?” I blurt out because the idea is so upsetting I lose it for a second.

  Finn stops, his hand on the door to the restaurant and looks back at me like I’m insane. “Oh fuck no. But she’s finally dating someone. Seriously. Although it’s long distance. He works and lives in Portsmouth New Hampshire so they don’t see each other more than a couple times a month.”

  “Oh. Cool.” So not cool. “How long has that been going on?”

  “Six or seven months,” Finn shrugs. “Dude is nice. She seems happy. I mean, she’s Terra so you know, it’s hard to tell. Girl likes to keep her emotions locked up in a vault somewhere in that head of hers.”

  I’ve never agreed with that assessment of Terra. Her whole family sees her that way but I know if you look close enough, every feeling that girl has is visible. I guess the guy I saw her kiss is this Portsmouth guy Finn is talking about. I was really hoping that he’d have gone away by now.

  “How’s she been feeling? You know, health-wise?” I ask as we walk into the restaurant. I can’t help but notice the hand written note on the glass door that says ‘closed for private party’. “They closed for me?”

  “Hell yeah they did,” Finn replies. He doesn’t answer my other question about Terra and I’m about to repeat it, but his dad cuts me off.

  “Finally!” Charlie Hawkins’s voice booms through the restaurant as we cross the threshold. “I thought maybe you’d come to your senses, turned back around and got the hell outta this water-logged crackerjack box of a town.”

  “You’re not fooling anyone, Charlie,” I say with a smile as I walk into the restaurant that has only Hawkins and Hawkins-adjacent bodies in it, like Javi, Nova’s brother, and staff members I remember from working here. “I know you love it here in OP and would never live anywhere else.”

  “But I’m batshit crazy,” Charlie counters.

  “We don’t use that word, Dad,” Terra reprimands, and my gaze floats across the room until I find her. And when I do, I wish I didn’t. She’s sitting at table near the center of the room next to the dude I saw months ago, her boyfriend. His hand is casually slun
g across the back of her chair. “Making jokes with the word crazy perpetuates stigma, and that can make it more difficult for people to seek treatment.”

  “Right,” Charlie clears his throat. “Sorry, what I meant was I’m looney tunes.”

  “Not better Dad!” Terra’s tone is no longer light.

  Charlie grins. He’s purposely pushing Terra’s buttons, like the ornery old New England fisherman he is.

  “Jesus Terra, can you put the PC police work on hold for a night? I’m the one who spent time in a psych ward, and I’m cool with it,” Declan calls out.

  Boof. Lucy Hawkins has managed to rock up high enough on her tip toes to gently whack her eldest son’s head. Quite the feat considering she’s five-one and Declan is six-one. “Do not take the Lord’s name in vain in my house, Declan Eammon Hawkins.”

  Declan rubs the back of his head, scowling, and I chuckle. “Some things never change.”

  My eyes find Terra and she’s smiling right back at me and mouths the words, “I told you so.”

  My heart beats faster. Then the door opens behind me and Logan walks in with River on his hip. Oh my God, he’s so big. His hair is darkening a little to a golden color from the bleached wheat color it was when he was one, and of course there’s much more of it. He’s looking more and more like Logan—and Finn if you want to get technical. “Do you remember your Uncle Jake? He gave you your Ewok stuffie.”

  River stares at me, little pudgy face scrunched up as he really gives it his all trying to remember me. I smile and wave and although I don’t think he remembers, he announces. “Tank woo unkie Jake.”

  “My pleasure,” I say as Logan puts him down and he toddles straight over to his granny Lucy. More people start walking into the restaurant behind them.

  “The guys from the station found out there was a little welcome back thing here for ya and wanted to tag along,” Logan explains.