The Captain's Second Chance

by Elana Johnson

  “There’s a whole town that does a huge carnival with the apple blossoms,” she told him when he insisted they wait until the trees were in full bloom. “We should go.”

  “You said it was five hours away,” he said without looking up from the paperwork he’d brought home with him that night. “I’m not driving five hours for what I can see here in a couple of weeks.”

  “It’s not until the end of the month anyway,” Brooklynn said, going over to the kitchen table where he worked. “What are you doing? Can we go get a treat?”

  He pulled a folder over the papers and got up from the table. “I thought you were going to make us something.”

  “The prelims for the bake-off are tonight,” she said. “Let’s go taste with the judges.”

  “Can we do that?”

  “Of course,” she said, grabbing her purse. “We organized this thing. We can taste a few cookies.” She grinned at him, glad it didn’t get dark quite so early anymore. She’d been working on building her self-confidence when it came to Dave, and she liked that she could get him to do what she wanted, when he just wanted to stay home.

  He drove them over to the community center, where past the front desk and down the hall, she knew right where the bake-off entries had been dropped off by five o’clock. The entrants had the opportunity to bring in their proposed entries two weeks before the event in order to get feedback on their creations.

  It wasn’t required, which was how Brooklynn knew they could have as many treats as they wanted.

  “Holy brown cows,” Dave said when they stepped into the room. “Look at all of this.”

  “Hello, Roberta,” Brooklynn said as she strode over to the only judge in the room. “How’s it going?”

  “Good,” Roberta said. “I’m almost done, and the other four have already finished.”

  “So this is all free?” Brooklynn asked.

  “Help yourself,” Roberta said, consulting her clipboard and reaching for a piece of dark bread.

  They’d chosen coffee as the focus ingredient for this year, and she couldn’t wait to taste the chocolate and coffee pairings. She picked up a cookie that had a dark batter, as well as three different kinds of chocolate chips, and bit into it.

  “Oh, this has butterscotch,” she said, the tanginess of it exploding across her tongue. “I was not expecting that.” But it was delicious, and she ate the whole thing.

  “You have to try this,” Dave said a few paces away from her. “It’s so good.” He lifted another spoonful of what looked like tiramisu to his mouth. He nodded and pointed with his spoon to the dish. “Mm.”

  Brooklynn laughed at him and joined him to try the tiramisu. The pudding was smooth and the coffee and chocolate tasted divine with the cookies. “Mm,” she said, moaning. “This is going to win.”

  “It’s fantastic,” Dave said, stepping down to a cheesecake. “This looks promising too.”

  They spent the next several minutes sampling items and saying if they were tasty or not. Brooklynn liked everything she put in her mouth, but nothing quite as well as the caramel macchiato ice cream. Even melted, it was delicious.

  “But it won’t win,” she said.

  “Why not?” Dave asked, tucking his hand in hers. “And are we going home now?”

  “Because it’s a bake-off,” she said. “And even if they had to cook something for that ice cream, they didn’t have to bake.” She glanced up at him. “Can we stop somewhere for food? Then you can go back to your secret paperwork.”

  “It’s not a secret,” he said.

  “You never let me see what it is.” Brooklynn noted that Dave didn’t jump to say what he’d spent so much time reading and marking.

  “Doesn’t mean it’s a secret,” he said. But he didn’t say what it was, and Brooklynn felt awkward asking again. So she let him move the conversation to something else, buy her a cranberry turkey sandwich, and take her back to his place.

  Finally, the first day of the Spring Fling celebration arrived. Dave had put in for the day off, and he’d gotten it.

  “What happens to a ship without her Captain?” Brooklynn asked him when he picked her up for breakfast. The weather had cleared the last few days, and the apple trees were glorious with their pink and white blossoms.

  “Someone else fills in,” he said. “Hopefully, it’ll be a boring day.” He opened her door and helped her in, something he did every single time without fail. Brooklynn had enjoyed the last month with him, and she hadn’t made the mistake of taking him home to meet her parents again.

  He hadn’t taken her to meet his either, and she stewed about it while he crossed over to his side of the car.

  “Do you think I should meet your parents?” he asked.

  He looked at her, surprise in his eyes. “You want to?”

  “Well, it’s normal, right? I mean, you met mine, and you already knew them.”

  Dave reached for her hand and lifted her wrist to his lips. “I’d love to take you home to meet them,” he said. “I just—I’m never quite sure where you are, and if you’re ready.”

  A pang of regret pinched in her chest, but she managed to put a smile on her face. “I’m not going to break again,” she said. “It’s okay to ask me.”

  “I know,” he said, but she wasn’t sure he did. He never asked how her therapy sessions had gone, and she had been relatively tight-lipped about them too. “I just figured you’d talk to me about what you’re comfortable talking to me about. I don’t want to have to ask all the time or feel like I’m making you tell me something you don’t want to.”

  Brooklynn looked at the side of his face, knowing he could feel the weight of her eyes and was choosing not to look at her. “I think I’m doing really good,” she said, which did draw his attention. “I’m still working on overcoming my fear, but every day you go out on the ship and come home okay helps.”

  “All right.” He drew in a deep breath and twisted the key in the ignition. “Let’s go eat, and then we’re going to go see some apple blossoms.”

  She giggled, because she knew he was just going along for her. They’d both grown up in the area, and Washington was famous for its apples.

  Over omelets and bacon, he talked about his siblings, and with her right there, they set up a family dinner with his parents so they could officially meet Brooklynn in her official capacity as his girlfriend.

  The parking lot at the orchards was overflowing, with cars parked down the street. “This is as good as we’re going to get,” Dave said, pulling into a spot barely big enough for his SUV. They got out and walked down the road to the huge red barn signaling the entrance to the orchards.

  Much like the Lavender Festival, which had huge lavender fields just for tourists, this particular orchard was owned by the Magleby’s and associated with the Spring Fling each year. Yes, there were apples grown here. But during the Spring Fling, the orchard was purely for touring.

  Cider and apple tarts waited for customers in a booth just inside the barn, and Brooklynn grabbed a map of the orchard and said, “I wonder where the kissing spot is this year.”

  “That’s not a real thing,” Dave said.

  Oh, but it was. She searched the map, a giddy feeling in her gut. “Yep. Right there.” She pointed and tilted the map toward him. “See?”

  He squinted at it, and she giggled. “Your old man eyes can’t see that?” She moved it closer as he continued to peer at it. “See?”

  Dave took the map and tilted it, and she laughed. “I see it,” he said. “That’s where you want to go, is it?”

  “Definitely.” She linked her arm through his and took the map back. “Didn’t you ever bring a girl out here in high school?”

  “Just to kiss her? No.” He shook his head. “Not my style.”

  Brooklynn smiled up into the sky, some clouds starting to roll in. “Yeah, me either. I always wanted to though.”

  “Well, for you, I might have. You should’ve said.”

  “And what woul
d that have sounded like? ‘Hey, Dave, want to take me out to the orchards and kiss me?’ Talk about desperate.”

  “Isn’t that what you just did?”

  Brooklynn paused, shock traveling through her. “I guess I’m desperate.”

  He chuckled and let a few people go past them. “Baby, if you want to kiss me, you can just do it.” He closed his eyes and puckered his lips.

  “Stop it,” she said, laughing and pushing against his chest. He laughed with her, tucked her into his side, and they continued walking under the canopies of blossoms.

  “Did your life turn out the way you wanted it to?” Brooklynn asked, unsure of where the question had come from.

  “I think so,” he said. “So far.”

  “You always wanted to be in the Coast Guard.”

  “I always did.” He bent and picked up a fallen blossom. “What about you? Are you where you want to be in your life?”

  “I think so,” she repeated back to him. “I love my job. Have three great dogs. A great boyfriend.”

  “Just great?”

  “Handsome?” she guessed. “Wait. Hot. A hot boyfriend.”

  He sent his laughter into the sky then, and she simply smiled at the sound of it. “I’m much too old to be called hot,” he said. “And your birthday is coming up.”

  “Another couple of months,” she said, trying not to dwell on the fact that she’d be one year closer to forty. And if she wanted even one baby of her own, she’d have to tie the knot quickly and get the deed done soon after that.

  She pushed away the pressure of becoming a mother. She couldn’t deal with it and everything else she was already in therapy for. There were other ways to build a family, and she needed to make sure she was physically, mentally, and emotionally ready to become a wife again before she could even come to the mother bridge.

  He navigated them through the trees without using the map, somehow getting them to the kissing spot anyway. “So, here we are,” he said, stepping away from her but not letting go of her hand. “Do you want a selfie? Is that what the kids are doing these days?”

  “A kissing selfie,” she said. “Yeah, I think we can pass on that.” She tugged on his hand, her love for him growing and expanding right there under the party-cloudy sky and apple blossoms.

  He came closer, and she stepped into his embrace easily. She wanted to tell him she loved him; the words crowded behind her tongue, clogging her throat.

  She gazed up at him, her fear disappearing in the tenderness of his gaze. “Dave?” she asked.

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m in love with you.”

  He blinked, grinned, and chuckled. “Is that so?”

  “Yeah,” she said, smiling too. “That’s so.”

  “That’s awesome,” he said. “Because I love you too.” He kissed her, and everything in Brooklynn’s world filled with sunshine and the scent of apple blossoms.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Dave enjoyed kissing Brooklynn when he knew she loved him. And he loved her. The feeling was quite indescribable actually, and he let the sweet scent of apple blossoms fill his senses.

  She giggled and broke their connection, and Dave simply held onto her and let the seconds go by one by one. A breeze kicked up, and he whispered, “Should we go? Did you get your apple blossom fix?”

  “Yeah,” she said, stepping back and putting her hand in his. “You up for more coffee-flavored treats?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Dave said, though the memory of that tiramisu sure did call to him. “Maybe ask me when I haven’t just eaten a huge breakfast.”

  She smiled and laid her cheek against his bicep, and Dave hoped they’d always feel so comfortable with one another. No, she didn’t tell him a lot about her therapy, but he didn’t mind so much.

  Her mood had definitely improved over the past month as she’d started seeing Dr. Jackson privately, and he was glad she could get the help she needed. He certainly didn’t know how to give it to her, and the last thing he wanted was to see her cry the way she had that night at her house.

  By the time they’d navigated through the orchard and back to the SUV, the wind had blown in gray clouds. His thoughts wandered down the road to Port Angeles, and he wondered what the conditions were like out on the ocean.

  Not your problem, he told himself as he buckled his seat belt. “So what next?” he asked.

  “Let’s go see if the dance committee needs our help with the decorating.”

  “You just want to get in that community center and eat the treats.”

  “Maybe.”

  He shook his head, the sky above him threatening to open and douse Hawthorne Harbor in rain. That wouldn’t be good for the tours of the apple orchards, and it was a good thing they hadn’t postponed their journey to the kissing spot. They might not have gotten the chance later.

  The first drops of rain hit the windshield as he pulled into the community center, and he drove through the circle to let Brooklynn out. “I’ll park and be in soon,” he said. She nodded, ducked out of the car, and ran for the entrance.

  After parking, he flipped his collar up and walked as quickly as he could toward the doors. When the thunder cracked overhead, he started running. His time on the beach paid off, because he made it to safety before the sky broke open.

  He held the door for several others hurrying inside, and once he was inside, he pulled out his phone to make sure the ringer was on. His gut writhed, and he had a bad feeling about his crew out on the Adelie.

  “Brooklynn,” he said, spying her up ahead. She turned, and the throng of people who’d come inside flowed around her as they dispersed to different activities. “I need to call in.”

  “But it’s your day off.” A panicked look crossed her face. “And what? You’re going to go to work? Out on the ship in this weather?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, pulling up the number of the commanding officer who ran the whole port. “I just know I need to check in. Give me a minute, would you?”

  She nodded, just once, and he walked away from her while the line rang. “David,” his CO said. “Everything okay?”

  “The weather’s turned,” Dave said. “I’m just wondering how things are there. Something told me I needed to call in.”

  “Things are fine,” Brian said. “We’re bringing in the Swordfish. No need to be out there for fishery inspection when they’re all shut down too.”

  “Good call,” Dave said. “Okay, well, let me know if the status changes.”

  “We’ll be fine,” Brian said. “Enjoy your day off.”

  Dave hung up and turned to find Brooklynn chatting with another woman. He approached, and she twisted toward him and grabbed onto his arm. “Dave, this is my friend Darcy. You know, the woman from my group therapy.”

  “Oh, Darcy, of course.” Dave stepped forward and hugged her, because yes, Brooklynn had spoken of her often. “Are you here alone?”

  “Oh, no,” Darcy said, hooking her thumb over her shoulder. “My sister and mother are around here somewhere.”

  “Everything okay in port?” Brooklynn asked, and she sounded so much like a member of the crew there.

  “Yeah,” he said. “They’re bringing in a non-essential ship. Other than that, the CO says everything is fine.”

  “Good.”

  “Well, I better go,” Darcy said, smiling at Brooklynn. “My mom’s convinced her coffee caramel cake is going to win, and I want to be with her to console her.”

  “You don’t think it will?” Brooklynn asked.

  “Honey, the caramel was like brittle. I doubt the judges were even able to taste it.” She laughed, and Dave liked her energy. Brooklynn hugged her, and Darcy left.

  “I like her,” Dave said, watching her weave through the crowd.

  “Yeah, she’s great,” Brooklynn agreed. “Should we go see if they have anything to do here?”

  “I wonder what they’ll do with all the outdoor activities,” he said.

  “Shut them dow
n,” Brooklynn said, a hint of sadness in her voice. “I mean, you can’t move the orchards indoors.”

  “The food trucks won’t like this weather either.”

  “They set up tents one year,” Brooklynn said. “But it was so windy, that they ended up closing everything.”

  “They might have to do that today,” Dave said, letting Brooklynn lead him toward the gym where the actual fling part of the Spring Fling would be held that evening. The dance. He’d come as a teenager a few times, but he hadn’t been back since returning to town.

  The woman he wanted to dance with had been unavailable, and Dave hadn’t seen the point. They went into the gym, Brooklynn heading toward a woman standing in the middle of the huge space with a clipboard in her hand.

  The lights flickered once, twice, three times, and then they went out. A cry of surprise tinged with fear went up, and Dave froze. His hand pulled against Brooklynn’s, and he brought her back to his side.

  “Does this place have generators?” he asked.

  “I don’t think so,” she said. “My dad’s never said anything about generators.”

  “Stay calm,” a woman called. “Let’s get to the doors.”

  “Wait,” Dave said. There were windows way up high near the ceiling, and it took several seconds for his eyes to adjust. The door did let in a rectangle of light, because the lobby had a lot of windows and doors as well.

  A sense of foreboding came over him as he and Brooklynn retraced their steps. It wouldn’t stay warm in here without power. And there wasn’t much to eat beside the bake-off items. How long would the power be out?

  There was a definite feeling of panic in the lobby, as more and more people continued to pack into the space.

  “Maybe we should go,” he said to Brooklynn, keeping a tight hold on her hand. The water sluiced down the glass outside, and that didn’t look like a viable option either. “I’ll go get the car.”

  “Can you believe this?” Darcy asked, and Brooklynn kept hold of his hand as she shook her head. So maybe she didn’t want him to go get the car. He honestly wasn’t sure what there was to do at the community center if there was no light and no heat.