Come Home

by Raleigh Ruebins

  “Gavin… why’d you sound so nervous over the phone?” Hunter asked. I realized I’d been staring at him like an idiot for who knows how long. “Are you trying to be all secretive still, or are you going to tell me why you’re here?”

  I nodded. “Yes. Of course,” I said.

  “Then just tell me,” he said, leaning in a little. “I’d love to think you came back just to see my pretty face, but I think we both know that’s not true.”

  I rolled my eyes, acting as if it was a ridiculous notion, when in reality it wasn’t so far off.

  “You said you’d be here for a whole week, too,” Hunter said, raising his eyebrows. “That’s gotta be something big. What don’t we don’t know about? Shit, are you trying to avoid someone? You’re on the run, aren’t you?”

  I laughed softly, letting out a long sigh. “No, Hunter,” I said. “And I’m… actually going to be here longer than a week.”

  He looked at me like I’d just told him I was moving to Antarctica.

  I took a deep breath. “I’m going to be staying here… for the foreseeable future. I closed a deal on a small property by the water just last week—the house Old Man Jansen used to live in.”

  “Christ, I remember that house.”

  “As soon as I have it move-in ready, I’ll be staying there while I’m on the island.”

  “Holy shit, Gav.”

  Just tell him.

  Just tell him.

  “What about your company?” he pressed. “You can’t be away from work that long—”

  “Being on Kinley is going to be my work,” I said finally. “Alto Ventures is looking to develop here.”

  He stared at me blankly. “Here, like… in the Pacific Northwest?”

  I shook my head. “Here on Kinley.”

  “Oh,” he said, realization settling on his face. “You know… many developers have tried and failed, right? There just isn’t the infrastructure in place, and too many people can’t handle the ferry boats—”

  “Exactly,” I said, pride rising within me. “But Hunter—we have the power to change that. The reason I’m here is to begin outreach in the community to propose we finally build a bridge.”

  My heart soared. I’d told him. I’d done it. Something I’d been so worried about for weeks—months, even—was now done, and I felt like I was shedding a layer of skin.

  “I know it sounds far-fetched, that’s what everyone tells me,” I said, starting to talk excitedly. “But this is different than it’s ever been before. We have seven other firms interested in investing with us. I already have an entire group of Alto deep in talks with the county council and the Department of Transportation, and the outlook is good. We’ve already talked with the top real estate investors in Seattle, and we have construction companies ready to give us screaming deals, and everyone is so eager, Hunter. It’s going to happen.”

  He was stunned and silent, just watching me, clutching his coffee cup in his hands.

  “All we need is the support of people on the island,” I said. “And I know it’s going to be a fight. I know people don’t think they want a bridge. But it would be such a step forward. And I know we can do it.”

  I waited for him to say something, but his eyes just stayed wide as he breathed in and out.

  “I’m here because I need you,” I said. The statement caught me off guard, even though I’d been the one who said it. It was true in so many ways. Even the simple act of sitting across from him for ten minutes had reinforced how much my life had been missing without Hunter in it.

  Focus, focus, focus. The Kinley bridge was the priority. Not Hunter’s eyes.

  “I need all the help I can get trying to win over the residents,” I continued. “Kinley can become something so much more than what it’s always been, but they don’t want people in suits like my team coming in and looking big, bad and scary. We need people like you on our side. Real residents who love Kinley, who have family history here, who want to make a life here. That’s how an idea like this takes off.”

  “Gavin, I…” he started. His eyes danced across my face, and he set down his coffee cup. I waited for him to continue, but then a minute passed, and he was speechless.

  I leaned in a little closer, pulling in a deep breath. My heart was racing again, but I knew this was more important than me, or Hunter, or my silly little crush.

  This wasn’t just for me, or my company, or some bold-faced pursuit of greed. This was for every single Kinley resident, including the ones who were no longer alive. This was for my mother.

  It was the only truly important thing I’d ever tried to accomplish in my life.

  “Please, Hunter. I never ask for help, but… I’m doing it. I need it this time,” I said, holding his gaze. “Can you do this? For me?”

  3

  Hunter

  How do you tell your best friend he’s about to make the stupidest decision of his life?

  I’d been trying to speak for what felt like two centuries, and I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

  My brain couldn’t fully process the enormity of what Gavin was suggesting. Did he know how he sounded?

  Had he grown up on a completely different version of Kinley than I had?

  Because on the Kinley Island I knew, the biggest pastime of the residents was hating Seattle and viciously protecting the island’s identity. Bridges had been proposed to connect Kinley to the city a handful of times, and each time had been tantamount to heresy.

  Nothing could sound worse to the residents of Kinley. We loved the way things were, and anyone who tried to change it was a threat.

  Especially when they were real estate developers.

  And especially if the particular real estate developer in question was Gavin Bell. Someone who used to live here. Someone who should have known better.

  He was looking at me, a mixture of pride and stubbornness on his face. I shook my head slowly, finally able to formulate a semi-coherent thought. “This is some elaborate prank show, right? Your company joined forces with some TV network, and three cameramen are about to spring up from behind potted plants in a few minutes?”

  He didn’t even smile. He was stone-faced serious.

  And that’s when I realized that my day was about to get astronomically more difficult. I was going to have to do something I rarely had to do, something that had often proved impossible in the past.

  I was going to have to tell Gavin that he was wrong.

  It wasn’t something he heard a lot, and for good reason. Gavin had always been off-the-charts intelligent—nearly genius level—throughout all of our schooling together. I had tried my damnedest to follow in his footsteps, but it had always felt like watching someone sprint effortlessly while I huffed and puffed, always ten paces behind. When we both applied to go to Eastendale University, it was a given that he’d be a shoo-in. But it had been a gamble for me, pulled off only by the skin of my teeth—probably helped by my laundry list of extracurricular activities and seven glowing letters of recommendation from various teachers.

  Where Gavin had always had smarts, I’d always had friends. He’d been a lone wolf who was only really comfortable around me. The other kids at Kinley High hadn’t been kind to him. A sullen, gangly, brooding nerd wasn’t exactly the norm here, and it didn’t help that he’d also been labeled a teacher’s pet since kindergarten.

  But no matter how much of an outsider he’d been on the island, his intelligence had carried him swiftly to a mega-successful career in Seattle. Especially now, being told he was wrong was a foreign concept.

  He was going to hate it.

  I hated it, too.

  But while the concept of failure might as well have not existed to him, I knew that for the first time in his life, he was making a colossal mistake.

  “Gavin… why?” I finally managed to ask. Saying one word felt like walking a tightrope.

  His eyes quickly flitted toward mine. Their lake-blue looked haunted, and I wondered if he even knew how promine
nt the dark circles under them had gotten over the years. He looked tired, yes, but his good looks had become refined since I’d last seen him. Gavin had experienced an ugly duckling transformation back in college—he’d started working out, gotten a clean haircut, started eating and dressing better—so he’d been relatively attractive ever since.

  But now—objectively speaking—Gavin was fucking hot. He’d become truly, undeniably handsome and I hadn’t even known until now. He practically looked like a star from an old black-and-white movie in his suit, polished and poised, eyes smoldering and intense as he watched me.

  He wasn’t the scrawny little kid from my memories. He was every bit a man.

  But I pushed those thoughts down. It didn’t matter how sexy he’d become—he was my friend, and he was a man powerful enough to destroy Kinley Island as we knew it.

  “Why do you have to do this?” I continued. “You know as well as I do that it’s a guaranteed loss.”

  “There’s no such thing as a guaranteed loss.”

  “Every single bridge proposal has been squashed as quickly as it’s been suggested.”

  “This is going to be different. I promise you.”

  I sat back slightly. “I don’t even understand. You can’t just decide to build a bridge. They’re government-funded and government-owned.”

  He shook his head vigorously, actually getting a smile on his face. “No. That’s what I thought, too. But there are a few—some very heavily trafficked—bridges in the United States that are completely privately owned. I have at least seven other interested investment firms that are willing to go in with me. All we need is government approval, and it looks good, Hunter. It looks like we might get it.”

  “It doesn’t sound good to me.”

  “A ferry ride costs twelve dollars, one-way, for non-residents. Our bridge will only be a four-dollar toll.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “Nobody on this island wants a bridge.”

  And then any semblance of vulnerability in him was fully gone. It was like a shade had been pulled down over his face. He was putting on his slick achiever persona, the mask of the ruthless businessman, the guy who simply got things done.

  “It’s just business,” he said. A meaningless, empty, stock answer to my earnest question. He folded his hands together on top of the table, straightening his spine. “Business that will be beneficial to all involved parties.”

  And that was about when I’d had enough. I wouldn’t take this treatment from anyone—but it was about ten times worse coming from my best friend.

  I leaned over the table and gripped his forearm tight in my hand. “Bullshit,” I said, looking him dead in the eyes.

  He jumped at the contact. His gaze darted down to my hand on his arm, shocked as a deer in the woods. For a second, I worried that he might have been preparing to get up and leave, and if he wasn’t so nice I might have thought he’d sock me in the face. He had clearly realized that I wouldn’t let him get away with anything, that I wasn’t just another businessman he could expertly negotiate into a corner.

  But then he exhaled.

  “I have to,” he told me, his gaze softening just the slightest bit. “You know I do.”

  “You don’t,” I insisted. “This project is your baby, right? You can call it off.”

  “I cannot,” he said.

  “Sure you can. Tell everyone at your company that you’d been body switched with a clone for the past year, and you take back everything you’ve said. Tell them you had temporary psychosis. I don’t fucking know. Tell them you were possessed by a trickster demon who came up with the whole idea for the project.”

  He didn’t even laugh, his lips pressed into a thin line. It was always bad when I couldn’t even make Gavin laugh.

  My hand was still gripped tight around his forearm. I loosened it a little, sliding it down until it met his hand. I clasped my fingers around his, squeezing his hand tight. A look of sadness passed over his eyes, and I couldn’t understand why. To me, nothing could feel better than holding his hand in mine. But after a moment, he slipped his hand away and stood up over the table.

  “It’s happening, Hunter,” he said. “The bridge outreach project is already in motion. And I’m incredibly proud of it.”

  The pit forming in my throat made it hard to speak. “No one on the island wants this,” I said quietly. “We don’t want a bridge. Never have, never will.”

  “We?” he asked, his voice soft. He looked almost hurt now, like I’d just punched him in the gut. “You’re really not going to help me, are you?”

  I stared up at him, dumbfounded.

  I had lived on Kinley for my whole life. I’d been raised here, my parents had been raised here, and my grandparents had been part of the original few families that had moved to the island in the early twentieth century, making something here when there was nothing.

  My whole life was on the island. And the thought of it becoming just the same as all the other islands nearby—connected with big, gleaming bridges to the city, open to the development of big, tall glass condominium buildings and businesses that just wanted cheap rent, and cars and smog and strangers and the impersonal endless anonymous lifelessness of a big city—

  I realized I was clenching my teeth, gripping my hands hard against the fabric of my jeans. I took a long breath in and let it out.

  “Pepper,” I said, keeping my voice low. “I know… what happened to your mom was unspeakable. You loved her, I loved her, and we can never bring her back. But this isn’t the way.”

  “It could be,” he said, his eyes intense again.

  “I also love you, Gav. And I know that if you try to propose a bridge, Kinley will be nothing but a mob with flaming pitchforks coming after you. I don’t want to see you lose.”

  But it was as if I was talking to a brick wall again. He shook his head briskly, back in total business mode.

  “The residents may not want it,” he said, “but they need it. The island needs to come into the twenty-first century, Hunter. Ferry boats aren’t enough. The bridge will be built.”

  “You’re being selfish.”

  “I’m not,” he said, resolute and cold as he pushed in his chair and straightened his jacket. “You may not know it yet, but I’m doing this for you.”

  “He’s lost his fucking mind!” I shouted from the open window of my Impala as I pulled up the long gravel driveway to the front of my house.

  Caleb was sitting out front, at the picnic table under the big dogwood tree. He was often there when I came home, though typically I at least waited until I’d turned the car off before I started blathering at my brother.

  But this was wildly different.

  This was a code red.

  I yanked the gear shift into park and turned the car off, slamming the door behind me and storming over to him.

  “We’re fucked,” I said as I approached him, raking a hand through my hair. “Prepare for Armageddon. Go to the grocery store now and stock up on cans of tuna. Water. Paper towels. It’s about to be fucking end times here in Kinley.”

  Caleb was, as ever, completely placid, calmly smoking as he sat at the picnic bench. He was forever unaffected by my moods. He stubbed out his cigarette, stood up, and lifted an eyebrow at me. “You know I don’t eat canned tuna. Also—and I mean this kindly, Hunter—what the hell are you wearing?”

  I looked down, remembering the absurd purple shirt. “It doesn’t matter. Today has been absolutely buck-wild. You might want to sit back down.”

  He nodded, his expression completely neutral. “Mhm. And to what do we owe the end of the world this time?”

  I shook my head, giving him a burning stare as I held up a finger at him. “You’re going to regret saying that when you realize how serious this is.”

  He nodded. “Uh-huh, sure,” he said, his deep voice dripping with sarcasm. “Of course. Just as serious as when you found a single gray hair on your head? Or when rain was predicted on the first day of your new jog
ging routine? Or when you thought your dick—”

  “Okay, shut up,” I said, “and we don’t need to talk about any of those things ever again, for the record.”

  “So why’s the sky falling today? And I’m not done talking about that shirt. Did Marshall Barrowfield give you that?”

  I rolled my eyes so hard it actually hurt, and I leaned against the trunk of the tree. “I should never have invited you to the party,” I said. “No, Marshall did not give me this shirt. Please forget whatever you saw last night.”

  “I wasn’t judging you for leaving with him last night,” Caleb said, shrugging his tattooed arms animatedly. “Well, maybe a little… if by a little, you mean a whole lot.”

  I glared at him. “Next time I feel sorry for you, could you remind me that just because you’re a loner doesn’t mean you should come to parties with me?”

  He shoved me, leaning back on the bench again. “Harsh, Hunter.” It was past noon now, and the sunlight cast bold shadows across his face as it filtered down through the leaves. His brow furrowed as he looked out past our lawn to the street. A lot of people said that Caleb was intimidating—I understood why, with the tattoos and the muscles and the hard gaze. But all I saw in my brother was a quiet strength, a man who’d been through the ringer in life and come out the other side.

  I paused for a moment, watching him. “Really, though—are you okay? I thought you quit last week,” I said, nodding at the ceramic ashtray on top of the picnic table. A small pile of cigarette butts lay along the bottom.

  He kicked at a pebble with the toe of his boot. “I did. And then I woke up here alone. The morning was stupidly beautiful. Exactly the kind Claire would have wanted to go drive around with the top down. And then….” He shook his head, looking back up at me. “And then I guess I didn’t quit smoking anymore.”

  “Hey,” I said, sitting down next to him and wrapping my arms around his shoulders. “Don’t worry about it. You’ll get it next time.”

  He gave me a tight hug, then pulled back, eyeing me. “Normally I’d never let you get away with condescending to me like that, but since you’re being so nice, I’m going to let it slide.”