Chapter 47: Jake
The jacket’s still damp when I pick it up. Salt clings sharp to the fabric, her scent threaded through it like she’s still there. It shouldn’t matter — it’s just a jacket. But it feels like evidence. Proof of how close she got to being sick, frozen, ruined, all because someone wasn’t watching her. Because he wasn’t.
By the time I hit the Vigil, my jaw’s locked tight. Reid’s on deck with Finn and Liam, voices low, like nothing in the world is wrong.
“Reid.” My voice cuts across the space. Hard. “We need to talk.”
Finn doesn’t even try to hide the smirk. “Yeah, okay, and I need to not be here for this.” He claps Liam’s shoulder. “You coming?”
Liam eyes me, then Reid, then groans. “Not staying for twin drama. I’ve seen shark feeds less bloody.” He grabs a coil of rope and trails after Finn. “Good luck, boys. Don’t sink the boat.”
Now it’s just us.
Reid doesn’t move. Doesn’t blink. Just leans on the railing like I haven’t stormed down here ready to tear into him. Bored, detached. That look he gives everyone when he wants them to know he doesn’t care.
I step on deck, shove the jacket at his chest. He catches it without looking down.
“What’s your problem?” My voice is sharp, close to breaking. “Trying to make her quit? First you fight to keep her off the boat. Now you let her, but you don’t let her go inside when the waves hit? How many times do I have to say it—we don’t have another biologist.”
Silence. His eyes on me, unreadable.
Finally, he speaks. Voice low, lethal. “Why do you have her jacket.”
I blink. “That’s what you care about?” My laugh is short, ugly. “Not that she’s out there freezing? Not that she came off the boat dripping like a castaway?”
His eyes flare, sharp. “I told her to go inside. Sloane made her think she couldn’t. By the time I came down, she was soaked. I told her not to listen to Sloane again. That’s it. That’s the story.”
We’re close now. Too close. The jacket’s still in his grip, knuckles white like it’s more than fabric, like it’s a trigger.
“Why,” he repeats, slower this time, “do you have it.”
I don’t understand why that’s the hill he’s choosing, but I don’t back down. My voice cuts like glass. “Because I made her take it off and put something dry on. Because she was shaking. Because someone had to notice. Someone had to give a damn.”
For a beat, neither of us breathes. Just staring, heat roiling between us like the storm building offshore.
Finally, I step back, drag a hand down my face. My pulse is hammering.
“We need to talk to Sloane. Figure out what the hell that was about.”
Reid’s jaw works. “Tomorrow.”
“She’s off the next three days,” I snap. “Not tomorrow. Today.”
He grunts. Sharp, unwilling. But he doesn’t disagree.
We’ve gone head-to-head our whole lives. That’s not new. Same brain, same temper — sometimes it feels like staring into a warped mirror and waiting to see which one of us cracks first.
But when it comes to work, to SWMRI, to the people who trust us to lead? We don’t fight. Not like this. We’ve always known where the line is: no matter how hot the temper, the research comes first. The Institute comes first.
So why the hell is she the exception?
Why is he so intent on making Madeline’s life miserable?
Reid’s jaw is clenched so tight I can hear it in the silence of the car. He hasn’t said a word since we left the Vigil, just sits there in the passenger seat with Madeline’s jacket balled in his fist like it personally offended him.
He looks at it like it’s more than fabric. Like it’s proof of something. Proof she doesn’t belong here. Proof she’s an inconvenience.
That’s all she is to him, isn’t it? One more liability to babysit. Another distraction he didn’t sign up for.
I shift gears harder than I need to, the tires humming over the coastal road. If that’s what he thinks, fine. But he’s going to have to get over it. She’s here. She’s the only biologist we’ve got. And for once, the ocean threw her something none of us have seen before.
The porpoises. The calves.
She’s not a liability. She’s the damn key.
Reid stares out the window, knuckles white on the jacket, and I let the silence stretch. My brother can brood all he wants. But this time, he doesn’t get to chase someone off just because she rattles him.
Not this one.
The gravel crunches under the tires as I pull up to the little SWMRI house. It’s dim inside, no lights on yet, but I can see the outline of the curtains pulled tight.
We don’t come here often. I’ve only ever stopped in a handful of times — usually to drop something off for Charlie. Reid? I can’t remember the last time he set foot near this place. Maybe never. He looks out of place even standing here on the porch, Madeline’s damp jacket hanging off his fist like it’s evidence in a trial.
I knock, sharp and short. No answer. The wind fills the silence, pushing the smell of salt up from the harbor.
While we wait, I glance over at him. “You were on the boat. You saw it happen. So what are you going to say to Sloane?”
His eyes stay fixed on the door, but his jaw ticks. “I don’t know what her problem is with Madeline.” He says her name like it’s foreign, like it doesn’t fit in his mouth. Then he finally looks at me, one brow cocked. “She thinks she’s a distraction. That she shouldn’t be out there. Not safe.”
The tone tells me everything — he agrees, at least halfway.
I grunt, low in my throat. “That argument’s gotta go out the damn door now. She’s here. She’ll learn. And that’s it.” My voice comes out sharper than I planned, but I don’t care. “We didn’t need another sailor, Reid. We needed someone with a brain.”
The corner of his mouth twitches, like he’s two seconds from snapping back. But the door handle clicks before he can, cutting the air between us.
The door cracks open, and both of us instinctively look down.
Madeline.
Her eyes go so wide it’s like she’s opened the door to two strangers instead of the same men she’s been stuck with all week. Aliens. Or FBI agents here to haul her away.
And for a split second, I swear I feel Reid flinch beside me. A barely-there shift in his stance, like her face hit him square in the chest.
Me? My body does something I can’t quite name — heat flashing, pulse stumbling — because she’s standing there with color in her cheeks again, hair damp from a shower, wearing nothing but a thin tank top and soft joggers that hang loose on her hips.
The wet strands at her temples glisten in the porch light, curling against her skin. Her collarbone is bare, the delicate line of it stark against the pale fabric. She doesn’t look like the woman on deck today, hunched and shivering in a soaked jacket. She looks… human. Young. Startled.
And none of us says a damn word.
Not me.
Not Reid.
Not her.
The silence stretches, sharp and loaded, until it’s almost laughable. Three people rooted in place like the first one to speak loses something.
Her hand tightens around the edge of the door, knuckles whitening. “Um…”
The sound is so small it cracks the spell, but it doesn’t fix the fact that my throat feels too dry to answer.