Chapter 13: Madeline
Charlie spots us first, her hand curling around a takeaway cup, steam curling into the salt-heavy air. “Morning!” she calls brightly. “Hope you found the place okay.”
“Yeah,” I manage, still out of breath — though not from the walk. “Finn and Liam walked with me.”
I can feel him before I even see him.
Like static in the air. That low hum before a storm.
The man standing next to her is half turned toward the boats, his profile sharp as a blade, and when he finally shifts — fully, slowly — it’s like the horizon just moved. He is what I didn’t prepare for. The man from the traffic light, the one with the voice like dusk and a smile that had me floating halfway home the other night.
In daylight, he’s worse. Or better. I don’t know. Tall — taller than Finn, even — with shoulders so broad they make the rolled-up jacket in his hand look like a kitchen towel. He’s not wearing it. Of course he isn’t. It’s five degrees above freezing, the wind is slicing sideways off the sea, and this man is standing there like he invented cold.
I drag my eyes back to Charlie.
I don’t even want to look at him again because what if he doesn’t remember me? Or worse — what if he does and regrets making eye contact with whatever level of chaos I looked like that night?
Charlie turns, gestures toward me.
“Oh, and—yeah, Madeline, this is Reid. Reid, Madeline.”
My heartbeat stutters. But I keep it together. I step forward, lift my hand. “Nice to meet y—”
But Reid’s already talking.
“Finn,” he says, eyes cutting toward the boat. “The secondary winch. Is it still slamming off-axis or did you realign it?”
My hand is still out. Just... hanging there like a fool.
Finn shifts awkwardly, and I can feel the secondhand discomfort radiating from him like a heat lamp. “Uh—yeah. I adjusted it yesterday. But if it’s still acting weird I’ll—”
“Show me,” Reid says.
No “good morning.” No handshake. No eye contact. Just that low, direct voice, cutting straight through all the air in my lungs like a wire.
Then he glances at Charlie, nods once. “Wait for me at the diner. I’ll be there in a few.”
And just like that, he’s walking. Cool and unfazed. Finn shrugs at me with an apologetic half-smile and follows after him up the narrow ramp onto The Vigil.
My hand drops to my side, fingers curling into a loose fist. It doesn’t sting, exactly. It just... burns a little. Confuses. Undoes the entire version of him I constructed in my head last night. The mysterious stranger with the half-smile and the warm, concerned tone. That man stopped at a red light even though no cars were coming.
This one? This one doesn’t even stop for basic human greetings.
Charlie makes a sound — a half-winced, half-groaned inhale — and puts her hand on my arm. “I’m sorry. Reid’s just—he gets tunnel vision. Especially around mechanical stuff. It’s not personal, I swear.”
I turn to her, trying to keep my expression neutral. “I mean… does he hate new people? Or just me?”
Charlie winces harder. “Neither. I promise. That was just... peak Reid. He’s always like this when he’s got a task in his head.”
“I think the word you’re looking for is rude.”
She grins. “That too. But efficient.”
I exhale, looking back at the boat. Reid and Finn are already halfway across it. Reid crouches to examine something near the stern, and even from here, I can see the focus in his posture. Like the rest of the world shuts off when he’s in work mode.
“I just…” I shake my head. “I guess I expected something different.”
Charlie hums knowingly. “Yeah, well. He has two settings. One is work mode, and the other is... well, I'm not entirely sure. He might only have one setting.”
I huff out a laugh, dry but amused. “Well. Great. Love that for me.”
She nudges me with her elbow. “Don’t let it throw you. He warms up. Eventually.”
I glance back one last time. Reid hasn’t looked over once.
“Right,” I mutter. “Can’t wait.”
We walk down the dock together, boots thudding on wet wood. The wind bites a little harder now, or maybe it’s just that the sting of being completely dismissed by the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen is clinging to my skin like sea mist.
Charlie doesn’t say anything else, and I don’t ask.
But in my chest, something curls. A bruise I didn’t expect. A question I don’t know how to ask.
How can someone be so gentle in one moment and so cold the next?
The diner sits just off the wharf, tucked between a bait shop and a boarded-up storefront that looks like it’s been promising to reopen “soon” for the last six years.
Inside, it’s all retro vinyl booths and sunlight striping through half-open blinds. The kind of place that still plays the radio on a speaker mounted in the corner and smells like bacon even when no one’s cooking it.
Charlie slides into a booth without waiting, like she’s done this a hundred times — and she probably has.
“Sit,” she says, patting the bench across from her.
I do, curling my hands around the warm ceramic mug the server places in front of me. Hot chocolate, as if she read my mind. Probably powder and milk, but it smells good enough to make my shoulders loosen a little.
Charlie’s on her second coffee of the morning. She sips it with the ease of someone who drinks it for function, not pleasure. Then she unzips the oversized canvas bag at her side and pulls out a thick stack of papers, bound with a binder clip and dog-eared in half a dozen places.
“Alright,” she says, thumbing through the first few pages. “We’ve got some time before Reid shows up, so I figured we could get a jump on the basics.”
I blink. “You sure? I thought we were just... easing into things today.”
She smirks. “This is easing in. Trust me, by tomorrow, you’ll wish all you had to do was sit at a booth and read about algae bloom patterns.”
I take a sip of hot chocolate, grab my notebook from my backpack, and flip to a fresh page. “Fair enough. Hit me.”
Charlie grins and slides the first paper across the table — a topographic map of the surrounding water, marked with red ink and small arrows. “Let’s start with the current lines. Then I’ll run you through the last three months of data collection. I want you to get a sense of how we move through the season. You’ll be fine.”
Outside the window, the harbor shifts in the light. Masts bob gently. Gulls call overhead. And somewhere, not far from here, Reid is on a boat with Finn, probably still pretending I don’t exist.
But right now, I’m here — in this booth, in this moment — doing what I came here to do.
So I click my pen.
“Okay,” I say. “Let’s go.”