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  I heard that metallic clanging again. This time it seemed more hollow. There was another sound behind this one—one that I recognized from spending time with my dad in his shop as a girl up through my teens. It was the sounds of tools clanking together.

  I opened the door and peered out. I saw Jack in the water, beneath the plane’s left wing. A metal flap was open and Jack was reaching up into it. He was muttering under his breath, clearly frustrated.

  “You okay?” I called out.

  He jumped a bit, startled by my voice. He peered out from under the flap and gave me a little nod of acknowledgment. “Yeah. Just frustrated.”

  “How long have you been up?”

  “About an hour and a half,” he said.

  “No luck fixing it, huh?”

  He shrugged. “That’s the thing. I know what’s wrong with the plane and I am pretty sure I can fix it. But the only tools I found on the plane are the equivalent of a Fisher Price starter kit. I should have checked for a tool kit. I should have—,”

  “Don’t do that,” I said, hopping out onto the float and then stepping down into the water. It was cold, but not unbearable so. I waded out to him, the water reaching a but past my knees.

  “Anything I can do to help?” I asked.

  “Not unless you know how to fix a CB radio,” he said. “I can’t figure out why or how, but that was damaged in the crash, too.”

  I thought this over, and suddenly the tranquil sea in the morning didn’t seem so comforting. “Do I need to be worried?” she asked.

  “I don’t think so. Even if I can’t fix this, I find it hard to believe that some other plane or a fishing boat won’t come along during the course of the day and spot us. I found some flares under the seat; if we hear an engine approaching, we’ll light them up.”

  “Well, I don’t know how to fix a CB radio,” I said. “So is there nothing I can do?”

  “If you just need to stay busy, you can go make sure there’s an area of beach cleared off where we could strike the flares up if it comes to that. Other than that, no. But you’re always welcome to sit in the plane and keep me company.”

  “Aye, aye, Captain,” I said, smirking.

  I made my way back up to the little beach, headed for the burnt our campfire remains from the night before. As I waited for my feet to warm in the sand (they were still a little tingly from the cold water), I looked back out to Jack, hard at work under that flap. I heard him give another series of curses and frowned.

  I had been totally unfair to him. Even after my awkward apology last night, it had taken less than fifteen minutes for me to get rude with him again. At the mere mention of his time in the army—particularly his last tour in Afghanistan—I had shut down on him. It had brought up the memory of my brother David and what had happened to him.

  Of course, I usually shut down when the topic came to David. But last night, I had brought it up. It was just my stupid luck that Jack’s own experiences so closely mirrored David’s.

  I wondered how Jack had felt about that story. The now-famous Devlin Stone coming out of an ambush as the only surviving member. I had no problem giving the man his heroics; as the story went, he had gone back into the conflict even after it was mostly over in the hopes of rescuing other members of the platoon. It was during that time that he had managed to kill nine insurgents and drag one single body back to the rescue location.

  That one solider, of course, had been David.

  I wondered if Jack knew the whole story and how he felt. I knew that the feelings about Devlin Stone were varied among troops. The man had come home a hero and, as far as I was concerned, sold out to get his stupid face in movies. And then it was—

  I paused here, thinking of the last movie I had seen with that goon it in. I looked out to the plane where Jack was still at work. I felt like she had made some sort of vague connection, a thought that blurred across my mind for just a moment. But it was gone as soon as it had come.

  What the hell was that?

  I shook the feeling away and started removing bits of driftwood and dead branches and vegetation from the beach. I suddenly wanted to do exactly as Jack had suggested; I wanted to sit in the seat and look out at him as he worked. Maybe I’d tell him all about David—how he’s been an amazing older brother than had not deserved to go overseas and die in a war that I had never agreed with. Maybe I’d tell him how he’d been more selective over the boys I had dated in high school that my father.

  But no. I wasn’t ready for that yet. First I needed to figure out my feelings for Jack. They were there, hiding in the corners of my mind like scared little rabbits. I didn’t want to go through the emotional turmoil of figuring out what they meant, though. For now, I was fine sneaking the occasional guilty glance at him and wishing he’d take his shirt off again.

  It was a nice thought, though. What might it be like to finally have someone in my life that I could share these things with? There was Grandfather, but he was a bit biased. He had no problems talking about David because he, too, had once been in the military had was proud to have had a grandson that died in combat.

  And, if I was being honest, it was a selfish desire. Yes, I wanted a man to touch me, to kiss me. Was that so bad? And Jack was certainly a man that I would be willing to broach those things.

  Still… there was something about him that seemed off. I felt a bit of my guard still standing—not as steadfast as it had been when I had been pissed about the plane, but still firm nonetheless. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.

  It was then that I realized that I had been staring out to sea for a prolonged period of time. I shook the daze away and took a deep breath. Jesus, I was becoming such a wreck… and for no good reason.

  As I started back out towards the sea, heavily considering the option of opening up to Jack about David, I heard the loudest metallic clattering yet. This was followed by Jack shouting in triumph; he yelled and whopped, inserting some curses that, quite frankly, made me smile. It was the first truly unfiltered human response I had seen from him… aside form the sarcasm he had I had been exchanging.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  His head appeared from behind the metallic flap. He was grinning maniacally. It was the textbook definition of any man that had ever conquered something. I gave him a smile which he returned in spades.

  “Hell yeah,” he said, pulling himself up onto the float and climbing into the plane. The kept the door open as he climbed inside. He tried cranking the plane and it only sputtered.

  Unperturbed, Jack leaped back out into the water, grabbed a screw driver and a set of wrenches from the wing, and went back under the flap.

  “Close?” I asked.

  “Oh yeah. We’ll be back in the air within half an hour.”

  I was relieved but, oddly enough, rather sad. It was stupid. I had wanted to finally get all of this David and Devlin Stone crap off of my chest. And now was simply not going to be the time. I wasn’t going to be a buzzkill when Jack was so clearly pleased to have figured out how to fix the plane’s engine.

  I waded back out into the water with him and waited. When my feet got cold, I remained. If he could suffer through it while fixing the engine, I could do it, too. I watched him working, enjoying the view. His shirt was wet, clinging to his chest. And when he drive the screwdriver under the flap and started twisting, his muscles were on full display.

  Something’s wrong with you, I told myself.

  Yeah, that was probably true. But I was smiling because of a man. And it had been a long time since that had happened.

  It took only another five minutes under the wing before Jack was climbing back up the float. Again, I got a great view of his muscles. I knew that what I was doing could be considered inappropriate but it didn’t stop me. I found myself starting to tingle a bit and it wasn’t just form the cold water.

  This time when he tried cranking the plane to life, the repaired engine played nice. It puttered for a few moments but then finally kicked t
o life. Inside the cockpit, Jack gave a little fist pump and then looked down to me with a smile.

  I smiled back but again, something in my head tried to make a connection. Something about this seemed familiar. It was one of those deja-vu sorts of things. I felt like I had met Jack before… maybe seen him somewhere before. I shrugged this off as misplaced romanticism (perhaps out of guilt for undressing him with my eyes)

  “Want to head home or stay here on the beach for a while?” he asked me. “I can rig up a volleyball net and promptly destroy you if you’d like.”

  “Maybe some other time,” I said with a laugh.

  He nodded and hopped out. He dashed through the water, back to the beach and untethered us. When he came back to the plane, he assisted me inside. As he helped me up the float and into the door, I was far too aware of his hands on my hip as he helped me climb. I climbed over his seat and into the passenger space. I looked out to the little stretch of beach, once again taken by how surreal this was.

  “Ready to head back home?” he asked, settling down beh

  ind the controls.

  “Absolutely,” I said, smiling.

  But the hell of it was, it was only a half truth. Part of me wanted to be alone with him, not really for nay lustful reasons, but simply to have someone to talk to.

  You can do that at home, you know?

  It was a great thought. And as Jack steered us back out to deeper water and started accelerating to get to a good flying speed, that thought stayed in the center of my mind. Maybe he and I could do dinner again.

  And maybe if I wasn’t such a bitch this time, I could get that time alone with him I’d been thinking of.

  18—Devlin

  I had never had issues with an ego. For the three or four years in the spotlight when women were screaming for me, when B-list actresses were stumbling over one another to get me into bed, it somehow never went to my head. Sure, it had felt amazing but it had never seemed real to me; it always felt like I was watching a biography on someone else’s life.

  Because of the lack of ego and the ability to remain nailed to reality, I’d never been nervous around women, no matter how famous or beautiful. I never pretended to be someone I was not and always stuck to the plain and simple truth: I was a lucky man that did not deserve the fame, success, and attention that I had gotten.

  But all of this went out of the window as I checked myself over in the mirror one hour before heading out to meet Mac.

  As I combed my hair, I thought back over the past twelve hours and wondered how things had come to this. Sure, spending time together on a deserted island was a surefire way to bring people closer together. But neither of us had actually said anything in regards to going out on a date.

  Well, actually, I guess that was my fault. One of the few good things about having all of those women throwing themselves at my feet was that it honed your radar. Knowing when a woman was interested in your started to become very easy to determine. And on the way home, flying from our little island back to Sitka, Mac had been giving me all of the signs.

  Or so I had thought. When we landed and started up the dock towards the street that would lead to the Pine Way and the other businesses in the downtown district, the words had come right out of my mouth, spilling out as if they had been there all along and were tired of waiting.

  “Let’s get together for dinner tonight.”

  It hadn’t been a question and was, in fact, a bit more than a simple suggestion. She had nodded and smiled warmly. I saw in that smile that she wasn’t shy, per se, but wasn’t quite sure how to gauge me just yet.

  It was that smile, that uncertain glimmer of hope that things could be okay between us, that I was thinking of as I readied myself for our date. I’d napped for part of the day and spent the other part down at Red’s Garage—the one place in Sitka that worked on plane engines—trying to figure out what the hell had happened to my plane. I had left there with Red telling me it would be another day or so before he had any real answers. For now, though, everything seemed to be in working order.

  But the plane was the last thing on my mind. I stared at myself in the mirror and thought about shaving my goatee. Without it, and a nice haircut and grooming thrown in, my identity would be given away easily. I wasn’t quite ready for that. If anything was going to happen with Mac, I supposed I needed to come clean at some point. But now was simply not the time.

  I checked my watch and saw that I had only twenty minutes left before I was due to meet her. I’d be walking, not wanting to embarrass her by pulling up on my bicycle. And we had decided to not meet at Pier’s End again, as it had bad memories for us both. No sense in jinxing things.

  So I left the house and started walking down the hill towards town. The place mac had suggested this time was called The Wharf and sat just a few blocks away from the Pine Way. It was nearing six thirty as I made my way into town. I realized that I was beginning to recognize many of the faces I passed. While I wouldn’t go so far as to say that Sitka was starting to feel like home, it was starting to become comfortable.

  The weather was great—a slight chill clung to the air, but the evening sun was hanging in there. People were waving, and I was waving back. I was in a tremendously good mood. It was almost as if I hadn’t been fearing for my life as the plane had been going down roughly one day ago. It’s funny how quickly a man’s mood shifts when there is a woman involved.

  As if things weren’t already looking up, Mac and I arrived at the same time. I closed in on The Wharf just as she was crossing the street for the restaurant. She gave me a smile, which I returned.

  “Hey,” she said simply.

  “Hey,” I said back.

  I opened the door for her and, I’ll admit, gave her what I have always referred to as the UpDown. I checked her out from the top of the bottom quickly. It wasn’t a lurid sort of thing, though. I was simply appreciating the way she looked. She was dressed in a simple blouse with thin spaghetti straps and a pair of jeans that fit well, but not too tight. She looked quite nice—somewhere along that often tricky line between cute and sexy. Her hair was plain, combed straight and hanging just passed her shoulders. When she swooped some of it out of her eyes and looked back to me as she made her way through the door, she fell off of that line and directly into sexy.

  I followed behind her and as the hostess gathered two menus and found a table on the seating chart, Mac turned to me and gave a nod of approval.

  “You clean up nice,” she said.

  “Thanks.” I was wearing a pair of dark jeans and an olive colored button-down shirt. It was a reasonably nice outfit, but miles away from the sort of getups I had grown accustomed to wearing at Hollywood parties.

  The hostess waved us on towards an open table, breaking the eye contact between us. As we made out way to the table, I felt something in the air that I couldn’t describe. It was an energy that was present at high school dances or in the front seats of cars as young men dropped of their dates, parked in driveways five minutes before curfew. I was antsy, I was nervous, and I was excited.

  When we were seated and started looking over the menus, Mac wasted no time with small talk. I silently thanked her for this. Coming up with conversational gambits during dates was something I had always been terrible with.

  “So how’s the plane?”

  “It seems fine,” I said. “Red wasn’t able to find any one thing wrong with it. He’s going to take tomorrow to look over it. But for right now, he’s thinking it was a fluke.”

  “That’s a pretty dangerous fluke.”

  “Yeah, I guess it is.”

  Our waiter came by and took our drink orders. Mac ordered a glass of red wine and I had a pint of a local beer that was on tap.

  “Let me ask you something,” Mac said.

  “Go ahead.”

  “This is a date, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Not just a business meeting?”

  “No. I hadn’t planned on talking about busines
s at all, in fact.”

  Actually, I sort of wanted to. It might take my mind off of the fact that I had watcher her brother slowly die in my arms as we waited for a helicopter to descend. I felt like I needed to tell her, to let her know that I had been there with her brother at the end and witnessed his bravery. But apparently, anything concerning her brother made her uncomfortable and stand-offish.

  This was going to be a slippery slope. I figured that conversation would eventually come back around to my time with the Army and if we broached the topic of her brother, I’d let it all come out.

  For the next several minutes—between receiving our drinks and making it halfway through the meal—our date went smoothly. There was much small talk and some slightly-more-than-innocent flirting. During this time, I found that when she spoke, I found it hard to look away from her. She was very passionate and exaggerated when she spoke, particularly when she talked about her father and her life it Sitka. She told me that she had lived her entire life here… which had been hard to do following the divorce.

  “People start to show you pity, even four years after it’s all over,” she said. “You start to feel like a kid that everyone takes pity on because your folks don’t love you enough.”

  As my plate grew emptier and I ordered my second beer, the conversation inevitably turned to my history. I remained true to everything until my foray into Hollywood. I also stayed relatively vague when I talked about my time in the Army.

  I told her about how I had grown up as the younger brother to a girl that excelled in everything she had ever done. She’d then gotten pregnant at the age of sixteen and ran away. The last I had heard from her—which had been about seven years ago—she had three kids and was married to truck driver somewhere in Arkansas. What I didn’t tell Mac was that it was my sister’s quick descent into failure that had played a huge part in my decision to answer Hollywood’s call. I didn’t want to fall from grace as she had. It had also been the driving force behind my decision to enlist in the military.