Chapter 5 · Two Hours of Diesel

The burner shivered against the bare floorboards before I could find my boots.

ICU POWER CUT.

Four jagged words on a cracked glass screen. Underneath sat my mother’s name in the hospice’s blunt billing font, next to a blinking red alert.

I got one bar of service if I stood on the third board from the drafty window and stopped breathing. On the third dial, the call clicked through. I could hear Deb’s rubber soles squeaking hard against clinic tile before she even spoke.

"Vivian."

"How long?"

"The backup generator’s got diesel for two hours," Deb said, breathless. "Three if I shut off the heat to the entire east wing, and I’m not freezing out Mrs. Alvarez down the hall." A sharp beat. "Somebody slapped an administrative hold on your mother’s account at six-forty tonight. It’s a signature hold. I can't override corporate without a release, honey."

"Whose signature?"

"You know damn well whose."

Freezing damp seeped straight through the pine boards into my wool socks. I hadn't put on shoes. I hadn't put on anything except the oversized thermal I'd slept in and the stiff canvas coat I’d grabbed off the hook by the door. Two in the morning. The loft was forty degrees, and the saltwater wind off the harbor ripped through the wall slats like a personal attack.

"Two hours," I said, throat dry.

"Maybe less." Deb’s voice split right down the seam. "She’s stable right now, Vivi. But there’s a protocol sheet on my clipboard. If the fuel runs out and that hold isn't cleared, I have to step aside and let the machines—"

"Don't say it. I know what the sheet says."

I cut the line and tapped June’s private number.

She picked up on the fourth ring. A silver fork tapping against fine porcelain. Low, muted laughter in the background. Jazz that cost more than my entire truck.

"Vivian." She sounded pure sunshine. June always sounded delighted when she had a foot on someone's neck. "A bit late for a check-in, isn't it?"

"Lift the hold."

"Which hold would that be?"

"Don't play with me, June."

"Why don’t you ask that husband of yours?" A chair scraped lightly over marble. Her voice dipped into that buttery, poisonous lilt she used whenever my father was in earshot. "You took the ring, Vivi. You signed on for the marriage. Marriage means living inside a shared budget. That was the whole arrangement, wasn't it?"

"He hasn't got a dime and you know it."

"Then maybe you should have read the fine print before you jumped." Ice cubes clinked against crystal. "Family brunch is Sunday at ten. Wear something that doesn't smell like a bait shop and we'll discuss the hospice account."

The line went dead before I could draw breath to scream.

Two hours.

My bank app loaded after two agonizing minutes. Sixty-one dollars and thirty-four cents. An unpaid municipal parking ticket had already dinged forty of it, leaving twenty-one dollars and thirty-four cents.

My mother’s breath was hanging on twenty-one dollars, a tank of cheap fuel, and a signature I couldn't afford.

I threw open the loft door and flew down the outside iron stairs in my socks.

The metal steps were rusted raw, biting into the soles of my feet like jagged ice. Freezing salt rain whipped sideways off the channel, drenching my hair, driving needles down my collar. I sprinted to the far edge of the rotting pier where the cellular signal was supposed to catch.

Rain ran in sheets down my face. I redialed the hospice—got an automated routing loop. I dialed the bank to confirm the balance and listened to a hollow synthetic voice read out my twenty-one dollars. Then I dialed a boatyard contractor in New Bedford who still owed me four grand from a spring hull survey.

Eleven rings. Voicemail.

I stood there until the stinging in my toes went dead, which was a hell of a lot scarier than the pain. Then I dragged myself back up the iron stairs.

Garrett was sitting on the edge of the mattress.

A rough wool blanket lay across his thighs. He was awake. Stone awake, eyes fixed on the door frame like he’d been tracking every single second I'd been gone.

The battery lantern on the wooden crate threw a hard yellow wedge across the room, leaving the dark corners swallowed whole. He wore a faded thermal with the sleeves shoved up to his thick forearms, muscles bunched, skin pebbled with cold. He hadn't bothered with a coat.

He smelled like pine pitch, diesel grease, and raw rain.

"You're soaking the boards," he said, voice rough as gravel.

"Oh, it's your floor now?"

"It's my floor every night your ass sleeps in that bed. You want to litigate the lease at three in the morning, go call a lawyer."

Something inside my chest snapped clean through. The freezing rain, June’s silky venom still echoing in my ear, the sheer arrogance of him sitting there watching me drown like I was just bad weather passing through.

"How much?" he said.

I froze. "What?"

"How much do you need to clear it."

A laugh ripped out of me—ugly, thin, and brittle. "What are you gonna do, dockmaster? Cut me a cashier's check? With what? You ate my stale cereal two nights ago because there wasn't a scrap of food in this dump that wasn't rusted shut!"

His jaw ticked once. Hard. He set the lantern onto the floor with a dull thud.

"You don't get to ask me that," my voice cracked, high and wild. "You don't get to sit on that cot with your arms crossed and ask me how much, like you're some kind of—"

The words shattered. I slammed the back of my hand against my mouth, biting down hard into my bottom lip to choke back the sob before it escaped. Too hard. Hot copper flooded my tongue.

The mattress frame groaned.

He cleared the distance between us in three long, heavy strides. Garrett stopped less than an inch off my toes, towering over me, cutting off the draft from the stairs. Heat rolled off his bare chest like an open furnace. Cold rain dripped from my soaked bangs and struck the floor between his heavy work boots.

His hand came up under my jaw.

Not rough. That was what nearly tore the floor out from under me. If he’d grabbed me hard, I had teeth and fury ready to strike back. But his callused fingers just cupped my chin, firm and immovable, his thumb tilting my face up into the light.

He stared down at my mouth. His rough thumb swept across my split lower lip, wiping away the wet red smear.

It stung like fire. His thumb came away stained with my blood. Garrett didn't wipe it off. He just rubbed his thumb against his forefinger, eyes dark and unreadable as iron slate.

Behind him, past the mattress, the loft’s open shower stall sat submerged in shadow—six feet of cracked, frosted glass with no lock on the rusted latch.

Garrett’s grip tightened on my jaw just enough to keep me from pulling away. His voice dropped low, rumbling against my skin.

"Strip. Get in the shower."