Spring Break Secret by Holly Rayner
Tom
After the bonfire, they headed back onto the sailboat, anchoring it a way out from shore. Tom was getting the rigging tied up and ready for overnight, while Louisa helped out. She had been a quick study with all the knot tying and boat terminology, and Tom was impressed at how quickly she had learned her way around the complicated ropes and sails.
Once they had finished, Tom opened a bottle of wine and they sat down to share it in the cool ocean air. “Today was really nice,” Tom said, pouring a generous glass of wine before passing it to Louisa.
“It really was,” Louisa agreed, sipping her wine. “I love Florida’s beaches.”
“I’m starting to see why.”
“You didn’t even get pinched by a crab,” Louisa pointed out.
“I did step on something slimy, though,” Tom said, shuddering at the memory. “I still think I might prefer pools.”
“Yech,” Louisa said. “All that chlorine? No thank you. Give me the occasional slimy thing to step on over those chemicals any day.”
“Fair enough.” The mention of chemicals made Tom’s gut twist. He had brought a pile of Comentex-related paperwork with him to study on the boat, but Nick knew that Tom was on a short trip and wouldn’t be giving him answers until he got back.
“There’s something I wanted to talk to you about,” Louisa said, and Tom worried that he might not get to escape the topic of chemicals any longer.
“Sure thing,” he said, feeling nervous and taking another drink of wine.
“I talked to Rei tonight, on the phone. And she’s excited to meet you. I think she’s ready, too.”
This was not at all what Tom was expecting to hear, and he felt his heart leap with joy. “That’s wonderful!”
“I was thinking we could meet up at her favorite place—the beach just next to the La Vega boardwalk. She’ll be totally in her element, and she’ll get to show you around a place that she considers hers.”
“That sounds great,” Tom said. They only had another day left of their sailboat cruise, so they immediately started making plans for this meeting a few days from now.
Louisa took out her phone to text her mom about the plans and add the meeting to her calendar. “I just realized I’ve never actually shown you a picture of her.”
Tom nodded. It had not escaped him that Louisa had chosen not to share many details about Rei with him, and he had done his best to respect her privacy and the time she was taking to open up.
“Here.” Louisa handed Tom her phone, and there was an image of a little girl, one of her front teeth missing, her smile wide, as she held up a papier-mâché model of a sea turtle.
“She made that at Eco Scouts last year,” Louisa explained. “It lives on our kitchen table, but it’s sort of falling apart now.”
But Tom wasn’t looking at the lumpy homemade turtle. He was gazing at the little girl—his little girl. Love flooded through his heart as he took in the image. She had her mom’s red hair, but his blue eyes, and a pair of dimples on her cheeks that were entirely her own.
“She’s perfect,” Tom whispered, touching the phone screen with one fingertip and wishing he could hold his daughter in his arms.
“She’ll be so thrilled to meet you,” Louisa said.
Tom hoped desperately that that was the case.
That night, down in his cabin below deck, Tom couldn’t fall asleep. He tossed and turned, then switched on the little light and tried to read through the Comentex materials from Nick that he’d brought with him.
The words just swam before his eyes, though, and he could hardly focus. All Tom could think about was Rei, the smiling little girl he’d seen in the photograph. He climbed back up on deck, quietly enough to avoid disturbing Louisa, and sat near the mast, looking out over the dark ocean.
He remembered sailing like this with his dad, going out on boats with his father’s business associates and learning his way around the rigging. His dad was always so proud of him when he worked hard and got better at his rope skills, but there was a pressure behind that pride, the threat of disappointment if Tom were to fail or falter.
When his dad got sick, Tom had promised him to be a good steward of Palmco Development, and after his dad died a few years later, Tom had taken those promises seriously. He knew how important this was to his father, how high his dad’s expectations had been.
This was the path that had been laid out for him—CEO of Palmco, successful and wealthy, dedicated to his work and focused on making the company as profitable as it could be. He had been born into it and raised to expect nothing else.
Now, though, another path was appearing before him. An opportunity to be a father, and perhaps a partner, to spend his life with Louisa and Rei. There was happiness there, he knew, available to him if he was only able and willing to reach out for it.
But it would mean turning his back on everything else, giving up on the vows he had sworn to his dad. There was no way he could stay as devoted to his CEO duties as he was now if he moved to La Vega and became a family man.
And then there was the issue of the Comentex and the new development he was supposed to oversee upon his return to La Vega. Tom didn’t know what to do, and unfortunately neither the black night sky nor the endlessly dark sea held any answers.