Avery

I woke the next morning, grinning. Who did that? Not me, certainly not in the middle of a season. Like most yachties, mid-season slump normally kicked my ass. By then tips had become the norm rather than a treat. The lack of sleep took its toll and there had been enough difficult charters and spoiled guests for time to drag and tempers to fray. It was the point in the season where we woke up sobbing, not grinning. But there was nothing normal about this season. Not the length of charter, not the lack of guests and certainly not the sex. If Hayden was even a tiny percentage as good at his job as he was at fucking me, it was no wonder he was a gazillionaire. I shivered at the thought of his mouth, his cock, his dirty words. I pulled the covers off and headed to the bathroom. A cold shower was the first item on the agenda.

After fucking me as though it was his job, Hayden had promised we’d be discreet. I should have given him up, redrawn the line in the sand, but there was so little about my life that was for me that I wanted to cling to Hayden and how I felt about him for as long as I could.

I wasn’t on duty until ten this morning, but I tended to keep my hours to whatever Hayden was doing. I showered and changed. Put on some tinted moisturizer and a coat of mascara and then, wet-haired, I picked up Hayden’s satellite phone from beside my bed. He’d insisted I take it last night when I told him I’d not spoken to my father for a couple of days.

“Daddy?” I asked as my father answered the phone.

“Avery. How are you?”

I took a seat on my bed, running my free hand through my wet hair, separating the sodden strands. “I’m sorry I didn’t call last night, there was some stuff here I had to sort out. Did you hear anything from the insurers?”

Since my father’s diagnosis, I’d persuaded him to have some additional help, just to assist with getting Michael up in the mornings. We just had to get the insurer to pay for it, and given the premium increase I was paying this year, they’d better.

“Oh, you know what they’re like. I’ll manage just fine.”

“No, Daddy. Lifting isn’t good for you.”

“I said I’ll manage. The insurance company isn’t going to pay.”

“You heard from them?” I asked.

“I got through yesterday. They’re reassessing our benefits or something.”

“Well that sounds good. Like they’re trying to help.”

My dad snorted. “I don’t think that’s what they meant.”

My father always tried to keep bad news from us. He was always the one marching forward at the front telling us it wasn’t as bad as we thought it was. But I’d learned to read the signs. He wasn’t telling me something. “What did they say?”

“We don’t know anything for certain, not yet.”

“What does ‘yet’ mean? Please don’t keep this from me. I need to know.”

There was a long, deep sigh at the other end of the phone. “I don’t know, Avery. Apparently, unless he’s making significant improvement with the physical therapy, the insurance company said it could be cut.”

“What?” I leapt out of my bed. “They can’t do that. He is making progress. He’s working really hard.”

“I don’t know, honey. They said something about it being chronic or preventative or—I can’t remember. They’re saying they’ll drop his sessions down to once a month.”

I was already paying for three sessions a week and that was only because I had a forty percent pay rise this season. I couldn’t pay for an extra three. “But we didn’t call about the physical therapy. We wanted additional home care. I don’t understand why they would decide to stop what they’ve been doing since the accident.”

“I guess our request for additional help led to a review of the entire file. I don’t know, sweetheart. But we’ll manage. We always do. I don’t want you to worry about it.”

I wanted to scream. I’d paid a fortune in premiums over the years and now they were cutting treatment? It wasn’t fair.

I had little in savings as I’d just finished paying for adjustments to the house so Michael’s wheelchair would fit and we could adapt the garage to a downstairs bedroom.

I pulled out my notebook from the shelf above my bed where I noted down my budgets. I’d always gotten into trouble as a teenager for being reckless with my allowance, but since Michael’s accident I’d coveted every penny—allocating every dollar and cent I had carefully. Maybe I could pay for the additional home help, but there was no way I was going to be able to pay for additional physical therapy too.

“He’s been making so much progress, Dad. The physical therapist said so. And you know how much he wants to walk again.” I might not be able to turn back time and stop us from going down to the river, but I would do everything I could so Michael lived the best life available to him. Maybe I could get a promotion to a bigger boat or go work on one of those Russian oligarch’s yachts and dodge bullets and the sexual harassment for more money.

“I know, honey. They’ve told us they’re putting it in writing, so let’s just wait for the letter and see exactly what’s going on.”

This was the last thing I wanted my father to be coping with. Another setback, another hurdle to climb. With his recent health scare he should be thinking about reducing his hours at work and taking things easy, but there was no way he’d do that now.

“Okay. Will you send me a copy—” Shit. I still wasn’t used to not having email on board. “Email me a copy of the letter when you get it. I’ll go ashore to an internet café and pick it up. In the meantime, I’ll see what ideas I have for bringing in some more cash. Maybe I’ll hold up a bank or something.”

My father chuckled. “Yeah, I don’t see you as an armed robber.”

I smiled. No matter what, my dad always found the funny side. “It won’t be long until I’m home.”

“It will be good to see you.”

My heart tugged at his words. He wasn’t a sentimental man and he’d never admitted he wanted me home or that he missed me. He always insisted that there was nothing in Sacramento for me, and that I was much better off travelling the world. His words, and the dull way they sounded across the phone, made me think that maybe things were changing. Maybe his positivity was floundering. I wasn’t sure what I would do if he lost his bright smile and easy charm—it was who my dad was. No, I had to find a solution to this and things would go back to how they’d been for the last seven years. I had to find a way to restore hope to our family.