I feel the truth of this reality sink like a weight in my chest. It will never be the way it was. My brothers and I will never know the life my dad knew, and his dad before him. There’s something so utterly defeating in that. A smart man would walk away; he’d sell everything he could, split the money and make a new life somewhere else. But it’s all the fucking history—what my family has fought for, sacrificed for, what Dad worked to keep after he lost Mom—that keeps me from just walking away.

“Right,” she says. “I guess that makes sense. What about fishing other things, then?”

“We already do that. We do sockeye, pink and chum salmon, roe herring, halibut, invertebrates,” I say, and then pause, seeing her face fall. I feel sort of guilty, she’s clearly put some time into this and I’m just shooting down her ideas, one after another.

But in typical Harlow fashion, she seems undeterred. “So maybe we need to think outside the box.”

“Outside the box, huh?”

“Yeah, let’s see...” She leans forward, knees pressed to mine, her hand ghosting along the top of my thigh. I’m still shirtless, and swear I can feel the heat from her body, an awareness of having her near me. And I wonder if she has any idea how it feels, or if I’m the only one of the two of us who gets so wrapped up that I could accurately estimate the distance between us in millimeters.

“What about T-shirts?”

I blink. “T-shirts?”

“Yeah, like, your own clothing line. Imagine a glossy ad with you and your studly brothers. You’re standing in the middle and wrapped in a tight T-shirt—”

“You’re messing with me now, aren’t you?”

“Maybe a little,” she says, tapping my nose with her index finger. “Because you’re so cute in the morning.” Sitting up straighter, she continues, “So imagine this: you, muscles, and an arrow pointing straight down with the words ROBERTS BAIT AND TACKLE printed on the shirt.”

“Pointing straight down,” I clarify.

“Yes.”

“To my cock.”

“Yes.”

I close my eyes and take a deep breath, counting to ten. “Ginger Snap. Honey,” I say, and close the distance between us even more. “I promise I’ve spent more time on this than you can possibly imagine. I’ve considered everything.”

“Everything?”

Nodding, I lift my coffee to my lips.

“How about selling sperm?”

Coughing, I splutter, “Pardon me?”

“Sperm. Jizz. Semen. Protein shakes. Love juice. Pecker spit. Face crea—”

“Harlow.”

“What? You said everything.”

“Why...” I start, and shake my head. “Wait, were you starting to say face cream?”

She nods.

Shaking my head, I decide to move on from that visual. “Why on God’s earth would I donate sperm?”