“Who has a family of her own to care for. Don’t worry, you’ll still get plenty of time to fuss over me while I’m home.”

He strapped a sleeping bag to the back of the motorcycle while his mother watched him. Pretending not to notice her frosty glare, he tinkered with spark plugs and connections before straddling the bike to kick-start it. The engine sputtered and died. He tried twice more before it roared to life with a deafening backfire.

Mac couldn’t wait to open up the bike on the island’s winding roads, just like he used to.

“Where are you going?” his mother hollered over the roar.

“To see Dad and then back to Maddie’s. I’ll be by tomorrow.”

“Mac! Wait! We need to talk!”

He turned the bike around and gunned it, sending pieces of crushed shell flying behind him.

“You forgot your helmet!”

Flashing a grin over his shoulder, he pretended he couldn’t hear her. Just like old times.

As Mac coasted down the long, winding hill that led to the marina, he was glad he hadn’t bothered to cut his hair before he left Miami. The wind rushing through it took him right back to high school, and the wild burst of freedom reminded him of a time before life became so complicated.

His thoughts inevitably turned to Maddie and what Janey had told him. They’d grown up just a few miles apart, but light years separated them. While he’d been the hometown hero, she’d been mocked and ridiculed and God knows what else because of something she could neither help nor change.

“It’s not up to you to right all those wrongs,” he muttered to himself. But for some reason, he wanted to do just that. She’d stirred something primal in him and touched a part of him he hadn’t even known existed. The notion both excited and discomforted at the same time.

Even as he decided he should keep his distance, he knew he wouldn’t. In fact, as soon as he said a quick hello to his father, he’d be heading right back to her. Surely the reaction he’d had earlier was the result of the accident and the ensuing burst of adrenaline. Once he saw her again, everything would be back to normal, or at least he hoped so.

Mac zipped into the marina and parked next to one of the Dumpsters.

Thanks to his six-foot, four-inch height, Big Mac’s thatch of wiry gray hair stood out amid the chaos on the main dock. Because the word sunscreen was not, and had never been, in his vocabulary, he was already as tan as most people were by the end of the summer. He wore a blue T-shirt with a faded silkscreen of a wide-mouthed bass and bleached-out denim shorts with his trademark boat shoes.