He waited.
“I need to go back to Palm Beach,” I said, my voice quieter. “There are things I have to take care of. The house. The business. My life … before.”
He nodded. “I figured.”
“But I don’t want to stay there,” I added quickly. “Not long. Maybe not at all.”
“Sloane—”
“I want to be with you,” I said, cutting him off gently. “That’s what I know. The rest? I don’t care. Charleston, Palm Beach, a cabin in the woods—I don’t give a damn where we are as long as we’re together.”
His jaw tightened, but not from tension. Emotion, maybe. Relief.
“You’re sure?” he asked.
I reached for his hand across the table. “I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life.”
Charlie gave my fingers a gentle squeeze. “Only thing on my calendar this week is making a donation to a local medical clinic. Thought maybe you could help me craft a pitch to raise some funds from friends, maybe expand.”
I blinked. “Oh?”
He nodded. “They’re good people. Underfunded, though. I like to drop in sometimes—quietly—find someone falling through the cracks. Give them the money, the referrals, whatever they need to get help.”
My chest tightened. Not from sadness—just from the sheer size of him. His heart.
“You do that a lot?”
“Often as I can,” he said, like it was no big deal. “Most people don’t need saving. They just need someone to see them.”
The back door creaked open somewhere down the hall—probably one of the brothers coming in from a run or a meeting or some not-so-secret mission. The house hummed with quiet activity. Life kept moving.
But right there, right then, everything inside of me was still.
We sat in the sunshine, holding hands, letting the world turn around us. For the first time, I didn’t feel like I was running from anything. I was ready to run toward something instead.
Charlie squeezed my hand once, then let out a slow breath like he’d been holding it for days. “I want us to take the yacht,” he said. “Today.”
I blinked. “The yacht?”
He nodded, a glint of mischief lighting his eyes. “We’ll head down the Intracoastal Waterway. Just you and me. A few days tobe together before we hit Palm Beach. No chaos. No noise. Just good food, open water, and time to figure things out—on our terms.”
My heart stuttered in the best way.
“We’ll stop at little restaurants along the way,” he continued, his voice soft and certain. “Sleep under the stars on the deck, drink too much wine, maybe pretend we’re normal people for once. You can steal my sweatshirts. I’ll steal your fancy shampoo.”
I laughed, breathless. “That sounds … perfect.”
“As normal as we can be,” I added, grinning, “on a massive yacht with a crew that probably knows how to filet a sea bass and break someone’s kneecaps in the same afternoon.”
He smirked. “Multitasking. It’s a lost art.”
We laughed together.
“It’ll give you time to decide what you want to do with the place down there,” he added. “And give us time to talk about everything else. Without pressure. Just us.”
Just us.
I pushed my chair back and stood, sliding into his lap like it was the most natural thing in the world. His arms came around me automatically.
