“Raphe?” I rose to my feet, head cocked, brow furrowed, when he returned from the bathroom. I’d been expecting him to come out swinging, gorgeous in a robe, maybe only his boxers. Definitely not in exercise shorts, tennis shoes, and a sporty hooded sweatshirt. “What are you wearing?” Maybe he wanted to role play too? Sexy athletic trainer meets sedentary party girl?
Pointing his chin toward the couch, he said, “Have a seat, Sunny.”
He knew.Stars save me, he knew. I didn’t know what he knew, but he knew enough. Dropping onto his couch again, I shut my eyes and slammed my hands over my face.
“No.” Sitting beside me, he pulled my hands down, one at a time. “Don’t do that.”
I kept my eyes shut, hiding. From him or from myself, I wasn’t sure. “I’m so sorry, Raphe.”
His hand slid over my cheek. “Open your eyes. Talk to me. Tell me what’s going on.”
I cracked one eye open, then the other, but I had no idea where to begin.
After I stared at him for a moment, failing to find my words, he asked, “How long have we been doing this, you and I?”
“Since I started working here.”Since tragedy shook my life to its core, and I ran away to this ship to hide from it all. “Almost five years.”
“Five years.” He sighed, his lips pressing into a resigned smile. “Not a bad run. But I knew, eventually, it would come to an end.”
“Nothing is ending. I’m just?—”
Brushing my bangs back from my forehead, he said, “But maybe it should. End, that is. Maybe it’s time to let go of whatever has been holding you back.”
“What are you talking about?” I sat up, my heart lurching painfully into my throat. “Nothing’s holding me back. I’m just tired. It was a long night. That’s all.”
He shook his head, rueful. “I always hoped I might be the one you’d choose, but that man—what was his name? Freddie?”
“Freddie?” I asked, looking at him like he’d made up the word.
“Yes,” he said with a small, patient laugh.
“What about Freddie? There’s nothing… We aren’t… We’re not together. At all.”
“Are you sure?” he asked, a sleek brow raised. “Because he looked at you so many times tonight, I stopped keeping track.”
I blinked, something light and bubbly fluttering in my stomach. “He did?”
“And you,” he said slowly, like he was begging me to disagree, “couldn’t take your eyes off him either.”
Slumping back against the cushions, I relented, too exhausted to deny it. Plus, he was a lawyer. He’d see through me anyway. “I have been a miserable date.”
He clicked his tongue. “Not my finest hour, I’ll admit. I wanted to have you at least one more time before you left me.”
Turning toward him, I took his hoodie in both hands and pulled, still trying to convince myself that none of this was happening. I was still Sunny, and he was still Raphe, and we still made sense together when nothing else did. “It’s not too late,” I said, even though we both knew it was.
Air rushed from his nose. “Sleeping with a woman while she’s thinking of someone else isn’t really my thing.”
“Fuck,” I groaned again. “Why is this happening to me?”
Taking my hands in his, he squeezed gently and said, “It happens to us all, eventually. If we’re lucky.”
“No.” I shook my head in fierce denial. “It’s not that. It’s only an infatuation. It’ll pass.”
“In the five years I’ve known you,” he said, cutting through my bullshit like a surgeon with a laser scalpel, “I have never, not once, seen you this affected by another being. I won’t pretend to know the circumstances of your relationship with Freddie?—”
Mind-blowing one-night stand that has left me in an utterly unraveled heap ever since.
“—but something like this doesn’t come along every day, Sunny. It’s fleeting and precious, and it should never, ever be ignored. Whether you want to be with him or not, for whatever reason, you should talk to him. Really talk to him. Because he feels something for you, I can tell. And if you feel something for him, you owe it to yourself, and to him, to tell him. At the very least, even if nothing comes of it, he’ll know that he isn’t losing his mind.”
