For the better.
23
Oliver
The boat bobbed on the water in the marina and I thought about slipping the rope and taking my baby out for a spin. Since leaving Mari in the library yesterday, though, I hadn’t had the energy to go for a sail. I didn’t want to do it alone.
It wasn’t like Mari called out for my cousin while we were in the throes of passion, but it didn’t do a man’s ego any good to have a woman wrapped up in his arms pull away and ask about another man.
And worse, I hadn’t stuck around for clarification. I left her there alone as I made my escape from the estate and found myself in the one area of the world I could always call my own even if I shared her with seven billion strangers.
The ocean.
The waves called to me, but I did not answer. It was the first time in my life I hadn’t taken to open water to deal with a conflict. Leaving now would take me away from my solar project.
And Mari.
Ties were keeping me on the mainland, and I wasn’t free to chart my own course. It was both horrifying and disheartening. I never felt heartbreak to this magnitude, especially when I hadn’t even been dumped.
“Oliver?” a sweet voice called out. I wasn’t sure I’d ever hear that voice again.
I stuck my head out of the hall. “Mari?”
She stood at the end of the dock, the sun filtered around her head as the light blue dress she wore caught up in the wind. “Can I board?”
I nodded and took the steps two a time to reach the dock and help her over the gap.
“What are you doing here?”
She hugged me hard, and her head rested in the crook of my neck allowing me to breathe in the smell of her lavender shampoo. Mari was my happy place, where I went to lose myself even for a moment, and I did so then. When did she become so important? Time didn’t matter, the only thing that did was that she’d become my compass. My solid ground. In a short time Mari had become everything.
“I had to find you because I need to tell you,” Mari said pulling back and staring into my eyes.
I drew a few strands of her hair off her shoulder and tucked them behind her ear. “Tell me what?”
She smiled slightly. “I choose you. I don’t know what that will mean, and I don’t know how to tell Pierce or Betty in Guatemala, but I choose you, Oliver.”
I wanted to ask a hundred questions, but nothing would make me ruin the moment for anything. I picked her up, sweeping her legs over my arm, and Mari squealed as I carried her down into the ship where I safely deposited her on my rumpled comforter.
“I don’t know how we’ll make it work,” she said as I laid kisses on her neck and sucked on the soft skin of her collarbone. She was mine. Finally.
“We can spend time in Guatemala and Africa.” I only had one potential site in Africa set aside. I’d find more in Guatemala. We needed to make sure Mari made it back to her volunteering site as often as possible. I didn’t care where we spent our time as long as we were there together.
She gasped as I rolled her nipple through the fabric of her dress. “What about Pierce?”
Hearing his name brought up the emotions I refused to deal with in that moment. Mari wasn’t his actual woman, but I was stealing her nonetheless. “I don’t want to talk about Pierce.”
She pulled back meeting my eyes again. “We have to. I have a good deal with Pierce. My project needs this money.”
I wanted to be a strong of man and tell her she could continue her farce to pretend to be his fiancée for the next few months, but the words wouldn’t come. Mari became mine the minute she walked on this boat, and the time came for me to claim her. “We’ll tell Pierce the truth. Together.”
“What about the money? I promised my site leader we had the funding,” she voiced her concern while pulling my polo shirt over my head.
Did she realize the money didn’t matter? “I’ll give you the money.”
She moaned as I raised the bottom of her dress, exposing her thighs, and then her core until the fabric was around her neck. Then together we pulled the dress away, and she left herself exposed for my eyes to roam.
“I can’t take your money,” she argued.
