“Well … I know that you’ve done long term before, and I know that … that how I feel about you is important enough to me that I want this to work … I really,reallywant it to work … but?—”
“But you’ve got no idea if you’re ready for something so serious,” he interrupted, his brows furrowing.
I shook my head vehemently, my hands going to his shoulders and squeezing. “That’s not it at all! I … I’m scared, Henry.” I nibbled on my lip, wondering how to put these feelings into words. “I worry that if something goes wrong between us, it will ruin everything.”
“Well, let’s just make sure that it doesn’t go wrong, Catnip,” Henry murmured.
“How do we do that? How do we not make mistakes? How can you be so sure that in a month, or six months, or a year, we won’t fuck up somehow, and it will all fall apart?”
Henry’s thumb swiped over my cheek, and I realised that I was crying. His green eyes were brimming with emotion too.
“Wewillmake mistakes, Ri. Everyone does. It’s how we handlethem that matters. But if there’s trust, and honesty, and … affection, then mistakes are just a learning curve, and we can work through them together. But for now, let’s just enjoy this new thing we’ve found, because if we spend all our time worrying about a hypothetical future where we might hurt one another, how can we appreciate what we have right now?”
“Who are you, and what have you done with Henry ‘Solve For All Variables’ Baxter?” I sniffed.
Henry chuckled. “I don’t want to solve for you, Ri. You’re not a problem. Right now you’re the least problematic thing in my life, and I want to bask in that.”
I nodded, sniffing, unable to speak. I wanted what he was saying to be true. I wanted to enjoy what we’d discovered. I wanted the trust and the honesty, and I wanted so much more of his affection.
I wantedlovewith him. But it could so easily slip out of my grasp. Because I was problematic. I was the woman with more than one stalker and a bunch of secrets and a criminal family … and I was still holding something back from him. Something I simply couldn’t tell him. The shame of it … the worries that lurked because of it. I wished I could scrub them from my mind forever.
“Catnip … is everything alright?” Henry asked, voice tight with worry.
With an effort, I forced all of it back down deep into the dark place where I’d been locking it for years and nodded.
“It’s just been … a big few months,” I admitted.
Henry’s lips brushed my temple. “That it has,” he agreed softly. “But if we had to go through all of that, to get this, then as far as I’m concerned, it’s all been worth it.”
I managed a wan smile, pressing a little kiss to his nose and getting up before he could get a good look at my no doubt haggard expression.
“Coffee?” I asked, heading for the kitchen.
“You know how I like it,” he replied. And I did. I knew a lot about him now in the space of a few short months. I knew he preferred fairy bread to cake, and that he made a mean spaghetti Bolognese. That his cats were like children to him, even though he spoke about them with a certain affectionate disdain. That his past had also been unhappy and difficult, and that he’d come out the other side of it … just like I had.
As long as my past didn’t catch up with me …
Everything I learnt about him made me care about him more … made me want this to work with every fibre of my being. Made me realise that even if I couldn’t be entirely honest with him, I’d already put all my trust in him. I trusted him to look after me. I trusted him to keep me safe.
But there was that niggling little voice in the back of my head, reminding me thathedidn’t know everything aboutme… that I wasn’t worthy ofhistrust.
We arrived at Staghorn Island the next morning. Josie came trotting down the stairs, grinning wide as I spooned muesli into my mouth.
“You can use the swim spa whenever you like, Irina!” she announced merrily. “We are officially docked.”
I glanced at Henry, whose face was suspiciously ruddy as he took a bite of his Vegemite toast. I hid a smirk behind a sip of coffee, wondering whether he was imagining the last time we’d been in the spa together. The first time I’d felt him hard between my legs … and how the rule no longer applied to stop us from taking things further. I hoped that was what he was thinking about. Because now my brain was filled with it.
I’d shoved the worries of the previous day firmly back in their box. I was on a yacht with my husband, who was utterly insatiable when it came to pleasuring me … and within a week I should be able to return to Australia and live there legally, hopefully forever.
Forever with Henry.
For now, I just needed to take life day by day and not worry about things—and people—on the other side of the world, who might never bother me again.
And if taking it day by day meant fucking him in the spa, then who was I to complain?
“Parker will undertake some routine maintenance around the yacht, and I’ll do an inventory of supplies … I’ve already radioed to the mainland, and we can get a chopper to fly out what we need. It’s the most expedient way to go about things,” Josie continued, apparently oblivious to the fact that neither Henry nor I were paying her much attention.
“You do what you need to do, Josie,” he murmured, a naughty little smirk tilting his lips up and crinkling his eyes as he watched me. “Just one stipulation.”
