For a heartbeat, everything almost feels… Like it used to.
I accept that as the boat jets away from the ship. I even let myself relax, that is, until we step onto the dock.
Most of the wedding guests are already milling around—and I immediately start scanning the marina. I’m looking for the yacht, the one from the website. Sleek. Modern. Seaworthy.
I don’t see it.
I see a few other tenders. A couple of fishing boats. Vendors lining the dock with coolers and sun-faded umbrellas.
But no yacht.
“Faraday—Grady party!Theeesway!”
The voice cuts through the crowd.
A swarthy man in a crooked captain’s hat and a faded T-shirt with CABO SAN LUCAS across the chest is waving his arm like he’s directing traffic. Not exactly who I pictured.
My stomach tightens. But he’s already corralling my group down the dock.
And then I see it, moored to the very last wooden posts.
A two-story wide-bodied vessel that smells of asphalt and old wood, with paint chipping, and tilting railings.
I slow to a stop.
This cannot possibly be ours.
I flip through the mental checklist I live by. Fine print read. Reviews checked. Comparisons made twice. Except?—
I pull out my phone, search through confirmation emails.
The man at the dock keeps waving, cheerful and oblivious.
“Right this way!”
The email I managed to thumb to reads…The Great Arch Explorer.
My head snaps up. Because that’s the nameon thisrickety, listing, end-of-the-dock thing?—
No.
No, no, no.
I have been… distracted. Not careless. Never careless. Just… a little stressed.
Still, this boat isn’t even close to what I booked.
“Wait! Excuse me!” I raise my voice, and then wave a hand in the air trying to get someone’s attention.
But no one is listening to me.
Beckett glances back with a question in his eyes, but he’s holding the boys’ hands, and with them pulling him over a feeble-looking plank and onto the boat, there isn’t much he can do.
Meanwhile. I. Am. Panicking.
This is… this is… It’s not what I ordered!
I try to hurry around Mr. and Mrs. Whitaker and then scooch by the two Baxter sisters without pushing any of them overboard, but just as I find my footing, my ears are assaulted by the crackling sound of a too-loud microphone.
