I had.
“So I’m moving here to be with you,” he said, shrugging. “If you want to stay in the dorms, that’s fine. I know you work hard and don’t need distractions. But if you want to live in here with me, there’s a tiny extra room back there that we can turn into your study room. And it’s only twenty minutes from campus, even in shitty traffic, as you just saw. Plus, the views from these windows are pretty excellent...”
I looked around at all the warm wood and steel inside the belly of the trawler. It was pleasant in here, I had to admit. And he wasn’t kidding about the views. Nothing but water and boats. My favorite.
“What about your job with Mr. Neely back in Haven Beach?”
“He was disappointed but I gave him notice. He hired my replacement last week.”
“Jaz and Benny know?”
He nodded. “I asked them to keep it secret. I wanted to surprise you?” He didn’t sound very sure about that. “I rented this slip here at the marina until next summer. It’s a little pricier than Neely’s Marina, lemme just say...”
“This isn’t an RV,” I said, remembering his ultimate dream of life on the road.
“It’s way better. I mean, Jazmine’s right—if a hurricane comes, we’re going to need to go to a shelter, but otherwise, it’s perfect. You go to school and get your art history degree while I go to this tech institute up the road and get my ASE certification to become a mechanic in a year.”
I shook my head, astounded. “You signed up for school here?”
“I start after the New Year. Registered and everything. I can always find work as a mechanic, and certification will get me better pay.”
Punkin trotted through the cabin, sniffing every corner. I watched her, a little overwhelmed. “What about the cottage?”
Seb reached for my waist and tugged me closer. “The cottage will always be home base. We can still spend summers there. And now that Benny and I reinforced the smuggler’s hole under Mr. Legs, the Golden Venus will be safe until we’re ready to bring her out.”
We put her back into the smuggler’s hole. She needed to be authenticated, and there was the matter of cultural reappropriation because technically, she’d been smuggled out of ancient Rome. I was making contacts at Harvard who could help, but I wasn’t ready to trust anyone yet.
Mabel was right to worry about literal gold diggers who’d do anything to get their hands on treasure. We didn’t want the local news celebrating our discovery of the statue or the gold bars, didn’t want our faces and names plastered everywhere. I mean, the town wasstilltalking about the single gold bar that was found in the downtown sewer. If people knew how many other bars we’d uncovered, we’d be fighting people back with pitchforks and fire.
Best to keep it down low. So we all agreed that our discovery was Wag business, no one else’s. Not until we were ready.
“Venus will be fine,” he told me, encircling me with his arms. “No one knows her resting spot but us, and we have the keys to open Mr. Legs. Not even Paul can get to her.”
“You’re right.”
“And like I said, you don’t have to live here with me if you think it’s distracting, but I can’t do long distance. Not with you. It’s been three weeks since we last saw each other, and I can’t take it.”
I slipped my arms around his back. He felt so nice, warm and solid.
He felt like mine.
“I can’t take it, either,” I told him. “Having two homes is too hard.”
He kissed me softly on the top of my head. “Then you and I are lucky, because we can make our home wherever we want. It could be in an RV, or a beach cottage, or this unbelievably dope boat. It doesn’t matter. You know why?”
“Why?”
He pulled back to look into my face. “You and I don’t really need walls. All we need is each other. As long as we’re together, that’s home. In fact, we’re home right now. Doesn’t it feel good to be here?”
My eyes brimmed with happy tears. “Oh, Seb, I don’t know what to say.”
“Say you’ll make a home with me here, and that you’re not mad that I did this.”
“If you’dboughtthe boat, I’d be mad. But you did good. Maybe we could make this work... ?”
“This is a try-it situation, Paige. We could hate the boat. But we might just love it. And, bonus, it just so happens that Benny discovered chatter on some treasure-hunting message boardsabout a series of buried gold caches along the Great Loop left by some Canadian fur traders around the Revolutionary War.”
“Seb...” I warned.
