CHAPTER 1
CAMILA
The Atlantic Ocean was showing off today.
I could tell because even the horizon looked smug. It had that particular shade of gold and turquoise that belongs exclusively to the Caribbean, the kind you see on travel blogs and assume it had gone through numerous filters on Instagram.
But there was no filtering what my eyes were taking in. I’d been staring at the ocean sky for twenty minutes from my sun lounger on the pool deck on the most luxurious cruise in the world, drink in hand, and I still didn’t fully believe it was real.
Then again, I’d been saying that about my life for three years.
“You’re doing it again.”
I looked up. Jason was walking toward me from the pool bar, two glasses in hand, his broad shoulders blocking the sun for just a moment. He was wearing navy swim shorts that sat low on his hips, and his skin — already perpetually golden — had deepened to the color of warm amber after two days at sea. He looked like something a sculptor had labored over for a very long time and then stepped back from, satisfied.
I was his wife. I still forgot to breathe sometimes.
“Doing what?” I said.
“That face.” He handed me my drink — chilled Grand Crus Chardonnay. “The one where you’re thinking about how you don’t deserve to be here.”
“I wasn’t—” I started.
He gave me a look.
“Fine.” I took a sip. “Maybe a little.”
He dropped onto the lounger beside me, close enough that his thigh pressed against mine, warm from the sun. He plucked my sunglasses from my face without ceremony, put them on his own, and tilted his face toward the sky.
“Verdict?” I asked.
“Terrible. Can’t see a thing. How do you manage?”
“They’re prescription, Jason.”
“Ah.” He kept them on anyway. “Happy anniversary, by the way.”
“It’s tomorrow.”
“I know. I’m practicing.” He turned to look at me, my ridiculous oversized glasses sitting on his perfect face, and smiled — that slow smile that he saved for exactly moments like this, when it was just the two of us and the world was nowhere in particular. “Three years, Cam.”
“Three years,” I agreed.
He reached over and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, the gesture so easy and habitual it probably looked like nothing from the outside. From the inside it felt like everything.
That was the thing about Jason Riley that no one ever seemed to understand. People saw the broad shoulders, the real estate empire, the jaw that looked like it had been carved for a purpose. They did not see the man who remembered that I liked Grand Crus wine, or cucumber in my water. This man, who remained neck deep in his business every day, but had booked this cruise six months in advance because I’d once mentioned, in passing, that I’d always wanted to see the Bahamas. Who had argued with me, warmly and persistently, for three weeks when I’d suggested we postpone the trip.
Come on the cruise, Camila.
But your stress—
The only thing that will stress me out is not taking my wife to the Bahamas on our anniversary.
I’d stopped arguing after that.
We moved to the private jacuzzi as the afternoon light began to soften — the one that came with our stateroom on the highest deck, enclosed and entirely ours, overlooking the open ocean.
I pulled off my coverup.
