“Oh no! That was so cheesy.”
“I know.”
“I liked it.”
“I know that too.”
“Okay, now Mr. Horny, let me get ready.” I pulled myself away and moved to the dresser. I picked up my stark red lipstick and looked at Jason’s reflection in the mirror, standing right behind me, still smiling at me with a mix of lust and admiration.
I smiled back.
I was still smiling when his phone buzzed on the dresser.
I was watching his face in the mirror as he glanced at the screen, and I saw the exact moment something changed. Not dramatically. Not in any way I could have pointed to and said:there, that’s the thing, that’s where it started.Just a tightening. A stilling. The easy warmth of the last three hours replaced, in an instant, by something closed and unfamiliar.
He set the phone face-down and straightened his jacket.
“I’m going to take a quick walk before dinner,” he said. “Get some air on the lower deck.”
I turned from the mirror. “Now? You’re already dressed.”
“I won’t be long.” He crossed to me, pressed a quick kiss to my forehead. “You finish getting ready. I’ll be back before you’ve done your lipstick.”
He was out the door before I could find the words to ask what had just happened.
He’s stressed, I told myself.The investor pulled out from his project at the last minute. Maybe he just needs five minutes to himself.
I uncapped the lipstick and leaned toward my reflection. Something about the change in his expression was not sitting well with me.
He is the best husband in the world. Stop it, Camila.
Stop looking for things that aren’t there.
I started humming to myself — something I did when I needed to quiet my own mind — and focused on the mirror.
The dress really did look wonderful.
By the time I’d finished my makeup, I’d almost convinced myself I’d imagined the look on his face entirely.
Almost.
CHAPTER 2
JASON
Camila was applying her lipstick in the mirror, and she had absolutely no idea what she was doing to me.
The ivory dress. The diamond necklace catching the last of the evening light. That particular way she leaned toward her reflection — focused, unhurried, completely unselfconscious — that had undone me from the very first moment I saw it.
Four years ago, I walked into an animal shelter with the singular goal of adopting a dog. I had walked out having met the most genuinely innocent person I had ever encountered in my entire life. Not naive — Camila was never naive. But innocent in the way that mattered. Untouched by the kind of darkness that changes a person permanently. She laughed without calculating how it looked. She trusted without auditing the risk. She loved without keeping anything in reserve.
I had lost that quality so long ago I couldn’t remember what it had felt like to have it.
And yet here she was —mine, impossibly mine — humming softly to herself in the golden light of our anniversary stateroom.
Then, my phone buzzed on the dresser.
I looked at the screen.
