“Okay.”
“I asked you for space. And you gave it to me. You didn’t push. You didn’t knock. You didn’t show up with solutions or excuses. You just... respected what I asked for.”
“You needed to think.”
“I did think. I thought for five days. And here’s what I figured out.” She takes a breath. “Matt will always be their father. He’ll visit. He’ll try. He’ll check his phone and show up late and cut the day short because something came up. That’s who he is. And I can accept that without pretending it’s enough.”
“Emma —”
"I'm not finished." She steps closer. "Jenna said something that stuck with me. About how loving someone and actually being there for them aren't the same thing." She takes a breath. "Matt loves those kids. I believe that. But love doesn't mean much if you're never around to prove it."
The water laps against the hull. The music plays above us. The whole reception is dancing, but down here it’s just us.
“You show up,” she says. “Every single day. Pancakes on Saturday. Millie’s dock readings. Aidan’s lists. The junction box at midnight. Stomper in the ocean. You show up without being asked, without keeping score, without needing anything in return. And I sent you away because I was scared that choosing you meant I wasn’t giving Matt a real opportunity.”
“And was he? Worth the wait?”
“He was an attempt. You’re a certainty.”
Certainty. She said it like it was simple. It isn’t simple. But she means it.
“I don’t need space,” she says. “I need you. Ten feet away is too far. I need you on my deck and in my galley and at my daughter’s readings. I need you making pancakes and fixing things and sitting in the dark counting seconds until my fairy lights go off.”
“You knew about that?”
“I’ve always known.”
I look at her. The camera abandoned on the railing. The bridesmaid dress she’ll never wear again. Five days of silence between us, and a whole life on the other side of it if I’m braveenough.
“I dropped a two-hundred-and-forty-dollar drill in the ocean because Aidan told me Matt might move closer,” I say.
“Harold mentioned that.”
“A pelican stole my breakfast.”
“I heard that too.”
“I’ve been eating terrible coffee from the marina store for a week because making good coffee alone in my cabin felt like giving up.”
She laughs. The sound carries across the water, mixing with the music from above, and it’s the best thing I’ve heard in five days. In five years. In eleven years of quiet mornings and empty boats and a sticky note that saysdon’t forget to eat lunch.
“I’m going to kiss you now,” she says. “On a yacht. At a wedding. While the entire reception is happening above us and my camera is sitting unattended on a yacht railing. This is the most irresponsible moment of my professional career.”
“Better make it worth it, then.”
She kisses me.
Five days since the last time. Five days of space and silence and her fairy lights going dark while I counted seconds in my cabin. Five days of wondering if she’d ever stand this close again.
This kiss isn’t like the others. Those were careful.Tentative. Two people testing whether the ground would hold.
This isn’t that. This is Emma. This is sunshine and salt air and her palms on my face and her mouth on mine and everything she is—chaotic, warm, brave, relentless—pouring into me like light through a window that’s been shuttered too long.
I kiss her back. My arms circle her waist. She tastes like champagne and the chocolate from Tally’s dessert table and the rest of my life.
When we pull apart, she’s smiling. The real one. The one I’ve been watching through portholes and across docks and over the heads of children who decided I belonged to them before I had the sense to agree.
“Paul.”
