“You shouldn’t be here.”
“I know,” the breath has all but left my body, and I have to power my speech off pure stress. “But I want to fix this. Tell me how to fix it, and I will.”
I reach for Caleb, my fingers aching to find his, but he turns away from me before I can get close. The sting of it burns deep in my chest.
“It’s too late,” he growls as he begins clearing out the drawer next to his bed. “You need to leave before someone sees you and makes this worse.”
“But none of it’s true!” I protest. “Did you tell them? Did you at least stand up for yourself?”
“Didyou?”
The serrated edge on his voice catches and pulls at me like a ring on a knit sweater. The man I’m staring at isn’t the Caleb who showed me how to navigate by starlight. This is hard Caleb. Sergeant Caleb. The Caleb who snapped at me for so much as walking too close to the railing. But this time, it isn’t an act.
“I—“
“Of course you didn’t. Because it wouldn’t make a difference! It doesn’t matter that I didn’t sleep with Steven, or whatever they’re accusing me of. I was withyou.I brought a guest to my cabin; I missed a dragging anchor that could have run the ship aground. I lied to the Warrens about the tides at Narara. Those were my mistakes, and now I have to face the consequences.”
“Mistake?” I say aloud, but I’m not sure if it’s a question or an accusation. All that talk about taking risks and following his heart, and he thinks I was a mistake?
You know those moments when you watch your own stupidity in slow motion? When you know you’ll regret what you’re saying as soon as it pops into your head, but you just can’t seem to stop yourself? This is one of those moments: a car I can’t stop steering off of the bridge. I have no right to be angry with Caleb—not while he’s losing his entire life. But I can feel the armor rising around my heart like hackles. And this time, it’s barbed.
“You were the one who kissed me,” I hiss at him. “You convinced me this was ok.”
“Right. So everything’s my fault,” he spits. “Funny, I don’t remember you protesting in the engine room.”
“Caleb, I told you this was a bad idea. I told you I didn’t want to risk your job!”
“You’re right,” he says sharply. “And I should have bloody listened.”
I stand there, frozen, waiting for him to take it back. To open his mouth and say something—anything—to tell me my Caleb is still somewhere in there. But he doesn’t. He just puts his hand on the door handle and pulls it open.
“You need to go,” he says, his eyes devoid of emotion. “If anyone sees you down here it’ll only make things worse.”
My chest constricts as if I’ve been punched. I’m practically hysterical, but Caleb is dead calm: the eye in the center of thestorm. He doesn’t want me here. Whatever magnetic force rippled between us, that cord I’ve felt since that first day in Denarau, has been broken.
“I’m so sorry,” I say quickly, at least—I think I say it. Whatever comes out is more like a snot-bubbly sob than an actual apology. But before I can make a greater fool of myself, I rush out of the room, my breath coming in short, asphyxiated spurts. How could I be such an idiot? How could I let myself fallagain—when I knew how much pain was at stake?
I sprint towards my cabin so quickly that I practically knock over a vase as I barrel out into the salon.
“Stella?” I hear Harry’s voice. “Is everything alright?”
I turn towards the voice and see that Harry and his father are seated at the bar, their bodies bent over some kind of paperwork. For a second, I don’t care if they see me. I want to scream. I want to rage like a squall that takes down everyone and everything in its path: the whole damned yacht, if I have to.
But there’s one person aboard who doesn’t deserve to go down with this ship. The person who brought me here. Who doesn’t have a cruel or manipulative bone in her body. The person who I promised my dad I would protect at all costs when he couldn’t anymore.
My sister.
Matthew, as much as I want to strangle him, is right. If I tell the Warren’s the truth, the next life I’ll be ruining ishers.
“Fine,” I squeak out as convincingly as possible, which isn’t very. There are a million questions I want to ask him, the most important being why Caleb is getting punished while Matthew and Steven walk scott-free. But the Warren’s don’t talk about anything real. Their lives are tucked neatly into the golden boxes they’ve built. Never mind that Arthur is a functional alcoholic. Never mind that Matthew is terrified to tell them about the man he’s loved since college. With the Warrens, everythingcomes down to reputation. Everything comes down to keeping up appearances.
And now I’m complicit in it, too.
Someone calls to me as I rush down the stairs, but I know that if I turn around, any remaining pretense of calm I’ve managed to maintain will be obliterated. Unstoppable tears stream over my cheeks as I throw myself into my cabin and lock the door behind me.
My body finds the side of the bed without my mind to guide it, grasping at the silky duvet as I fling myself downwards. But for as much as I’m sucking in ragged gulps of air, I can’t seem to catch a breath.
So this is what I get for letting my guard down. For compromising the rules I’ve taken so long to build for myself. Will told me to be careful with yacht boys. Hell—Calebtold me to be careful. But I ignored everything I knew to be true and let my feelings get the better of me,again.How could I be stupid enough to let myself believe this time would be any different?
