“Does that mean we won?” I ask Matthew, who’s wrapped in a candy-striped towel a few feet away.
“Looks to me like a tie,” Patricia weighs in from her perch as Caleb pulls himself up to the deck and helps Harry after him. “Unless one of you remembers who hit the water first.”
“A tie?” Matthew asks incredulously. “Harry didn’t even finish his leg! I demand a rematch!”
“No way!” Jules practically shouts. “We clearly won—IsawStella’s shoulder hit the water.”
Matthew whines, “did not!”
But Harry claps his brother on the shoulder.
“Matthew, if you want your victory shot, go ahead. No one’s stopping you. But I’m going to celebrate with a hot shower.”
“Coming right up,” Caleb says, pulling a glistening silver shower hose from a hidden compartment on the deck. He turns to Jules, who’s wringing her salty hair out with a towel.
“Good idea,” she says, reaching for the shower head. But Caleb holds it back.
“Allow me.”
He holds up the nozzle above her head and clicks it on so I can feel the warm spray splatter across the deck against myfeet. Jules may be much better behaved than she was when we were teenagers, but I can see in her eyes she’s still annoyed at the outcome of the race. We’ll be lucky if she doesn’t rope us into some insanely complicated board game later to break the tie.
As soon as she’s finished rinsing off, I step into her place, anxious to wash off the salt and the memory of Caleb’s fingers. But instead of water on my head, I feel the warm spray against my knees. I turn to see Caleb holding out the hose to me, a look of displeasure on his face.
“Make sure you hang it up when you’re done,” he says as he drops it into my hand.
Humiliation gurgles in my stomach. Thatass. First he sabotages our foam fight with his smile, now he has the nerve to act disgusted by me in front of the whole family. So much for our white flag. Without thinking, I lift the hose up to his turned back and pelt him with the spray. He turns back to me, indignant.
“Oops,” I tell him. “Slipped.”
He narrows his eyebrows and opens his mouth to say something, but stops when he sees someone approaching behind me. Gia is beside me in a flash, fresh towel at the ready.
“Thanks, Gia,” I say, but my eyes are still following Caleb. So much for playing nice. Was he really that icked out by being pressed up against me on the trampoline? Or was it the knowledge that I once thought he was sexy that set him off? I have a choice here—buckle and take the cold shoulder, or be the first person in his adult life to call him on his bullshit. So, still wrapped in my Warren crest embroidered towel, I stomp off after him.
“Caleb,” I call as I enter the salon. “I know you can hear me!”
But despite being less than twenty feet from me, Caleb doesn’t look back. He marches across the room as fast as he canwithout breaking into a jog, heading straight for the galley. I skirt to the side, trying to cut him off, and he redirects his steps towards Arthur and Patricia’s cabin instead. No, not their cabin, theelevator.
The doors open for him as if by magic and he steps inside, jabbing the button for another floor as quickly as possible. I break into a full run as the doors begin to close, losing my towel on the floor somewhere in the process. But I don’t have time to turn back. I slide through the gap just before the doors click shut, throwing myself into the tiny space and directly into Caleb’s orbit. He looks mortified, but at least he’s finallylookingat me. Or, at least, at my feet. It’s hard to ignore someone when you’re trapped together inside a three-by-three-foot mirrored box.
There’s no turning back now.
“What is wrong with you?” I ask as soon as I’m sure the doors are closed. With the way these walls are designed, we might as well be in a nuclear bunker, so I don’t hold back on the volume.
“Excuse me?”
I glance behind me and smack the large red button next to the floor numbers. Luckily, my bargain pays off and it doesn’t sound the alarm, just stops us in place. I’m fed up with Caleb’s hot and cold routine. Or, more accurately, lukewarm and frigid. He’s not getting out until he explains his borderline psychotic behavior once and for all.
“You heard me,” I say forcefully. “I thought we were over this, but you’re still treating me like a pariah. Exactly what about my being on this ship is so repulsive to you?”
His nostrils flare, his competent captain mask replacing the look of shock in the space of a breath. But he willnotlook me in the eye. I didn’t know it was possible for someone so full of himself to be so visibly uncomfortable.
“You didn’t have to egg Jules on about the beach. If you’re really so grossed out by me?—”
“Grossed out?” he repeats coldly, and I fight the urge to smack him in his perfect jaw. “Stella, if I’ve offended you somehow?—"
“Offended?”I gasp. Did Caleb invent gaslighting, or just minor in it at seaman school?“Let’s see. You spent forty minutes digging sea urchins out of my feet on the beach only to pretend we’d never met as soon as I arrived on board. Since then, you’ve avoided me, chastised me, and made it abundantly clear that you want me off this boat. But I still don’t understand why.”
Caleb’s breathing quickens. He’s obviously furious that someone would have the audacity to hold him accountable for his general jerkiness.
