“I guess not,” I say.
“Would a wimp have kayaked into the black with no paddle, no phone, and no idea where she was going?”
No.And someone with a lick of sense probably wouldn’t, either.
“Ah!” I yelp as something distinctly slimy brushes against my calf. “Oh my god, oh my god something touched me.”
I flail in the water, sending shimmering neon splashes every which way. Caleb pushes towards me with a single kick.
“Relax,” he tells me, and close as he is I can see his eyes are full of laughter. I keep thrashing. “Nothing’s going to hurt you.”
I feel something rest against my waist: Caleb’s hands. He’s barely touching me, but the panic drains from me in an instant, replaced by something else. Surprise. His hands are smoother than I thought they would be; holding me steady in the water. Keeping me still. My legs stop kicking and I lean my full weight into his strong grip. He shifts his palms against me and I feel heat race from my stomach to my thighs; back up to my chest.
I wait for him to let go now that I am calm, now that I’m no longer afraid, but he doesn’t.
“See?” he says, and for a second the world goes still. Mybody is screaming with instinct.Put your arms around him,it demands, but I don’t dare. I might as well be a caught fish.
He lowers his chin as if daring me to come closer; to taste the salty water that gathers in beads on the edge of his lip.
“I’ve got you.”
I let him hold me up as he treads water, and for a few moments, we exist out of time, out of the bounds of reality. Above us, more stars than sky mirror the twinkling plankton surrounding us, holding us in our own constellation. Here, Caleb isn’t my enemy. He is a body glued to mine—some strange and beautiful creature from the depths of the sea. I watch almost helplessly as my fingers trail across his submerged arm, striking it like a match. He shudders beneath my touch as his skin alights with phosphorescent glow.
Suddenly, I’m conscious of all the places our bodies aren’t touching. The gap between our chests. The impossible distance between my mouth and his. I want to zip it closed. To discover if he’s breathing as hard as I am.
“Caleb,” I mean to say, but all that comes out is a breathy sigh, an echo of a name that just a few days ago felt sour against my tongue. He pulls me closer, and I feel the muscles of his chest tighten as I wrap one leg around his thigh.
“Yes?” he answers back. I move towards him, or he moves towards me, until my lips are so close to his I can feel the beat of his heart like ripples in the liquid dark. Until the warm air is replaced with the graze of his teeth against my bottom lip and I’m unravelling, all of me, and melting into the luminous sea.
“Caleb… We can’t do this.”
The sound of my own voice takes me aback, and I have to repeat it in my head a few times to realize what I’ve said. When I grasp it, it becomes clear how right I am. I push him back, detaching myself like a barnacle from the rock of his body.
“Matthew told me how Patricia feels about the crew gettinginvolved with guests,” I say quietly, the energy evaporating from me with his body heat. “Whatever this is, it’s not worth it.”
There are no sounds here to mask his heavy breathing but for the whoosh of the tide against the walls of the lagoon.
“Whatever you think of me, I am here for my sister. Not for me. I’m here to play nice with her new family so she can live happily ever after.”
Even in the night, I can see his expression darken.
“You think I haven’t thought about that? Do you think you’re the only one with something to lose?”
He pushes back towards me and I kick towards the kayak so I can catch my breath.
“No, but?—“
“I don’t think this is about your family at all,” he interrupts me, covering the distance between us in a few short seconds. “I think you’re scared, and Jules’ happiness is a convenient excuse.”
I feel the rage bubbling up inside me like boiling water. Convenient? Nothing about my life, this family, isremotelyconvenient. And Caleb is the last person I would accuse of making it so.
“Can you blame me?” I practically shout at him, my voice echoing off the rock walls and amplifying it three-fold. “One minute you’re pretending like I don’t exist, the next you’re screaming at me for being a liability. You ignore me, you chastise me, you avoid me like I’m a leper. You make it abundantly clear that you want me off this boat, and then you look at me like… like…”
Caleb hits me with that same look that infuriates me and turns my stomach to jello at the same time.
“Like that!” I bark. I have a death grip on the kayak now, my arms clinging onto the ropes for fear I might drop like an anchor to the bottom of the sea. “If what you want is some forbidden tryst, Caleb, I guarantee there are a hundred girlswho’d gladly sneak onto the yacht for a night with you. But don’t rope me into it.”
Caleb scoffs.
