I wait what feels like an eternity before I deem it safe to creep up to the bridge. It’s empty. I do, however, notice that one of the futuristic panels shows the feed from the boat’s many security cameras. And as grainy as the picture is, I can see that someone much taller than Yara is moving around in the engine room. I trot down the back stairs as quickly and quietly as I can in my manic state of over-analysis. If I’m wrong and the person down there is Remi or Russ, I’m in for a very awkward conversation. But luckily, the lanky man logging engine temperature readings inside the half-lit room is just who I wanted to see.
He whorls towards me as he hears me come in, blinking when he realizes who’s interrupted him.
His voice is gravelly and confused as he says, “Stella?”
“Why did you lie about the swell?” I bark out. I had, of course, planned a much more graceful approach.Hi, Caleb. Are you well? Interesting weather we’re having.But now that I’m in his orbit, staring at the man who just yesterday had his calloused hands around my thighs, I seem to be fresh out of tact.
“You shouldn’t be down here,” he says. But something in his eyes tells me he’s not going to enforce it.
I take a step closer.
“Tell me why you lied to them and I’ll go.”
He looks away from me, jaw clenched. His nostrils flare as he tightens his grip around the railing.
“Stella, youknowwhy,” he says almost angrily. “Are you really going to make me repeat it? Make me humiliate myself again when you’ve made it painfully clear you don’t feel the same way?”
I open my mouth to argue with him, but Caleb is right. The only thing that’s changed since yesterday isme. Why did I come down here when I already know what he’ll say? When he’s already told me just how strongly he feels and been turned down not once, but twice?
On the cliff today, Caleb said that we only get to do life once. I’ve had two chances to change my mind about him. And looking at the stern line of his lips, the white-knuckled grip of his hand against the metal railing, I won’t get a third.
I look down at the hair tie on my wrist. At the sore spot beneath that’s been snapped so many times the skin’s red. I have two choices here. I can either turn around and go back to my quickly crumbling life: my closed-off existence of musts and must-nots, or I can finish what I came here for. So, in what’s quickly becoming a habit of mine, I do theoppositeof responsible.
I reach back behind me and pull the door closed.
“Why?” I ask slowly, not breaking eye contact as I take the last few steps towards him. Caleb’s body is rigid and still, like he’s waiting to see if I’ll bite. I did this to him, I realize. Mr. Stone Heart poured his soul out to me, and I spat it out like seawater.
His lips form a hard line before he says to me, breathy and quiet, “Because I saw how important it was to you. And I wanted to make up for the pain I caused—for everything I handled so badly. Just once, I wanted to be the reason you were smiling.”
Everything in the room stops. The mechanical whirring of the engine. The beeping of the control panel behind us. All I can hear is the riotous pounding of my own blood.
I suck in a breath as Caleb takes a step towards me, backing me up to one of the silent metal engines behind us. He lied for me. He risked his job, the thing he cares about most, to helpme.
Every firing synapse in my lizard brain tells me I should turn around and go. That there’s still time to make the responsible choice—to go back to my room and ride out the next few days on this ship as if there’snota volcano erupting inside me. But just once, I want to let go ofshould. To feel what I felt when I leapt off the stern into the water below. When I held mybreath to wait out a tiger shark. Have I been responsible? Or have I just been avoiding the possibility of pain? Where is the line between responsibility and rejection? Where is the line between playing by the rules and hiding from your own life?
What if, for once in my life, I just saidyes?
I grab Caleb’s hand and pull it to my face, where the calloused pad of his thumb lands along the line of my bottom lip. He shudders as he slowly drags it down. A lightning bolt of anticipation shivers through me.
“Are you sure?” he pulls his head back, eyes half-lidded with desire. But when I nod and grab hold of his sun-bleached curls, the animal in him lets loose.
He pushes against me, and I gasp as my shoulder blades press into the warm metal of the engine behind me. We stay there for one heart-pounding moment before he crushes his lips to mine, enveloping me in his intoxicating sea-salt scent. I run my arms up the granite muscles of chest and wrap them around his neck to pull him closer. Because in that moment, I need Caleb. I need his mouth on mine, his hands on my back, the feeling of him already hard against me. He groans, softly, and a shiver runs up my spine as he drags his fingers down my back towards the hem of my shirt. Blood rushes down past the lines of my stomach and I wrap my leg around him, crushing his hips to mine.
“Fuck,” he breathes as he pulls his lips away, and I shift my mouth to kiss the soft space where his neck meets his lightly-freckled jaw. His breath quickens and he grinds against me as my hands slide beneath his tucked shirt onto the warm skin beneath. Two days ago, I never wanted to speak to Caleb again. Hell, I wanted to throw him overboard. Now I feel as though I might combust if he even thinks of taking his hands off me. Like if we keep going, I might not be able to stop.
Caleb’s hand climbs up the contours of my thigh and under the hem of my cotton shorts, brushing over my thong. I wanthim to leave his hand there—to feel his fingers slide inside me and release me from the heat and desire raging through my body like a tropical storm. But he keeps going, inching his palm beneath the band of my bra and rolling his fingers over my hard nipple. I gasp, and something sets off in him—he crushes me to the warm metal behind us and circles his hand faster as his other fingers dig into my hip.
I drag my nails down the warm skin of his back and let him run his tongue down my earlobe as he whispers to me,
“You have no idea how much I’ve wanted you.”
My legs threaten to give out from under me. I want more of him.Needmore of him. I slip my fingers beneath the hem of his shirt and yank it upwards, wanting to feel the heat of his skin as soon as humanly possible. But he bars my arm, gently pulling it down and remaining, beyond tragically, fully clothed.
I take in a desperate breath as he pulls away, his eyes hazy with desire.
“We’ve got to stop,” he says breathlessly, and I feel my stomach drop like a stone.
“Oh,” the sound comes out strangled and weak. I feel humiliation rising through my body like the line of a thermometer, turning my cheeks a pulsing red. Did I do something wrong?
