Chapter 24 #3
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.”
“Yeah.”
“Your hands are shaking.”
I look down. They are. “This one felt different.”
“Different how?”
“Permanent.”
She takes my trembling hands and holds them between hers. Steadies them. No fuss. No commentary. Just her fingers wrapped around mine until they stop shaking.
“Come to the houseboat tonight,” she says. “After the reception. Not for—just. Come sit on the deck with me. Watch the yacht sail away. Drink terrible marina store brew because my machine is dead and neither of us has a replacement.”
“I can fix that thing.”
“I know you can. That’s the whole point.”
Above us, the music swells. Someone—Aidan, probably—shrieks with joy about something. The yacht rocks gently in its slip. Somewhere on the upper deck, Levi is singing another song, and Delilah is dancing, and Twin Waves is doing what Twin Waves does best.
“Emma.”
“Yeah.”
“It isn’t just nice. You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. I’ve thought that since the day you showed up at my marina with a possessed coffee maker and three kids and a smile that made me forget how to be angry. I just didn’t know how to say it.”
Her eyes go bright. “That’s a significant upgrade from your earlier attempt.”
“I’m a slow learner.”
She kisses me again. Shorter this time. Sweeter.
“Come on,” she says, lacing her fingers through mine. “We’re missing the reception. And if Aidan has been doing the shark for this long unsupervised, someone has probably been injured.”
We walk up the stairs to the main deck together and step back into the light and noise and beautiful chaos of a wedding on a yacht in a small town where everybody knows your business and nobody lets you give up on love.
Grandma Hensley spots us first. She elbows Harold. Harold looks. Raises his champagne glass.
Dawson sees our hands and grins so wide I can see it from across the deck. Jenna catches Dawson’s reaction, follows his gaze, and sees me holding her mother’s hand. She doesn’t smile. She doesn’t need to. She pulls out her phone, types something, and shows it to Dawson.
He laughs. She laughs.
They’ve been waiting for us to figure this out. Apparently we’re the last to know.
Aidan spots us from the dance floor. He stops mid-shark. His eyes go wide. He opens his mouth and I brace myself for the volume I know is coming.
“Mom! Mr. Paul! Are you—are you together?”
Every head in the vicinity turns. Michelle spills her coffee. Grayson catches it. Jessica grabs Scott’s arm. Mads says “Finally” loud enough to be heard over the band.
Emma squeezes my fingers. “We are,” she confirms.
Aidan’s face splits into a grin so bright it rivals the fairy lights. He sprints across the dance floor, crashes into both of us simultaneously, and wraps his arms around our legs in a hug that nearly takes us down.
“I knew it,” he says. “I told Millie. I told Olson. I even updated Stomper.”
“You updated the elephant?”
“He was invested. I owed him a report.”
Millie appears beside us. She doesn’t say anything. She just slips her hand into my free one—the one Emma isn’t holding—and stands there, quiet and certain, like she’s been saving that spot for me.
I look down at my hands. Emma on one side. Millie on the other. Aidan wrapped around my legs. Somewhere across the deck, Jenna is pretending not to watch while absolutely watching.
This is it. This is what Holly meant. Not don’t forget to eat lunch. Don’t forget to live. Don’t forget that a sticky note on a logbook is not enough. Don’t forget that grief is not a house you have to stay in forever.
The music plays. The yacht glows. The ocean stretches out dark and endless beyond the railing.
“Dance with me,” Emma says.
“I’m terrible at it.”
“You are tonight.”
She pulls me onto the floor. Aidan follows, because Aidan follows everywhere. Millie stays at the edge, watching, smiling, holding her book against her chest. Jenna rolls her eyes—fondly, I think, but with Jenna you can never be sure.
I dance. Badly. With a woman who smells like champagne and salt air, on a yacht that shouldn’t exist at my marina, at a celebration I spent months dreading and will remember for the rest of my life.
The yacht sails at midnight.
Levi and Delilah stand at the stern as the engines rumble to life, waving at the crowd gathered on the dock.
Delilah throws her bouquet backward without looking—Caroline ducks like it’s a grenade, and Lottie catches it one-handed without trying.
Justin, standing ten feet away, goes very still.
Lottie looks at the bouquet. Looks at Justin. Looks back at the bouquet.
“Don’t,” she says.
Justin holds up both hands. “Didn’t say a word.”
“Your face said it.”
“My face is neutral.”
“Your face has never been neutral in its life.”
The whole dock laughs.
Then the yacht pulls away. Slow at first, easing out of the slip, the wake barely rippling the dark water. The twinkle lights on the rigging shrink as it clears the harbor mouth and heads for open ocean. Caribbean bound. Twenty years in the making.
The crowd thins. Cars start and voices fade.
Aubrey is already directing cleanup with her clipboard.
Michelle and Grayson leave arm in arm. Harold walks Grandma Hensley to her car, and I watch him open her door, and I watch her pat his cheek, and I stop watching because some things a son doesn’t need to see.
Dawson finds me on the dock. “Dad.”
“Yeah.”
“Good night.”
“It was.”
He grins and bumps my shoulder with his. Walks to the parking lot where Finch is waiting, and they drive off in Dawson’s truck with the windows down and the radio up.
My marina is quiet again. The slips are empty except for Justin’s boat, my boat, and Emma’s houseboat with its fairy lights glowing against the dark.
I find Emma on her deck.
She’s changed out of the bridesmaid dress into a sweatshirt and shorts. Her hair is down. Her feet are bare on the wooden planks. The camera bag is by the door—she’ll sort the photos tomorrow. Tonight she’s just Emma.
Aidan is asleep on the deck bench, Stomper tucked under his arm, still wearing his wedding clothes.
His shark tooth necklace—the replacement one Harold gave him after he lost the first—hangs crooked against his chest. He crashed mid-sentence, Emma tells me.
Something about how the shark worked better on the dance floor than he expected.
Millie went to bed an hour ago. Book on her nightstand. Lamp off.
Jenna is inside texting someone. I don’t ask who. I have a feeling I already know.
Emma hands me a mug. I take a sip. Marina store coffee is terrible.
“I told you the machine was dead,” she says.
“I’ll look at it tomorrow.”
“You don’t have to fix everything, Paul.”
“I know. But the coffee maker is personal. That thing has been taunting me since March.”
She laughs. Quiet, because Aidan is sleeping. We sit on the deck steps, side by side. The water laps against the hull. The fairy lights hum above us. The spot where the yacht was docked is empty now—just dark water and the reflection of stars.
“They’re gone,” Emma says. “Sailing to the Caribbean on a yacht with a wine fridge and a soaking tub.”
“We have a deck bench and bad coffee.”
“I think we got the better deal.”
I look at her. Profile lit by fairy lights. Bare feet. Sweatshirt with a hole in the sleeve. The most beautiful woman at the wedding tonight, and she’s sitting on a houseboat deck drinking the worst coffee in North Carolina with a marina manager who owns one suit.
“Emma.”
“Mm.”
“I love you.”
She goes still. Not surprised-still. Listening-still. Like she’s been waiting for me to get here and she wants to hear every word.
“I love your kids. I love that Aidan makes lists and Millie reads on the dock and Jenna counts things nobody else notices. I love that your coffee maker is possessed and your port light flickers and your houseboat creaks when the wind shifts. I love that you showed up at my marina with three kids and a camera and turned everything upside down, and I don’t want it right-side up again.
I tried that for eleven years. It doesn’t work. ”
She sets her mug down.
“I’m not Matt,” I say. “I’m not going to check my phone during dinner.
I’m not going to cancel because something came up.
I’m going to be here. Tomorrow. Saturday.
Every Saturday after that. For pancakes and dock readings and crab expeditions and whatever Aidan puts on his next list. I’m going to be here, Emma. That’s what I do.”
“I know,” she says. “That’s why I love you.”
She says it simply. No tears. No drama. Just the fact of it, handed over like something she’s been carrying for a while and is glad to finally set down.
“I’ve known since that first night with the wiring,” she says.
“You came over because my lights were flickering and you were worried about a fire. You were so annoyed, and you fixed it anyway, and you didn’t ask for anything.
You just muttered about the amperage and left.
And I stood in my galley thinking: oh no. ”
“Oh no?”
“Oh no, this grumpy man who hates my fairy lights just spent an hour on my electrical at eleven at night and I think I’m in trouble.”
I almost smile. “You were done for.”
“We both were.”
On the bench behind us, Aidan shifts in his sleep. Stomper falls to the deck. I reach over, pick up the elephant, tuck it back under his arm. Aidan doesn’t wake up. His fingers close around it automatically.
Emma watches me do this. Her eyes are bright but she’s not crying. Same look she gave me during the ceremony—full, steady, unguarded.
“Paul.”
“Yeah.”
“The list. Aidan’s list—the one from Matt’s visit. More than half of it never got crossed off.”
“I know.”
“He put it in his drawer. He didn’t throw it away.”
“I know that too.”
She’s quiet for a moment. Then: “Would you—”
“I’ll finish it. Hot chocolate at Michelle’s. Hermit crabs on the shoreline. Whatever’s left. We’ll get through every item.”
“He’ll add more. You know that, right? Once you start, he’ll just keep adding.”
“Good. I like his lists.”
She leans into me. Her head on my shoulder. Her hair smells like salt air and hairspray and the gardenias from Delilah’s arrangements. I put my arm around her, and we sit there on the houseboat steps watching the empty slip where a yacht used to be.
The fairy lights are on. The coffee is terrible. Aidan is asleep behind us with an elephant and a list that’s about to get a lot longer.
Somewhere on the ocean, Levi and Delilah are sailing toward their honeymoon.
And in the marina office, Holly's sticky note is still tucked into the logbook, and tomorrow morning I'll read it, and I'll smile. And then I'll start the rest of my life.
But right now is enough.
Emma’s breathing slows, the fairy lights hum, and the water does what water does.
I stay.