Chapter Nineteen #2
I lurched up in my chair as the thought passed over me. I couldn’t believe I’d let myself think it at all.
Don’t be stupid, Ember. He’s just trying to be professional.
It’s not about you.
You are the past.
“Oh, I mean, I don’t know,” I said, trying to smile.
“I’m sure it’s just what he’s been saying, that he doesn’t want to be rude.
Besides, all these cameras around,” I said, waving to the camera people who were almost too easy to forget about now that we were this far into the season.
“He probably feels weird about that. But you know him better than I do.”
I didn’t mean for those words to sound so spicy when I said them, but Bernard bit back a smile as he took a drink, and Gisella pursed her lips.
“Yes. You’re right. I do. And I’m sure it’s fine. There will be plenty of time for him to rail my brains out once the show is done.”
Acid burned my throat as I reached for my cocktail, trying again to smile.
“What about you, Em?” Leah asked. “You going to have any fun before this season is over?”
“I’m the chief stew,” I reminded her. “My job is to stay professional.”
“Eli will be crushed to hear that,” Bernard said. “Poor thing is like a lost puppy when it comes to you, just following you around like a mutt begging for scraps.”
“Oh, my God, stop, he is not,” I said on a laugh.
“You’re blind if you don’t see it,” Leah said. “He’s been into you since the first charter. And I don’t see why you can’t have some fun, if you want to. I bet he’d be a great lay.”
I flushed so hard Bernard ran his hand over the condensation from his cocktail and rubbed it on my cheeks.
“Oh! If not him, maybe Palmer?” Leah suggested next. “He’s hotter than a Montgomery summer.”
“Palmer isn’t interested in any boatmances,” Gisella snapped, still irritated by the whole conversation, it seemed. “He’s a bosun.”
“Exactly. Gisella is right. We’re both here to do our jobs and get paid — that’s it.”
But Bernard was eyeing Gisella curiously. “And just how do you know what Palmer wants?”
She waved him off. “Doesn’t take a genius to read the neon signs.”
“Uh-huh.” Bernard narrowed his gaze, but then snapped his smile back to me. “What about Cap? He’s newly single. Very daddy-like. Could spoil you rotten, too. You don’t mind an age gap, do you?”
“And on that note,” I said, standing up and stretching my back. “I’m going to take a stroll by the water.”
“Should we send Eli to join?” Gisella teased.
I gave them all two big thumbs up, and their chorus of laughter followed me all the way down to the water.
The warmth of the sand gave way to cool relief as I stepped closer to the shoreline, my feet sinking into the soft grains with each step. The breeze off the Mediterranean carried hints of sea salt and lemon, and I let it lift my hair off my shoulders, breathing in deep as I walked.
The laughter from our lounge chairs slowly faded behind me, muffled by distance and the rhythmic sound of the waves lapping against the shore. Out here, away from the teasing and the cameras, it was quiet. Still.
I wrapped my arms around my waist, not from any chill — because the Amalfi sun was generous — but from the ache that was blooming in my chest.
Six charters behind us and just a few left now. It was almost over.
And what a season it had been.
There were so many moments I thought I might break under the pressure — under the expectations, the long hours, the chaos.
But somehow, I hadn’t. I’d kept things afloat, managed every detail, every guest tantrum, every crew conflict.
I’d stepped up as a leader and earned the respect of the captain and crew. I was damn proud of that.
And still…
My father’s voice haunted me.
“This isn’t a real career, Ember. It’s a phase. A detour. You’re smarter than this.”
I blinked hard against the sting that came with the memory. It didn’t matter how many times I reminded myself that he didn’t understand; that he’d never even tried to. It still hurt. Worse than that, it made me doubt.
Was he right?
Was I chasing something fleeting? Something unworthy? Was I wasting time instead of building the kind of life that would make him finally look at me with approval instead of disappointment?
My eyes lifted from my toes in the sand to the horizon. Everything in me wanted to believe I wasn’t wrong. I wanted to trust that surge in my heart for this job, this life, for the people I’d grown to love and the passion I felt for what I did.
It meant something.
But even as I stood rooted in that truth, doubt whispered like the tide around my ankles, washing over me, pulling me back, tempting me to give in.
I sank into the sand where the surf kissed the shore, arms draped over my knees, toes half buried.
I watched the waves, letting their rhythm soothe the war in my chest. I wanted to just have fun.
It was a beach day, for fuck’s sake. And when I was with the crew, the alcohol buzzing through me made me silly and happy and carefree.
The moment I was alone, it made me sad.
I didn’t hear him approach, too lost in my own thoughts, but I felt the moment his shadow passed over me.
Finn settled into the sand without a word, close but not touching. I didn’t look at him, not right away. I just kept watching the sea, heart thudding at the nearness of him.
I felt his eyes on me.
Always, I felt him.
And just like the sea, he unsettled me — familiar and wild, beautiful and dangerous, capable of saving me or pulling me under.
“Hello, Firefly.”
I turned to face him, and then all the anxiety was swept from me with the next wave that hit my toes.
Because he was grinning at me, his hair a mess from the wind, his shoulders sun-kissed, and something about that made all the heaviness vacate my chest in an instant.
“You’re drunk,” I mused, tapping his red nose.
“I am,” he confessed.
“And you need sunscreen.”
“You going to rub it all over me?”
I rolled my eyes, nudging him with my shoulder before I looked back out at the water.
“I’m glad you’re letting loose,” I said. “You deserve to after that charter.”
“Wouldn’t have made it without you.”
“Yes, you would have.”
He didn’t respond, so I turned to look at him again, and the playfulness had left him completely.
“I was ready to give up,” he said. “But you pulled my head out of my arse. You’re a good friend.” He swallowed right as the word pierced my lungs. “But more than that, Ember, you’re a fucking fantastic chief stew.”
The corner of my mouth lifted. “Thanks.”
“I mean it,” he continued, his words slurring a bit.
“I know your dad makes you feel like it’s just cocktails and cleaning, but it’s more than that.
You’re a leader, Em. You saved that dinner service.
You made a luxury vacation for those women that they’ll never forget.
It takes a special person to touch lives like that. ”
It was like my ribs were crushing my lungs, his words both healing me and adding pressure at the same time. How did he know? How could he walk up here and just know exactly what I was in my head about?
Suddenly, my stomach somersaulted as a memory of the last time we sat on a beach like this hit me like a crate of bricks.
I’m sitting where the water meets the sand on Kontokali Beach, the night closing in around me like a black hole. I feel his presence without looking to confirm it.
I don’t need to turn my head to know he’s walking the dark beach toward me, that his haunted eyes are set on my hunched-over form in the sand. My body alerts me, buzzing to life the way it always does when he’s near.
I am the orchestra and he, the maestro.
I press a hand over my racing heart, the one he conducted without care, closing my eyes and trying to find a steady breath through the ringing in my ears.
Any attempt is thwarted the moment he says my name.
“Em…”
“Don’t,” I beg, not recognizing my voice as it croaks out of me.
My throat is dry and raw, tongue like sandpaper in my mouth, but I force myself to open my eyes and look up at him.
I hope he sees the desperation, hope he sees how I’m crumbling, hope maybe he will grant me this one mercy. “Please, Finn. Don’t.”
Even in the dark, I notice his jaw tighten.
I told him not to follow me.
I pleaded for him to let it go, to let me go…
But he just can’t.
The selfish bastard.
Rage simmers in my chest, pushing away the harder, deeper emotions I’ve been surrendering to on this beach. And I welcome anger. I embrace her like an old friend.
It’s easier to be mad.
This is how it’s always been with us — everything is just… big. Big lust, big jealousy, big possession, big love. All of it is too much for of us to hold onto together, let alone by ourselves. And yet we let it crush us, over and over, the weight a welcome pain.
“I wish I never met you,” I murmur, knowing it’s a lie.
“You don’t mean that.”
“I do.”
I stand, not bothering to brush the sand from my legs or wring the water from my shorts.
“Damn you for following me.” I mean to spit the words at him like venom, but instead they leak out of me like a sad last breath. I’m so tired, the burning flame he lit inside me the past four months slowly flickering out and leaving me numb in its wake.
I take a step in the direction of the marina, but he stops me, his hand catching my hip.
“What am I supposed to do, Firefly? Just watch you walk away?”
The irony of that question combined with the pain his nickname for me now elicits has a harsh laugh barreling out of my chest, because the alternative would have been for him to come with me.
Which is exactly what I’d asked him to do.
Not to come with me here, to this beach, on this night — but to the Bahamas, to the next boat, the next adventure. We were supposed to leave this island together. We were supposed to walk hand in hand into our next gig as a couple. All summer, I thought that was the plan.
I thought that because he’d let me.