Chapter Twenty
POST-PRODUCTION CONFESSIONAL
CLOSE QUARTERS
LEAH brOOKS: THIRD STEWARDESS
PRODUCER
Do you feel like the crew beach day was a turning point for you and Cameron?
LEAH
Oh, yeah. I was content to stay away from him the rest of the season and just do my job. I was hurt, you know? But Cameron made an effort, and I appreciated that. I felt like he regretted what he’d done.
PRODUCER
Do you think Gisella regretted it, too?
LEAH
Well, she apologized to me, which was nice, but… I don’t know. I don’t think she felt bad for what she did. I think she’d do it again, if we could turn back time. She wanted attention and she got it.
PRODUCER
Finn’s attention?
Leah shrugs.
LEAH
I mean… I think anyone’s attention would do.
The sun had dipped below the horizon while we were still elbow-deep in a fiercely competitive beer pong tournament — half the crew versus a pack of rowdy tourists who’d somehow roped themselves into our beach day.
Shirts were swapped for team colors, dares were shouted over music, and Eli played the entire last round wearing a snorkel mask, claiming it was a strategic advantage.
It definitely wasn’t, and when we lost, we made him run the naked lap around our cabana.
He somehow managed to do so without the local authorities noticing.
Or maybe the Italians and tourists on this beach didn’t care about someone running around with their dick slinging so long as everyone was having fun.
Now, hours later, the beach glowed under warm string lights woven between driftwood posts and leaning cypress trees, casting golden halos over a sea of people swaying to music.
A local Italian cover band played from a stone terrace just off the beach, their sound a dreamy fusion of acoustic guitar, soft percussion, and the occasional saxophone.
They were taking American pop hits and spinning them into smoother, slower remixes.
It felt like being at a forbidden speakeasy jazz bar, except under the stars with the smell of salt wafting in from the sea.
The air was charged.
I stood in the middle of it all, barefoot in the sand and buzzed just enough to feel like the world was on tilt in the best way.
Leah was curled up against Cameron on my right, her cheeks flushed and lips kiss-swollen.
The hot tub incident was officially ancient history now, if the way they couldn’t stop touching each other was any indication.
They laughed at something I missed —probably another joke about Cameron’s failed, behind-the-back beer pong shot that nailed Palmer square in the forehead — and I smiled, warm and loose-limbed and grateful for the night off.
Finn stood to my left.
Where I swayed and sipped the cocktail in my hand, he was solid and still. He still seemed just as buzzed, if not more so, than he had been when we sat by the water earlier, a lazy smile on his lips, but I saw what I was sure most didn’t.
He was somewhere else.
I saw it in the way his eyes glossed over as he watched the band, in how he’d blink back to the present moment every now and then and attempt a wider smile at whoever was trying to talk to him.
He kept a small but noticeable space between where he stood and where I was, but the tension still coiled in the inches that separated us.
Gisella danced on the other side of him, rotating between hanging on him and joking with Eli and Palmer.
She tugged on his arm until he bent enough for her to say something in his ear over the music, and she let out a laugh that had her tilting her head back and eyes watering from exertion.
Finn only gave a lazy half-smile in response, but his eyes didn’t leave the band.
He didn’t lean into her or let his touches linger on her skin.
He didn’t pull her into him and move with the beat.
And when Gisella didn’t get the reaction she wanted from him, she turned back to Palmer and Eli.
I shouldn’t have cared, shouldn’t have been so tuned into them that I missed an entire song, but I was drunk and the kind of tired that made it harder to ignore the tug in my chest every time I glanced his way.
What happened on the shoreline earlier still stuck to me like a leech, no matter how I tried to pluck it away.
I watched the band, trying to keep my focus on singing and dancing with Leah when she took a break from making out with Cameron.
I sipped my drink. I sang along to words I knew.
I did everything I could to let the memory of Finn’s hand on my neck dissolve into the sea air.
But I felt like a forest in a drought — just one stray spark from burning too hot and too fast to be contained.
With a long exhale, I surrendered to the music. I was dizzy from drinking all day, but not in an unpleasant way. My buzz vibrated through my sore muscles, and I let it carry me, humming through my bones as I moved in time with the smooth, slow melody.
I’d needed this.
We’d all needed this.
Six charters behind us and just three more to go, and the long days were catching up with everyone.
We were still working together nicely, but there were small moments when the little nit-picky things slipped — like Eli making a joke about Cameron taking yet another coffee break, or Leah muttering that she never got to see the light of day from being stuck in laundry, or Palmer popping back at me when I asked for his help on service and he pointed out that he hadn’t had a break all day.
We were all strung tight and exhausted, and without this day off, we likely would have snapped.
There was still the chance even after a break, if I was being honest.
But I chose not to focus on the what ifs.
I swayed with the rhythm of the music, hips rocking, hair sticking to the back of my neck, my smile widening with each passing second. My eyes slipped shut, the world narrowing to the pulse of the song and the fizz of liquor in my veins. And I let go — of the tension, of the stress, of him.
Just for a moment.
When the band ended the song and introduced another, I finally peeled my eyes open, and the scene around me had shifted.
Gisella and Palmer were gone. I assumed they’d gone off to get new drinks or take a break from the crowd.
Eli was at the bar with Bernard and a gaggle of locals, slamming back shots and howling with laughter.
Cameron and Leah were still nearby, though they’d moved closer to the front of the stage, and they might as well have been alone with the way they were tangled up in each other.
One camera duo was with Eli and Bernard at the bar, the other had tired of the endless footage of Leah and Cameron drunkenly making out and was nowhere to be seen. I wondered if they’d taken off with Gisella and Palmer.
I scanned the space, registering it with the kind of lazy awareness only alcohol and exhaustion could bring.
And then I felt it — the faintest touch on my left hip.
It was the graze of a knuckle, rough and warm, curling just under the tie of my bikini like a question mark.
Feather-light, so much so that it was almost nothing at all.
But it seared my skin like a branding iron.
I didn’t have to look to know who it was.
My heart lurched into my throat, strangling me as it stalled out. I froze. I couldn’t will my hips to sway to the music anymore, not with that touch anchoring me to a past I realized I’d never escape.
Finn’s warmth invaded my space even though he was still a safe distance away.
I chanced a glance, secretly, tilting my head to the left like I was looking at the bar when really I was cataloging him in my peripheral.
And there he stood, his eyes on the band, head bobbing a bit to the beat like there was nothing out of place.
But his knuckle dragged along the skin beneath my bikini, from the front of my hip to the back, and then he slid his finger beneath the tie.
That was the spark.
I went up in a blazing inferno, heart stuttering back to life before it kicked hard and fast like a snare drum in my chest. I swallowed, keeping my eyes on the band, but I felt it when Finn moved in closer, when he slid to stand behind me.
His finger toyed with my bikini again.
Oh, God.
I should stop this.
I should walk away.
But I was rooted in place, drunk off hours of alcohol and the heat of his forbidden touch.
There was no question — he knew what he was doing. It didn’t matter that he kept his eyes on the band and pretended to be innocent. His halo was askew, flickering and threatening to burn out altogether with every millimeter of space he annihilated between us.
We were hidden by the crowd, tourists and locals dancing all around us with their hands in the air. I once again found myself scanning for the location of the cameras, and when I found them focused elsewhere, my insides liquified.
Because I knew Finn noticed their absence, too.
He slid up fully behind me, confident and careless all at once as his other hand found my hip, too. He had me framed in his grasp now, and his fingers bit into my flesh as his hot breath washed over the back of my neck.
My eyes fluttered shut, tongue sweeping out to wet my bottom lip as I desperately tried to hold onto my morals. But they were washing away quickly, the buzz dampening my inhibition, the darkness of the crowd daring me to test my limits, the heat of Finn’s touch too intoxicating to resist.
I gasped when Finn pulled me closer, one hand still holding fast to my hip as the other wrapped around me and splayed across my abdomen. The tip of his nose ran along the back of my neck, a groan vibrating out of him when I let myself fall into his touch.
My body melted into his, back to chest, and that devilish hand of his slid up higher until his thumb slipped beneath the string between the two triangles of fabric covering my breasts.