Chapter Twenty-Four
CHARTER CONFESSIONAL
CLOSE QUARTERS
GARY PARKS: CAPTAIN
Captain Gary groans, runs hand over face, shakes head, drinks coffee.
PRODUCER
We know you have a lot on your plate this morning, so we’ll try to keep this brief.
Captain Gary nods.
PRODUCER
So… in your own words, can you tell us what’s happened?
CAPTAIN GARY
Let’s just say I woke up thinking today would be about fuel levels and guest preferences. Didn’t expect I’d be managing a full-blown scandal before breakfast. And if I don’t handle this right, it’s not just reputations on the line — it’s my boat.
I was still in a daze when we made it back to the Sinking Sun.
It felt like I was watching someone else take off their shoes and pad along the teak deck into the main salon, down the stairs, and into the crew quarters.
Everyone was shouting about going to the hot tub or making snacks. I was focusing on breathing.
When I walked into my cabin, the lights were off and white noise was blaring from Gisella’s speaker. It sounded like a rushing river. One glance at her bunk confirmed she was already there, a large lump of a body under her comforter and pillows stacked all around her.
I frowned, trying to fight through the haze in my brain to remember if she’d left at the same time the rest of us had. The other cab did get here before ours did, but it wasn’t long enough for her to already be passed out. Was it?
I considered asking if she was okay, but thought better of it. I was fairly certain that if she was upset, it wouldn’t be from her knowing what happened between me and Finn. But guilt still slithered down my spine like a cottonmouth snake, and I was too cowardly to face the possibility.
Using the light from my phone screen, I debated my next move. I needed to change, but would I change into my swimsuit and join the crew in the hot tub?
Was Finn joining them?
Or should I just change into my pajamas and get some sleep?
Would I be able to sleep after what just happened?
I stood immobile for a full three minutes just staring at the chaos of clothes and shoes in my shared room with Gisella before my phone vibrated in my hand.
I turned it toward me, squinting against the screen now that my eyes had adjusted to the dark, and then my stomach hit the deck.
Text from Do Not Call Him Ever No Matter How Drunk You Are STOP DON’T DO IT:
Come to the primary cabin.
I’d been too weak to delete our messages when I finally cut myself off from Finn, and though I’d blocked him on social media, I couldn’t bring myself to ever block his number.
Just in case.
Now, I was staring at the first text from him in two years.
Just above it was a string of ones from before, inside jokes and kiss emojis and dirty promises we kept. I stared a little too long at the one that read I sleep better when you’re in my bed, Firefly before I clicked the screen off with my heart hammering in my chest.
I debated for all of two seconds before I was changing into my pajamas, brushing my teeth, checking my appearance in the dimly lit mirror of my cabin bathroom, and sneaking out as quietly as I could.
There were voices from the main salon followed by a loud burst of laughter and the distinct sound of glasses clinking. I tiptoed through the crew mess and up the stairs, peeking my head into the galley before I crossed through it and over to the stairs that led to the guest cabins.
My heart was racing the entire time, like I was some secret agent on a mission, and if one person caught sight of me, I was done with.
But no one spotted me. I cringed a bit when I heard Eli ask Leah if I was coming into the hot tub, and when she answered that she wasn’t sure, he started singing out my name.
Bernard eventually hushed him and warned not to wake Captain, and then their voices slurred together until they were snuffed out by the sliding glass doors closing behind them as they disappeared outside.
The silence their absence left the boat in made every step I took feel like I was a bowling ball crashing through glass.
The camera duo following me certainly didn’t help, and I wanted to tell them to fuck off, but knew I couldn’t.
So I let them trail me all the way to the primary cabin, and then I knocked so softly I wasn’t sure I made any noise at all.
I looked back over my shoulder with my ears thrumming, but I was alone, and the camera crew had paused at the end of the hallway, their lenses focused on me but giving space.
Finn opened the door, and then he snagged me by the wrist and pulled me inside. He shut the door before the camera crew could get more than a glimpse of us.
“Give me your mic.”
Finn was already yanking his from where it was wrapped around his midriff, and the sight of him dragging his shirt up to do so had me temporarily frozen before I snapped into action and followed suit.
“We’re not supposed to take them off.”
“I don’t fucking care.”
As soon as I had the mic cord free from where it had been snaked under my thin silk pajama top, Finn plucked the device from my hands. He tossed it onto the floor in the corner of the cabin along with his, the clattering of them loud enough to make me jump.
“They’ll still be able to hear us,” I pointed out. “Maybe not as clearly, but—”
“Come here.”
Finn hooked his finger under the waistband of my silk shorts and tugged until I was in his arms, until he could wrap me up and lower his mouth to mine.
He let out a long, sated exhale the moment our lips touched, as if he’d been holding his breath since we broke apart outside the bar and could finally find relief now that I was here.
That thought had me melting into him, and I almost forgot about all the questions my brain had been screaming since I hopped into the cab. It felt so fucking good to just kiss him and be kissed that I almost didn’t care about anything else.
Almost.
“Finn.” I broke away just far enough to part our lips, my forehead against his, fingers still curling in the fabric of his shirt.
“I want nothing more than to lose myself in you right now, but you… you’ve got to talk to me.
You’ve got to tell me what the hell is going on because I’m…
I’m going out of my mind trying to figure it out. ”
I was panting between the words, my entire body trembling even as Finn’s hands fought to hold me steady. When I lifted my gaze to his, he looked wrecked by my admission, and he pressed a swift, sweet kiss to my lips before he dragged me over to the bed.
He sat, pulling me to sit next to him, but he didn’t allow even a centimeter of space between us. His thigh was against mine, his hands wrapping mine up and holding them tightly in my lap. He angled himself toward me, his eyes flicking between my own.
“I haven’t touched Gisella since the moment I saw you.”
Those were far from the first words I expected him to say.
“I’m serious. All the times she dragged me into your cabin to cuddle?
I felt fucking sick, Em. She always wanted to do more but I refused.
She’d try to come to mine in the middle of the night and I’d essentially play dead.
I told her I didn’t want to be unprofessional or make anyone uncomfortable, but the truth is I couldn’t lie to her or to myself.
I couldn’t hurt her like that. I couldn’t pretend.
” He swallowed, his thumbs smoothing over my fingers where his hands were laced with mine.
“If I took her to bed, I knew it would be you I’d be thinking of. ”
His words lit the fuse I’d had to stomp out when we broke apart outside the club, and I felt the countdown start. The longer he stared at me, the more he said? The closer that spark got to the dynamite piled inside of me.
I thought about the crew beach day, about how Gisella had confessed to us that she’d been frustrated with Finn for not touching her. It was one thing to hear it from her, but to hear his side of it now…
It was terribly wrong, how good it made me feel.
Still, I shook my head, a full-body shake rocking over me. “I… I don’t understand.”
“That makes two of us, Firefly,” Finn said on a short laugh.
“I don’t even know where to start. I hate myself for what happened between us two years ago.
I’ve tortured myself these past two months just wondering what would have happened if I would have asked you to be with me in the offseason, if I would have told you sooner about the restaurant, if I wouldn’t have thought I was so fucking smart with my grand plan to get you to fall in love with me and abandon everything else you care about. ”
“I was young and stupid, too,” I told him, my eyes welling with tears. “I was just so proud. I couldn’t stop the anger long enough to be reasonable. I wanted to hate you because it was easier than admitting I was hurt.”
“I hate myself enough for the both of us for hurting you.”
I shook my head, but Finn kept on.
“And I’m sorry for not doing something sooner, for not pulling my head out of my ass the second I saw you and realized nothing about the way I felt for you had died.
I was just… fucking confused. Scared. I didn’t want to hurt Gisella, even though I knew it was inevitable.
I didn’t know where you stood, if you would even hear me out if I tried… ”
His eyes dropped to our joined hands, his thumbs brushing lightly over mine as he searched for the right words.
“And all those times I was a dick to you in the beginning — snapping, picking fights, lashing out over stupid shit like dinner service — that wasn’t about the job.
I was reeling. Seeing you again wrecked me.
I didn’t know how to function with you that close when you weren’t mine.
It was like fate had slammed us back together but locked the fucking doors.
I felt trapped by my own choices… and by how badly I still wanted you.