Chapter Twenty-Seven
POST-PRODUCTION CONFESSIONAL
CLOSE QUARTERS
LEAH brOOKS: THIRD STEWARDESS
PRODUCER
Looking back now, did you know, walking into charter eight, that it was going to be a disaster?
LEAH
I didn’t know for sure, but I felt it. We all did. It was like the wind picking up or the smell of rain before a storm moves in. After what happened, everyone was just… raw. Wound up. Looking for fights rather than solutions.
PRODUCER
Do you blame Finn and Ember for the way the season ended?
LEAH
They weren’t the only guilty ones.
Finn was at my side as I rapped my knuckles on the door frame leading to the bridge.
He’d been there as soon as I opened my cabin door, but he hadn’t pushed me to talk, hadn’t invaded my space.
He’d simply handed me my mic to strap back on, his presence letting me know without words that he was there.
He knew what I needed right now, and I’d never been more thankful for that.
My ears were still ringing, heart still pounding like a jackhammer in my throat. The whole morning felt like a nightmare I couldn’t wake up from, and yet it was all right on the heels of a dream I wished I could relive again and again.
It didn’t make sense to me, how so many emotions could exist inside me at one time.
How could I feel devastated for hurting our crew, guilty for betraying Eli and Leah and Gisella, but also elated from my reunion with Finn?
My soul was on fire, body begging for me to seek comfort in his arms, and yet I felt sick at the thought of giving in to those desires.
It was too much to hold at once, and I wondered if Captain Gary could see the teetering tower of fragile dishes I was struggling to balance as he waved us into the bridge.
“Have a seat,” he said, gesturing to the bench along the back of the bridge. A beautiful Mediterranean day sprawled out behind him, the water shockingly blue and little white puffs of clouds floating in the sky. It was such a contrast to the storm wrecking me inside.
Captain leaned a hip against the helm, folding his arms and staring at the floor for a moment before he lifted his gaze to meet mine and then Finn’s.
There was no warmth in his eyes.
Captain Gary had always been firm, but fair. Blunt, but with a side of humor. But this… this wasn’t the man who gave nicknames or winked when we nailed service. This wasn’t the man who cheered on a cheeky dance during crew night out or tossed out jokes mid-docking to cut the tension.
This was the captain of a fifty-five-meter vessel.
And he looked ready to sink us both.
“I’m not gonna waste time sugarcoating it,” he started, his voice low and clipped. “What happened this morning was a disaster. You know that. The crew knows that. The cameras sure as hell know that.”
He paused, letting the weight of those words hang in the air, and I swore I could hear my heartbeat echoing inside the silence that followed. Said cameras were aimed right at us, capturing our lashing for everyone to see.
I didn’t have the ability to be embarrassed anymore, not after this morning. I’d already sealed my fate with the viewing public. Now, all I could think about was my career and how the hell I could save it.
Okay, so that wasn’t entirely true.
I was thinking of my career, yes, but I was also thinking of Finn, of the words we whispered to one another in the dark last night, the promises made, the confessions kissed against skin.
I chanced a glance at him, and though he didn’t reach out for my hand or meet my stare, his hand twitched in his lap — a subtle sign that he was still with me.
But could we be together?
My heart crashed into my stomach at the thought that we couldn’t, that there was no way for us to weather this without splitting. The right thing would be for us to stay apart, to do our jobs — if we even still had them anymore — and try to earn back the trust of the people we hurt.
But I couldn’t stand the thought of losing him again after knowing what it felt like to have him back.
Could we possibly have both?
My gut churned like a stormy sea, those thoughts warring inside my head as I tried to focus on Captain Gary.
“I brought you two on as department heads,” he said. “Leaders. People the rest of the crew could look to for guidance, for professionalism. And what I got this morning…” He shook his head. “Was a complete breakdown in trust.”
My lungs burned, but I couldn’t seem to pull a full breath in. Finn was still beside me, his forearms resting on his knees now, fingers interlaced so tight his knuckles had gone white.
Captain’s voice hardened. “The moment you lost the respect of this crew, you lost the ability to lead them. And without leadership? Everything falls apart. Service. Deck. Galley. Interior. Doesn’t matter how good the food is or how well the table’s set if everyone’s too busy watching the damn fallout to do their jobs. ”
I swallowed hard, vision stinging.
He was right.
This wasn’t the type of job where coworkers could hate each other and still somehow make the final product shine.
We had to be a united team or the guests would notice.
Service would suffer — and so would our tip.
It could get even worse than that. It could be so bad that the guests demanded their money back altogether — and this wasn’t just a fifty-dollar dinner tab.
This was a six-figure refund no one wanted to make.
Memories of the morning shocked me in rhythmic flashes of light, and I wondered how the hell we would work together seamlessly again after all that went down.
“I don’t care what your reasons were. I don’t care if it was love or lust or a bloody lapse in judgment.
This—” Captain pointed toward the door like he could still see the explosion we’d left in our wake “—is drama. And I don’t want it interfering with these last two charters.
We’ve got guests flying in from halfway across the world, paying astronomical amounts for the experience of a lifetime. They didn’t sign up for a soap opera.”
He pushed off the helm then, standing tall.
“I’m not firing you. Yet.”
My heart thudded with hope I didn’t dare name.
“There are only two charters left, and frankly, I don’t have the time or the resources to replace you.
And technically, you haven’t committed a fireable offense.
But make no mistake — if things don’t change, if the tension continues, if the crew keeps turning on each other because of the two of you? ”
He stepped forward, eyes sharp as broken glass.
“I won’t hesitate.”
Finn nodded beside me, stiff. I did the same, forcing my head to move even though my entire body felt frozen.
“Keep your heads down. Do your jobs. Make amends with who you can, and lead. Together.” He looked between us, that word heavy with expectation.
“You don’t have to like each other, you don’t have to speak outside of what’s necessary.
But I expect the interior to function like a well-oiled machine.
I expect dinner service to run without a hiccup.
I expect you both to act like the professionals I hired. ”
The silence that followed his statement was heavy with that expectation.
“I don’t want to fire anyone,” Captain Gary said again, softer this time — but somehow even more dangerous. “But that doesn’t mean I won’t.”
We both nodded once more. My mouth was dry as sand, but I managed to croak out my biggest fear.
“What about after the season?”
His gaze snapped to mine.
I hadn’t meant for it to sound as broken as it did. But he knew what I was asking. Would this ruin me? Was I done? Captain had taken a chance on me this season. He’d given me my shot as chief stew.
Had I ruined it?
Captain’s jaw ticced, his lips pressing into a flat, unreadable line. “We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.”
He held my gaze, and something in his eyes flickered — not kindness, exactly. Maybe pity. Maybe frustration. Maybe a mix of the two.
“You’re both damn good at what you do. But professionalism is half the battle, if not more, in this career. And I’m not sure a glowing recommendation from me can overshadow drama that makes a whole crew melt down.”
I bit the inside of my cheek hard against the emotion threatening to overtake me from that little truth bomb. I knew he was right, but I’d hoped he could somehow reassure me that it would all be fine.
I hoped, somehow, this could all be fixed with the wave of a magical Captain wand.
“Dismissed,” he said, turning back to the helm. “Get to work.”
For a beat, Finn and I just sat there, like the lecture had stripped us of the ability to move, like our limbs no longer took commands from our brains.
Finn broke the spell first. He stood, slow and heavy, then waited for me to do the same.
We stepped out of the bridge, and the second we made it to the end of the hallway and paused at the stairs leading down to the crew quarters, my lungs turned to concrete.
It was a foreign sensation — and yet familiar all at once.
I’d been here before, this edge-of-a-cliff feeling.
The moment when your body starts reacting before your brain can even label what’s happening.
My pulse was a war drum, thudding in my ears, in my throat, in my wrists.
My chest tightened like a vise, ribs constricting, lungs shrinking, the air around me too thick to breathe.
I couldn’t get a full breath. No matter how hard I tried, it wasn’t enough.
It felt like drowning.
My fingers tingled, then went numb. My knees threatened to buckle. My skin went cold, clammy, a sheen of sweat blooming across my back even though I was shivering. Every sound was muffled except the rush of my own blood roaring in my ears.
Too much. Too fast.
Can’t fix this. Can’t breathe.
My thoughts splintered. Logic left the room. All that was left was panic, clawing up my throat like a scream with no exit.