Chapter 44 Olivia
OLIVIA
I capture Stefan’s king with my queen and lean back with a satisfied smile. “Checkmate.”
He raises a brow. “Is that so? I’ll be damned.”
“I knew it!” I cry out. “You let me win.”
Stefan doesn’t deny it. He just sits there in his deck chair, one arm draped over the back, watching me with that infuriating smirk that makes my stomach flip.
“Maybe I enjoyed watching you think,” he suggests.
“You’re a filthy liar.” I cross my arms, which makes the tiny bikini top he gave me ride up even higher. “You were distracted the entire game.”
His gaze drops to my chest, then back to my face. “Can you blame me?”
At first, I think he means the waves. Or the sunset. Or, hell, maybe he has some secret vendetta against pawns. But then his gaze dips down again—and realize he hasn’t been staring at the board at all.
Oh, God.
My stomach drops, heat prickling my skin. “You weren’t even trying,” I mutter, which sounds a lot like, Please tell me you were at least pretending to think about chess. I need some plausible deniability here.
“Not true.” His voice is maddeningly lazy. “I was trying very hard.”
Cue internal meltdown. Because I know exactly what he means. The bikini is ridiculous—white triangles held together by thin string and sheer audacity. When I’d emerged from the cabin wearing it, Stefan had gone completely still, his coffee mug frozen halfway to his lips.
“Too small,” I’d muttered, tugging at the bottoms like that would make them cover more of my pale ass.
“No. Perfect,” he’d corrected, never blinking.
Now, with the way he’s looking at me, I wish I’d stayed in sweatpants. Or do I? TBD.
I snatch his linen shirt from the chair beside me and shrug it on, leaving it unbuttoned. The fabric is soft and smells like him—citrus and smoke, so unfairly male it makes me want to shove my head inside it like a deranged aromatherapy addict.
Stefan’s eyes darken as I move. “That’s worse.”
“What’s worse?”
“My shirt. On you. Barely covering anything.”
I roll my eyes, even though my pulse is thudding in places I’d rather not admit. “You have a problem. You should seek professional help. Some kind of twelve-step program for men who can’t keep their eyes north of a collarbone.”
“Wouldn’t work,” he says, not even pretending to look guilty or look away. “I’m a lost cause.”
I make a sound that’s supposed to be derisive but comes out closer to a squeak. Fantastic. Sexy chess goddess one second, doggy chew toy the next. “You’re insufferable.”
“And you’re blushing.”
I clap both hands to my cheeks, which only makes them hotter. “I’m sunburned.”
He smirks. “On your chest, too?”
Okay, he’s got me there. I do my best to skewer him with a vicious glare, which is difficult when my brain is busy replaying that moment again and again.
“Too small.”
“No. Perfect.”
And worse—the little voice in the back of my head that keeps whispering: He liked it. He liked you.
My body does not need to hear that right now. It is already staging a full-blown coup.
I cross my legs, tug the hem of his shirt down, and mutter, “Next time, we’re playing checkers. Fully clothed.”
Stefan grins, slow and wicked. “You planning on distracting me there, too?”
“Not unless red and black plastic discs do it for you.”
“Everything about you does it for me.”
His eyes are fixed on mine. My first instinct is to look away, but I don’t. He doesn’t blink or breathe, as if he’s daring me to flinch first.
I should say something. Anything. A joke, a deflection, a scream—Fire on deck! Mayday! Abandon ship!—but my tongue’s gone on strike.
He tilts his head just slightly, like he can hear every frantic beat of my heart.
Leans closer over the chessboard.
Closer.
Closer…
My phone buzzes against the table, breaking the spell. Stefan reaches for it before I can.
“Camille,” he says, reading the screen. “Should I answer?”
“God, no. She’ll want details about…” I gesture vaguely between us. “This.”
“We can’t have that, can we?” he teases.
“Definitely not,” I agree. “She’d alert the press immediately.”
“Mm. And we certainly cannot have that. Some things aren’t fit for the front page.”
He’s doing that thing again where he says one thing and means another. His posture is the giveaway—utterly relaxed and yet somehow vibrating with intensity at the same time.
It’s the contradictions about him that kill me. How he can be so much of one thing and so much of another thing, too.
Dark and light. Hot and cold. It’s enough to give a girl a headache.
“Have you heard from your grandmother?” I ask, if only to change the subject.
He nods. “She’s happily bossing my men around.”
I let out a soft laugh. “I could see that. It’s sweet that you take care of her, you know.”
“‘Sweet.’” He says the word like he’s never heard it before. “I’m not sweet, Olivia.”
I shudder and turn my face toward the horizon. There it is again. Kind and cruel, scorching and freezing, here and then gone again.
“She wants to know when we’ll be back,” he says.
“Funny,” I mutter, “I had the same question.”
“Sick of life at sea already? It’s only been a few days.”
I shake my head, still stubbornly averting my gaze so he can’t see all the thoughts running through my mind. “Honestly, no. It’s been a long time since I was away from work.”
He hums and follows my eyeline out to where the sea meets the sky.
“You could stay here forever, couldn’t you?” I ask.
“Here as in on the yacht?”
“Here as in away from everything. The business, the threats, the constant looking over your shoulder.” I stretch my legs out on the lounge chair, letting the sun warm my skin. “It’s peaceful.”
Stefan shakes his head. “Peace is a luxury I can’t afford.”
Another beat passes. Seagulls cry and wheel overhead.
“My father loved this boat,” he says quietly. “He’d disappear for weeks at a time, sailing up and down the coast. Which meant my mother hated it.”
“Because she couldn’t control him here?”
He nods. “She used to say the yacht was his escape from reality. From responsibility.”
“What do you think?”
“I think he was trying to escape from her.”
“Then why name it after her?” I ask, wrinkling my nose in confusion.
“Antonia wasn’t her name,” Stefan says. “He named it after his first love. A woman he met in college, before my mother sank her claws into him.”
“Oh. What happened to her?”
“My mother happened. She made sure Antonia understood that my father belonged to her.” He takes a sip of his vodka. “Antonia married someone else six months later. Moved to Italy.”
“Did your father ever see her again?”
“No. But he kept her picture in his desk drawer, along with love letters she’d written him when they were young.” Stefan’s mouth twists. “My mother found them after he died. Burned them in the fireplace while I watched.”
“Jesus. A little Cruella de Vil of her, no?”
“She said it was for the best. That dwelling on the past was unhealthy.” His laugh sounds dry and rusty, dead on arrival. “Then she married my uncle two months later.”
“Do you believe in it?” I ask suddenly before I can think better of it. “Love, I mean. Real love.”
“I believe in obsession. Possession. Lust.” He meets my eyes. “Love is just the story people tell themselves to feel better about those things.”
“That’s cynical, even for you.”
“It’s realistic.”
“I don’t think so.” I shift in my chair, pulling his shirt tighter around me. “I think you’re scared.”
“Of what?”
“Of wanting something you can’t control. Someone you can’t control.”
Stefan’s expression hardens. “I don’t want anything I can’t control.”
“Everyone wants that,” I counter. “Connection. Partnership. Someone who sees all your flaws and chooses to stay anyway.”
He scoffs, “Fairy tale bullshit.”
“Is it? Your father loved Antonia enough to name his boat after her twenty years later. What is that if not the real thing?”
“And look how it ended,” he retorts. “He died alone, betrayed by the woman he married because he couldn’t have the one he actually wanted.”
The pain in his voice makes my heart ache. “Maybe he made the wrong choice. That doesn’t mean love doesn’t exist.”
“You really believe in that? Soulmates and happily ever afters?”
“I want to,” I confess quietly. “I want to believe that somewhere out there is someone who’ll love me for who I am, not who they want me to be. Someone who won’t leave when things get complicated.”
“Everyone leaves when things get complicated.”
“No,” I whisper. “Not everyone.”
Stefan squints at me, the sun bright on half his face. “What happens when you find this mythical soulmate? What then?”
“Then I stop feeling like I’m fighting the world alone.”
“And if he’s not what you expected? If he’s dangerous? If loving him could destroy everything you’ve built?”
I look away again, following the path of the birds overhead. “I guess I’d have to decide what matters more,” I say quietly. “Safety or happiness.”
“And if you could only have one, which would you choose?”
I don’t answer. I can’t, because the truth terrifies me. Because sitting here with Stefan, feeling safer than I have in years despite knowing exactly how dangerous he is…
I’m starting to think I’ve already chosen.
“What about children?” I ask, deflecting. “You want an heir, but no partner. How does that work?”
“Simple. I provide for the child, ensure they’re educated, protected. Everything else is unnecessary complications.”
“Everything else meaning what?”
“Bedtime stories. Soccer games. Arguments about curfew.” He shrugs. “I’ll hire people for that.”
“You can’t hire people to love your child.”
“I can hire people to care for them properly. It’s more reliable.”
“Is that what happened to you? Hired caretakers?”
“After my father died, yes. Nannies, tutors, bodyguards. It was efficient.”
“It must’ve been lonely.”
Stefan’s jaw tightens. “It was safe.”
“Safe isn’t the same as loved.”
“Love didn’t keep my father alive.”
I bend forward, my hands clenched in my lap. “But it made his life worth living. The way he loved Antonia, even after she was gone—that’s what kept him human in a world that tried to make him a monster.”
“He was weak.”
“It takes courage to love someone when you know it might destroy you.”
“Or stupidity.”
“Maybe they’re the same thing.”
Stefan drains his vodka and sets the glass down. “You’re romanticizing it.”
“And you’re running from it.”
“I’m not running from anything.”
“No? Then why are you so determined to keep our child at arm’s length? Why hire strangers when you could—”
“When I could what? Play house? Pretend this is something it’s not?”
His words sting, but I push forward. “When you could be a father. Really be one, not just a provider.”
“I don’t know how to be a father.”
“Nobody does,” I say gently. “You learn as you go. You make mistakes and try to do better next time.”
“What if I screw it up? What if I turn out like my mother—manipulative, cruel, incapable of putting anyone else first?”
“You won’t.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“I’m not. That’s the only way you know it’s real.”
When I reach out to touch him, Stefan doesn’t move to reciprocate. He stares down at our joined hands. His skin is rough, calloused from years of violence, but the heat it emanates is soft and tender.
“If we do this,” he says slowly, “if we bring a child into this world… I won’t abandon them. Whatever happens between us, whatever goes wrong—I’ll be there. You have my word.”