Chapter 49
KATIE
How often do you think about me naked? Please circle one.
All the time
Constantly
As much as I think about you
“Here?” I kick my feet and squint at the water. We’re fifty yards away from one of the islands in the bay, but I can’t see the bottom.
“Yep.” Tristan settles next to me on the platform at the stern of the Targa.
She’s forty feet of wood and chrome and pristine white siding, with a massive platform for sunbathing and a sunken seating area.
We’re perched in the sun, side by side at the edge.
“We have to anchor out here. If we bring the boat too close, we risk getting trapped when the tide goes out.”
Our toes skim the water. He’s in a pair of neon orange swim trunks and a faded white t-shirt that says Prince in block capitals. I’m in my most athletic bikini. It’s a perfect late June day—one of those days where the sunshine feels physical and my hair is already searing the back of my neck.
“Are we staying that long?”
“We could be.”
I slide him a glance. He’s leaning back on his palms, and it makes every muscle in his arms stand out in stark relief. His smile is lopsided and sneaky, like he has a secret he won’t share.
“What?” I narrow my eyes on him.
“Just happy to be alive.”
“I don’t believe you.”
He laughs and bumps me with his shoulder. “You want to explore?”
“There?” I gesture toward the island. It’s half-wild, with a small lighthouse at the end and tangles of scrub trees and low bushes past a rock-strewn beach. The bay surrounding Crownhaven is full of islands like this.
“It’s special.”
“What does that mean?”
His hand goes to the neck of his t-shirt and he pulls it off, and I get one long mouthwatering look at the lean planes of his torso.
“It means that I’ve never brought a girl here and I want to show it to you.”
My pulse leaps.
“Tristan,” I say warningly.
“What?” He pushes to stand, and my breath catches while I watch him. When he slips into the water, he goes under for five seconds and surfaces, shaking his head like a dog and grinning. “Come with me, Katie.”
“I shouldn’t.”
“Don’t you want to?”
Of course I do.
I want to curl up next to him and nap in the sun.
I want my head in his lap. I want a hundred more summers with him.
I want my fingers on his jaw and his tongue in my mouth and I want to do it every day until we die.
And I think he wants it too, and oh god, no, of course he doesn’t, because he told me at the start of the summer that he’d prefer not to feel anything.
“Katie,” he says coaxingly.
I screw my eyes shut so I can untangle my thoughts.
I turn every word over from last night and today and I wish I could understand him. He’s being different. Sweet, almost. Hot. Silly and sexy and handsy.
But does that mean he wants more?
I don’t think so. I think—and it’s hard because he’s skimming his thumb over my knee—that this is just fun for him.
He feels like a vise is closing around him.
This is a distraction before his marriage.
Something we’ve both wanted for a while and not something that runs deeper.
There’s a massive gap between just practice and deeper feelings, and this isn’t that. Tristan doesn’t want to feel things.
He told me so himself.
But I do.
There’s an ache low in my stomach. It’s soothed by the skim of his fingers up my thigh, before it returns, harder and sharper, like a stone in my belly.
“What do you want from me, Tristan?”
I lift my lids to see him gazing up at me, arms folded over the edge of the boat, feet kicking lazily behind him.
“Give me the day.”
I shake my head. Panic flares inside me. “One day won’t be enough for you. You’ll want more, Tristan. I know you. You’ll want my nights and every day after and you’ll consume me.”
His eyes are gentle, and his lips are quirked. “Of course I will.”
He sounds so confident, so at ease with himself, and I have never felt that way in my whole damn life, unless it’s at work.
“Would it be so bad?” He cocks his head, watching me. “What if you let yourself have fun with me? What if you didn’t think ten steps ahead?”
“Bad things will happen.” The words are automatic, a product of a lifetime spent trying to make sure things turned out okay.
They’re the words of a little girl who was so determined to make sure life went right that she focused all her energy on what could go wrong.
Against all reason, the back of my nose heats.
“What if they didn’t?” Another lazy kick. His shoulder muscles bunch as he shifts to rest his chin between my knees, to cage me with his arms. “What if we had the best day ever?”
“I’d want more.”
“Me too.” His words are automatic, his gaze flaring with something that might be triumph.
My stomach squeezes. “I don’t lead a charmed life, Tristan.”
He presses his cheek to my thigh, stubble scraping as he nuzzles me, his smile spilling over his face, like he understands what I’m really saying—that I want him more than I’ve ever wanted anything and it terrifies me.
“Katie, baby. Can’t you see that’s what I’ve been trying to give you?”
The pressure behind my eyes grows and I blink furiously.
I close my fingers around the edge of the stern, until the fiberglass digs into my flesh.
I have a choice to make. I either pull away now or I accept that this is what it is.
He marries someone else. I’m happy with what I get.
I don’t do regret or sadness. I don’t look back and resent my circumstances.
If I did, I’d spend my whole damn life shaking my fist at the world.
With Tristan, I feel like the sun has been turned on inside me, lighting up a small corner of my heart that I’ve only just found. Maybe it’s a corner that didn’t even exist until I met Tristan.
Right then, I decide.
Even if this ends in catastrophe, I’ll still be glad that Tristan owns that piece. I still want this for as long as I can have it, especially if it feels like this.
This is better than being a best friend.
This is buying a winning lottery ticket every day.
It’s the light turning green every time you approach it or the coffee shop giving you a free coffee just because.
It’s the Tristan Prince magic and it feels like a million dollars have been shredded to confetti inside my heart.
His gaze on my face, warm like the sun.
He gives me a teasing smile. Confetti bursts and that corner expands by a millimeter, a dangerous amount for a heart to grow.
“What?” he asks.
“Just thinking,” I croak. Rearranging my insides. Making more space for you because you’ve moved in and I fear it’s permanent. “I’d really like to be more like you. I want to take life by the horns. I don’t want to be scared. I don’t want to worry about the consequences.”
I pull my shirt up and over my head and smirk at the stunned look on his face.
“Bikini or no bikini?”
His eyes flare. His mouth is ajar, shock racing over his features, followed by something hotter and darker.
There’s a twist of need in my belly, followed by triumph. My fingers flirt with the edge of my waistband, and Tristan licks his bottom lip like he’s imagining his mouth replacing my hand.
He turns his face against my thigh and mumbles something that sounds like “fucking hell,” and I burst out laughing.
I can do this too. I can be that girl. The confident one. The one who makes Tristan feel weak. He makes it easy for me. He always has.
“Don’t want you getting burned,” he mutters. “Wear the suit.”
I chuckle and slip into the water after him, feeling like I could float all the way to the island. As I follow Tristan’s powerful strokes through the choppy water, it never once occurs to me to be scared, because Tristan is right there in front of me.
He will always catch me, and he’ll always like me.
I never feel like I have to please him. I never feel like I’m not enough with him. I never worry about being pushing him away because of how awkward or reserved I can be. The thought stuns me. I tread water, tipping my face up to the sun, blinking back tears.
“Bailey,” he shouts. “You good?”
“Yep,” I shout back.
I’m so not. I’m falling for him.
Of course I am.