Chapter 32
Thirty Two
Callan
Dinner came together simply. Jeff pulled a battered camp stove from one of the storage lockers and balanced it on the deck while the boat rocked gently beneath us. Ethan handed him a dented pot and a bottle of water, and soon the quiet sound of the burner filled the air.
Rice and beans.
We sat in a loose circle on the deck while Jeff stirred the pot with a spoon, his movements unhurried.
Ethan leaned back against the railing with a grin. “Told you the totes were a good idea.”
I chuckled, rubbing my sore ankle. “Kid saved our asses with that one.”
Sloane nodded, lifting her bowl toward him. “Seriously, Ethan. Genius move.”
He ducked his head, embarrassed but clearly pleased. “Just figured if we had to run again, starving on the ocean would suck.”
“Solid logic,” Jeff said, handing him a bowl.
We ate quietly after that.
The rice came out a little undercooked; none of us cared. The food sat warmly in our bellies; there was nobody chasing us, nothing banging on the door—simply the ocean and the boat with four people surviving.
That counted for something.
When the sun finally dipped below the horizon, the first stars appeared—faint at first, becoming brighter, filling in the dark canvas above us until the whole sky glittered.
Jeff stood and stretched his back.
“Alright. Night shift.”
Ethan took the wheel first, while Jeff checked the charts. They’d take turns guiding the boat through the dark, keeping the speed low to avoid anything drifting in the water.
Before heading forward, Jeff tossed a thick wool blanket and a couple of old vinyl seat cushions toward us.
“Figured you two might want these.”
“Much appreciated,” I said.
I dragged the cushions over near the side rail where the deck curved slightly inward—a spot that offered a little protection from the wind. I lowered myself down carefully, stretching my injured leg out, and arranged the cushions behind my back.
Then I looked up at Sloane.
“Come here.”
She raised an eyebrow. “What are you doing?”
“Making a bed.” I patted the space between my legs. “Curl up.”
She hesitated for half a second—long enough for me to see the debate cross her face—but she climbed down beside me and settled back against my chest. I pulled the blanket over both of us, tucking it around her shoulders, sealing the warmth between our bodies.
The night air on the open ocean carried a bite, but with her weight against me and the blanket cocooning us, the cold didn’t reach very far.
She let out a soft sigh, and her body relaxed into mine—gradually, as if she had to give herself permission.
For a while, neither of us spoke.
The Mariner moved through the water with a low, steady rumble. Above us, the sky was bright and beautiful, an impossible spread of stars stretching from horizon to horizon, the Milky Way visible as a pale river cutting through the center.
Sloane shifted, resting her head against my shoulder. Her hair smelled like salt water.
“You okay?” I asked quietly.
“Yeah.”
Her fingers traced idle patterns on the fabric of my shirt, absent and slow, as if she didn’t realize she was doing it, but after a long silence, she spoke again. Her voice came softly, carefully.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
She tilted her head back slightly so she could look up at me; the starlight caught in her eyes.
“How long were you married?”
The question startled me, landing like a stone dropped into still water.
My body went still. I stared up at the stars for a moment, my jaw working around nothing. I had no idea she even knew I was married. I never talked about my personal life at work, and Sadie was not one to come to the aquarium.
I exhaled slowly through my nose.
“Fifteen years.”
She didn’t push, her thumb still tracing slow lines on my chest; I rubbed the back of my neck.
“Met her in college,” I continued quietly.
“Her name was Sadie. She was studying finance. I’d just come out of the military, still trying to figure out what the hell I wanted to do with my life after the Marines.
” A faint, involuntary smile tugged at the corner of my mouth.
“She used to call me a walking bad decision.”
Sloane snorted softly. “Sounds accurate.”
“Yeah, well. She had good instincts.”
The boat rocked beneath us, the rhythm slow and steady, almost meditative.
I stared out across the dark water where the stars reflected in broken points of light on the surface.
“She was good,” I said after a moment. “Patient. Way more patient than I deserved, especially early on. I came out of the service angry at everything, and she just… absorbed it. Waited me out. I don’t think I understood what that cost her until later.”
Sloane’s hand stilled on my chest. Her voice softened.
“What happened?”
I hesitated.
“Life happened. She climbed the corporate ladder, and I stayed the same. Same job. Same habits. Same guy she’d married, except now she had a corner office and galas and friends with titles in front of their names.
” I paused. “I didn’t fit anymore. Not in her world.
I think she tried to pretend it didn’t matter for a while, and I tried to pretend I didn’t notice, but we both knew. ”
Sloane shifted against me, her head settling more firmly into my shoulder.
“We drifted,” I said. “Slow at first. Then faster. Separate schedules. Separate rooms. Two people living in the same house with nothing left to say to each other.” I rubbed my thumb along the edge of the blanket.
“Two years ago, I came home early, walked into the garage, and found her with some guy on the hood of our car.”
Sloane’s breath caught.
I kept my voice even, flat, the way I’d trained myself to tell it.
“I didn’t fight it. She said she wanted a divorce, and I said, fine. Moved out the same week.”
The silence that followed stretched long and heavy between us. Sloane’s hand found mine under the blanket and held on, her grip firm, grounding.
“I worked too much,” I said. “I know that. I probably drove her toward it in ways I don’t want to look at too closely.
But honestly, Sadie disappeared from the marriage long before that day in the garage.
I just couldn’t let go of the idea of her, of the version of her I’d fallen in love with in college—I kept waiting for that person to come back. She never did.”
I rubbed my thumb across Sloane’s hand.
“I wanted a family.”
The words left my mouth quieter than I intended. They hung in the night air, vulnerable and exposed, and I almost wished I could pull them back.
“She kept saying later,” I continued. “Later, when things were financially better. Later, when the timing’s right. Later, later, always later.” I let out a dry, humorless laugh. “Turns out she simply didn’t want a family with me.”
Sloane tightened her grip on my hand.
“She left for some guy with a big loft downtown,” I said. “Finance type. Money. Status. Everything she’d been building toward. It made sense. That’s what she always wanted. I wasn’t honest enough with myself to see it.”
I paused, debated whether to say the next part, then decided Sloane deserved all of it.
“When I moved back into the house after she’d cleared out her things, I found a pregnancy test in the bathroom trash. Positive.”
Sloane went very still against me.
“She never told me,” I said. “Didn’t know I knew. But I did the math. The timing didn’t line up with anything between us.”
The ocean moved beneath the boat. Stars burned overhead, ancient and indifferent.
For a long time, neither of us spoke.
Then Sloane’s voice came, barely above a whisper.
“I’m sorry.”
I shook my head slightly. “Don’t be. It’s done.”
More silence. The boat creaked. Somewhere near the bow, Jeff murmured something to Ethan about a course heading.
Then Sloane asked, her voice gentle and careful, “Do you still love her?”
I thought about it, gave the question the honest weight it deserved instead of the reflexive answer I could easily hand out.
“No.” The word came without hesitation and surprised me with its certainty. “Whatever I had for Sadie died in that garage. Watching her with someone else on the car I’d made payments on for three years—something just died. Clean. Like a breaker tripping.”
She turned slightly in my arms, tilting her face up to search mine in the dim light.
“Do you miss her?”
I considered that, too. Longer this time.
“Sometimes,” I admitted. “But it’s not her I miss. It’s the shape of having someone. The connection. I liked being a husband; most guys complain about it—I never did. I liked having a partner. Someone to come home to, who knew how I took my coffee and didn’t have to ask.”
I looked down at her. My voice dropped lower, the corner of my mouth pulling up.
“Though I’ll say this—whatever dark, rough thing with sex you’ve got going on, Sloane, is significantly more my speed than Sadie’s vanilla approach ever came close to.”
She stiffened against me, her shoulders started shaking with a laugh she tried and failed to suppress.
“Oh my god,” she muttered into my chest.
“I’m just being honest.”
“You’re being terrible.”
“Also honest.”
She laughed again, quieter this time, and the sound of it—real, unguarded, warm—did something to my insides.
The laughter faded into a comfortable silence. Her fingers played with mine beneath the blanket, tracing the lines of my knuckles, the rough calluses on my palms.
Then she spoke, soft and serious again.
“You would have been a good dad.”
The words hit me somewhere deep and unprotected. A place I’d stopped visiting a long time ago.
My throat tightened.
I squeezed her hand.
“Maybe,” I said. “Guess we’ll never know.”
The boat continued its slow path through the dark ocean. Jeff and Ethan’s voices drifted back to us in quiet fragments—heading adjustments, watch schedules, the mundane logistics of staying alive.
Sloane rested her head against my chest again. I could hear her breathing—steady now, calmer than it had been all day.
After a minute, she asked softly, “Do you regret it? The marriage?”
I looked down at the top of her head, her hair moving slightly in the wind, the starlight catching the lighter strands.
“Yeah,” I admitted. “Parts of it. The years I spent chasing something that had already ended. The conversations I never started. The mornings I left before she woke up.”
Then I paused.
“But not now.”
She tilted her head slightly. “Why not now?”
I tightened my arms around her, drew her closer against my chest until I could rest my chin on the top of her head.
“Because somehow,” I said quietly, “in the middle of the goddamn apocalypse, I ended up right here. With you.”
She didn’t respond with words.
But her fingers laced through mine and held on—tight, deliberate, certain—and she pressed her lips against my hand in a kiss so small and tender it nearly broke me.
I turned my head and kissed her hair. Let my mouth linger there, breathing her in.
“Stay with me,” she whispered. Not a question. Not a demand. Something in between—a request made fragile by everything we’d already lost and everything we still stood to lose.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I said against her hair.
She nestled deeper into my chest, and her breathing slowed, and her grip on my hand softened as sleep started pulling her under.
I stayed awake.
Watching the stars drift overhead. Listening to the engine, holding the woman curled against me, and thinking about all the ways the world had ended and the one impossible, unexplainable way it had given me something worth keeping in the wreckage.