Chapter 33
Thirty Three
Sloane
Imust have fallen asleep at some point, because the last thing I remembered was the stars drifting across the sky, the steady rumble of the Mariner’s engine vibrating through the deck beneath us.
Callan’s arms were around me, the blanket tucked tight against the cold ocean air.
His warmth pressed along my back, his heart beating against my cheek.
The sky above us had turned pale blue, morning light spreading in a slow wash over the water. The ocean calm—long silver ripples catching the first edge of the sun.
I didn’t move, still curled between his legs, my back against his chest, his arm draped loosely across my waist beneath the blanket. His breathing was slow. Steady.
Still asleep, I should move, I thought.
But I didn’t.
I had nowhere to be, and it had been a long time since I’d been this comfortable.
So I stayed.
The boat rocked gently as it pushed through the water. I shifted, turning, and rested my cheek against his chest, letting the quiet rhythm of his breathing lull me.
For a long time—years, really—Callan had been the last person on earth I thought I’d ever let this close. We’d fought constantly, snapping at each other over nothing.
I’d been so sure he hated me, and now here I lay, tucked against him like we’d known this version of each other for eternity, and the strange thing I couldn’t quite explain—the thing that kept catching me off guard—
It didn’t frighten me.
After a while, he shifted behind me. His arm tightened slightly around my waist, the blanket rustling.
“You awake?” I murmured.
His voice came a second later, rough with sleep.
“Mm… yeah.”
Low. Gravelly. That unfair thing men’s voices did in the morning.
A shiver traced up my spine.
He shifted again, his chest rising against my back.
“Do you need me to move?” I asked softly.
He shook his head, his lips brushing the back of my neck. Just barely. A soft, sleepy press of warmth against my skin.
Something turned over in my chest.
“Not yet,” he murmured.
His arm slid a little tighter around me, his breath faint against my neck, his voice still thick.
“Just… let me get up and pee.”
I laughed quietly.
“Very romantic.”
“Hey,” a lazy mutter. “Morning priorities.”
He pressed another kiss against my neck—unhurried, like he had all the time in the world—before slowly sitting up. The blanket slipped from us, and the cool morning air rushed in.
I turned to watch him as he shifted his injured ankle carefully and stood, stretching his arms overhead with a low groan.
“God,” he muttered. “Everything hurts.”
“You jumped off a building yesterday.”
He glanced back at me. That crooked smile is such a rarity.
“Yeah. That might have something to do with it.”
I watched him go, this man I’d spent so long being angry at, and now the anger had burned down to nothing, and underneath it—something I hadn’t expected at all.
When he came back, he dropped behind me, pulled me back between his legs, and the blanket over both of us in one easy motion. His arm found my waist again as if his body already knew where I belonged: against him.
“We’ve got time,” he murmured near my ear.
“How much?”
“Jeff said the rest of the day, at least, before we reach the island.”
He settled back against the cushions and drew me closer.
“Might as well rest.”
The ocean rolled beneath us. The sun climbed. His fingers brushed lightly along my arm as he tucked the blanket tighter.
“Comfortable?” he asked.
I nodded against his shoulder.
“Yeah. You make a great bed, Callan.”
His chin came to rest on top of my head; he laughed.
“Good,” he murmured.
As I started to drift, Callan’s voice broke the quiet.
“Sloane?”
“Mm?”
A pause; I could almost hear the thought turning over in his head before he let it out.
“How long were you with Peter?”
Casual on the surface, but underneath, the question had been sitting in his chest for a while, waiting for the right moment to ask.
I opened my eyes and stared out over the slow-rolling water.
“Four years.”
Callan stayed quiet for a second.
“Four?”
“Yeah.”
His arm shifted around my waist.
“How’d you meet?”
I let out a quiet laugh. “At a concert.”
“What kind?”
“Some indie rock thing. Loud. Too many people, way too much beer.”
He chuckled softly behind me.
“Romantic.”
“Very.” I watched the horizon as the memory floated up, distant and faded, as if it had happened to someone else. “He spilled a drink on me, actually, spent ten minutes apologizing like he’d committed a war crime.”
Callan smiled against my shoulder. “Smooth.”
“It worked,” I said.
The boat rocked beneath us.
His next question caught me off guard.
“Were you going to marry him?”
I snorted before I could stop myself.
“God, no.”
“No?”
“Honestly?” I said.
“Yeah.”
“I had plans to dump him that Wednesday.”
His arm tightened slightly.
“Seriously?”
“Yep.”
“Why?”
I stared at the water for a long time. I took a breath and thought about my answer.
“Because I’d spent four years waiting to care about him the way I thought I should, and it never happened.”
Callan didn’t move.
“But it wasn’t just Peter—every relationship I’ve ever been in,” I said quietly, “it’s the same thing: no butterflies or the spark everyone talks about. Nothing that made me think—this is it. This is my person. This is different.”
The words sounded strange aloud, as if admitting something I’d barely allowed myself to think.
“After a while, you start wondering if the problem is you, like you’re broken.”
His thumb brushed slowly along my arm.
“You’re not broken, Sloane.”
I shrugged a little.
“Maybe not, but after four years I still looked at Peter and felt exactly what I’d felt the first night I met him: attraction, desire sometimes, but overall nothing. So I figured it was time to stop pretending.”
Callan’s voice came carefully, measured.
“Was he good to you?”
I laughed quietly, not much humor in it.
“He was fine.”
That answer seemed to sit wrong with him.
“‘Fine’ isn’t exactly glowing.”
I hesitated.
“Yeah.”
“I got tired of being treated like a convenient thing, a toy he pulled off the shelf when he had nothing better to do, merely to fuck and put away. Did our relationship get physical? Yeah, sometimes it did, but never anything I probably didn’t instigate.”
His arm went rigid around me. I could sense the anger rising in him.
I kept my eyes on the water.
“You know that thing where someone touches you and it has nothing to do with you? Like you’re just… there, like you’re a prop in their life instead of a person.”
He didn’t answer, but I could hear his breathing change behind me—tighter.
“That’s what it became,” I said. “That’s what it always becomes.”
My voice was quieter than I had meant it to be.
A long silence, I added with a dry, bitter little laugh—
“Plus, the guy called me fat.”
Behind me, Callan made a strangled sound.
“Fat?”
I shrugged.
“Yeah.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
“Nope.”
“Sloane,” he said, disbelief thick in his voice. “That guy was a fucking idiot.”
I let out a small laugh. “He had opinions.”
“Yeah, well, his opinions are garbage.”
His arm locked around me again, firm, protective, as if the information had physically hurt him.
“Fat?” he repeated. “Jesus Christ.”
His chest rose as he shook his head.
“Sloane… you’re hot.”
I rolled my eyes. “Oh, please.”
“No. Seriously, if you knew all the times I looked at you and had to walk away over the years, because I got hard thinking about you.”
His voice had dropped lower.
“I thought you were hot long before any of this. I had a wife and spent way too much time thinking about what it would be like to fuck you on every surface of the aquarium and every surface of my house. I’m ashamed, honestly.
I had thoughts about you long before Sadie left, and I hate that about myself. ”
His hand shifted along my waist.
“You’re absolutely beautiful,” he kissed my neck.
My cheeks warmed despite myself.
“You’re terrible,” I muttered.
“I’m honest.”
The early sunlight spread soft and gold across the water.
For a moment, we just lay there.
“You deserve better than someone who makes you invisible.”
I didn’t answer right away.
That word—invisible—lodged deep in my chest and stayed there, because that’s exactly what it had been. Every time, every relationship. I’d been present in someone’s life without ever being seen in it.
And here, on a boat in the middle of the ocean, wrapped in a blanket with a man I’d spent years convinced hated me—
I realized he’d seen me the whole time, not the version I performed, the version that smiled and said everything’s fine and let people take what they wanted without asking for anything back.
Me.
The difficult one, the stubborn one, the one who fought him at every turn and never once made it easy.
He’d seen all of it.
I leaned back against him. His warmth was solid and steady.
“Maybe,” I said, and my voice came out thinner than I wanted.
His fingers traced gently along my arm.
“Definitely.”
I turned my head enough to glance back at him.
His eyes—close, quiet, serious—held mine. I wanted to stay exactly here, in exactly this gaze, and never move.
“And you?” I asked softly.
“What about me?”
“You’ve been very complimentary this morning.”
A crooked smile pulled at his mouth.
“Stating facts, love.” He nuzzled his stubbled cheek against my shoulder, kissing me.
“Uh-huh?” Still caught off guard by the love, but getting more used to it.
He leaned forward slightly. His voice was low near my ear, and my pulse picked up.
“Besides,” he said, “if you’ve spent your whole life waiting to care about someone and it never came—”
His thumb traced slowly across the back of my hand beneath the blanket.
“Maybe you were just with the wrong people.”
The words settled, quiet, and sure.
I believed him.
Because when he touched me, when his arm tightened around me, when his voice dropped low and soft against my ear—
I didn’t feel nothing.
I didn’t feel fine.
I felt everything.