Chapter 6 — The Trap Hatched
Sienna got back to the room well after dark, hair still damp from a shower she’d taken at the spa to avoid walking through the ship looking as thoroughly wrecked as she felt, and found Chloe sprawled across her own bed painting her toenails like she owned the entire ocean.
“There you are.” Chloe didn’t look up from her polish. “I texted you like four times.”
“Phone was in my bag. Sorry.” Sienna dropped onto her own bed, careful to keep her face doing something normal. “How was the massage guy?”
“Boring. Married, actually, but the boring kind of married, not the fun kind.” Chloe capped the polish and finally looked up, and whatever she saw in Sienna’s face made her sit up fully, delighted. “Okay, what is that. You look like you got hit by a bus. A good bus.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You’re glowing, Si. You’re actually glowing, I’ve never seen you glow.” Chloe crawled to the end of the bed, grinning. “Spill. Right now.”
“It’s not — it’s complicated.” Sienna picked at a loose thread on the comforter, torn between the promise she hadn’t technically made and the sheer physical impossibility of not thinking about the last several hours. “I might have spent the afternoon with Julia.”
Chloe’s whole face lit up like she’d just won something. “The wife? Oh my God, that’s incredible, that’s actually the best possible outcome, do you understand what this means?”
“It doesn’t mean anything, it was just—”
“It means I’ve basically already won.” Chloe flopped back against her pillows, practically vibrating.
“I’ve got the husband eating out of my hand, and now you’ve got the wife too?
We’re going to end this cruise having personally wrecked an entire marriage.
That’s iconic. That’s genuinely iconic behavior. ”
“Chloe.” Sienna’s voice came out sharper than she meant it to. “It wasn’t like that. Julia wasn’t — she didn’t seem like someone being wrecked. She seemed like someone who knew exactly what she wanted.”
“That’s what makes it hot, though. She thinks she’s in control.” Chloe waved a hand, already moving past the point entirely. “Okay, but forget her for a second, you need to hear what happened with Mark last night. It was insane. Actually insane.”
Sienna already knew, in broad strokes, from the state Chloe had come back in at two in the morning, but she let her friend tell it again anyway, the whole story spilling out fast and breathless — the deck, the railing, the arm across her throat, the way he’d flipped every ounce of her confidence inside out in about four seconds flat.
“He’s not what I thought he was,” Chloe finished, eyes bright. “Like, at all. I thought I was going to get some sweet, guilty married guy I could push around. He’s not that. He’s scary, Si. Scary in the best possible way.”
“Maybe that’s a sign to leave it alone.”
“Absolutely not, are you insane, that’s a sign to go bigger.
” Chloe sat up, and Sienna watched the gears turning behind her eyes with a growing, specific dread.
“Okay. Captain’s Gala. Two nights from now.
Everyone’s dressed up, everyone’s drinking, Julia’s going to be busy working the room because that woman clearly loves an audience.
I invite Mark to our room. Tell him I want to finish what we started properly.
No railing, no rush, no chance of getting caught. ”
“Chloe—”
“And this time I actually go for it. The real thing. I’ve got him so worked up he’s not going to say no, and once he’s inside me with nothing between us, that’s it.
That’s the whole game. He’ll never be able to look at his wife the same way again.
” Chloe’s grin had gone sharp, victorious, already living three days in the future.
“It’s perfect. It’s honestly the perfect ending. ”
Sienna’s stomach turned over, and not from excitement. “You really think he’s going to just — go along with that? Just show up and do exactly what you planned?”
“Why wouldn’t he? Have you seen how he looks at me?”
“I’ve seen how he doesn’t look at you, actually.
Or — I don’t know. Something about the way he plays along feels different than you think it does.
” Sienna chose her words carefully, aware she was walking right up to the edge of a promise she hadn’t made but felt bound to anyway.
“Julia’s not stupid, Chloe. She’s genuinely the sharpest person I’ve ever met.
I don’t think either of them is playing the game you think they’re playing. ”
“Oh my God, did she get in your head that badly in one afternoon?” Chloe laughed, not unkindly, but with the specific dismissiveness of someone who’d already decided the conversation was over.
“Sienna. I love you. But you spent one afternoon with a hot older woman and now you’re defending her marriage like she’s your best friend.
She’s a mark. They’re both marks. That doesn’t stop being true just because one of them made you feel special for an hour. ”
“It wasn’t just an hour, and it didn’t feel like being a mark.” Sienna’s voice had gone quiet, and something in it must have carried, because Chloe’s grin finally faltered, just slightly.
“Wait. Are you actually into her? Like, into her into her?”
“I don’t know what I am.” Sienna pulled her knees up to her chest, suddenly exhausted. “I just have a bad feeling about the gala plan. That’s all I’m saying. I have a bad feeling, and I think you should listen to it, just this once.”
Chloe was quiet for a moment, considering, and for one fragile second Sienna thought it might actually land.
Then Chloe grinned again, wide and unbothered, and reached over to squeeze her friend’s knee.
“You’re sweet for worrying. But I’ve got this completely handled.
Two more days, and I’m going to have that man exactly where I want him.
” She flopped back onto her own pillows, already scrolling through her phone for gala dresses, humming something under her breath.
“Trust me. This is going to be the best night of the whole trip.”
“What are you even going to wear? For the — the plan.” Sienna made herself ask it, mostly to fill the silence, mostly because some part of her still needed to know exactly how far this was going to go.
“Something that unzips in under ten seconds. I’m not overthinking the aesthetics, Si, I’m overthinking the logistics.
” Chloe held two dresses up against the ceiling light, considering each in turn — one black and barely-there, one a dark, wet-look red — before tossing the red one aside entirely.
“Black. Obviously black. Gala’s formal, I want him to spend the whole cocktail hour staring at me in a room full of people and not being able to do a single thing about it. That’s half the fun. Making him wait.”
“And if Julia notices you two disappearing?”
“She won’t. She’s the one who told me she loves working a room, remember?
She’ll be busy schmoozing with the captain’s table the entire night.
Trust me, I’ve thought about the timing.
” Chloe rolled onto her stomach, chin propped on both hands, eyes bright with the specific glow of someone who’d already rehearsed the whole night in her head a dozen times.
“I’m going to slip out right when the dancing starts.
Nobody notices anything once people start dancing. It’s basically a law of physics.”
“That’s not a law of physics.”
“It’s a law of parties, which is basically the same thing.
” Chloe grinned, unbothered, and reached for her phone again to keep scrolling.
“God, I can’t stop thinking about how he looked at me on that deck.
Like I was something he was trying really hard not to want.
I want to see what happens when he stops trying. ”
Sienna turned the loose thread on the comforter over in her fingers, over and over, saying nothing for a long moment. “And what happens after? Say it works exactly the way you want it to. What then?”
“Then I go back to Ohio with the best story of my entire life and he goes back to pretending his marriage is fine.” Chloe shrugged, easy, like the ending had never once cost her a second thought.
“I’m not trying to steal the guy, Sienna.
I don’t want a husband. I want to know I could’ve had him, if I’d wanted to. There’s a difference.”
“Is there, though? Because from where I’m sitting it sounds like you want to break something just to prove you’re strong enough to do it.”
Chloe’s smile finally slipped, just a fraction, something flickering underneath it that looked almost like being seen too clearly. “That got dark fast.”
“I’m serious, Chloe.”
“I know you’re serious. You’re always serious, it’s like your whole personality now that you’ve had one good cabana session.
” Chloe softened the jab with a laugh, but her eyes stayed steady on Sienna’s a beat longer than usual.
“Look — maybe it is about proving something. Maybe I’ve spent my whole life watching guys pick the safe, boring version of a woman and I want, just once, to be the reason a safe, boring guy stops being safe and boring. Is that so terrible?”
“It’s not terrible. It’s just not going to go the way you think it’s going to go.” Sienna’s voice had gone quiet again, and this time she let herself say the rest of it. “I don’t think Mark’s the one who’s going to end up wrecked, Chloe. I think you might be.”
Chloe was quiet for a moment, considering, and for one fragile second Sienna thought it might actually land.
Then Chloe grinned again, wide and unbothered, and reached over to squeeze her friend’s knee.
“You’re sweet for worrying. But I’ve got this completely handled.
Two more days, and I’m going to have that man exactly where I want him.
” She flopped back onto her own pillows, already scrolling through her phone for gala dresses, humming something under her breath.
“Trust me. This is going to be the best night of the whole trip.”
Sienna didn’t answer right away. She got up instead, crossing to the little balcony off their cabin, and stood there a while with the door cracked, letting the salt air do something to clear her head that the conversation hadn’t managed.
Below, the ocean had gone black and glassy under a half-moon, the ship’s wake a long pale seam cutting through it, and she thought about how easy it had been, that afternoon, to let somebody else make all the decisions for a few hours.
How good it had felt to not be the responsible one for once.
“You’re doing the thing,” Chloe called from inside, not even looking up from her phone. “The thinking-really-hard-out-on-the-balcony thing. You’ve done it since freshman year every time you’re about to talk yourself out of something fun.”
“I’m not talking myself out of anything. I’m just standing here.”
“Uh-huh.” Chloe finally looked up, something almost gentle under the teasing. “For what it’s worth — whatever’s happening with you and the wife, I actually am happy for you. Even if I think you’re being paranoid about the gala thing. You deserve to have somebody look at you like that.”
The unexpected softness of it caught Sienna off guard, and for a moment the easy affection between them felt like the only solid thing in a week that had otherwise turned entirely unfamiliar. “Thanks, Chlo.”
“Don’t get weird about it. I have a reputation to protect.” Chloe threw a pillow at her, grinning again, and the moment passed the way all of Chloe’s real ones did — fast, deflected, gone before it could ask anything more of either of them.
Sienna came back inside and lay back on her own bed, staring at the ceiling, and thought about Julia’s hands, Julia’s voice, the quiet certainty in the way she’d said I have absolutely no intention of sharing you with anyone — and wondered, with a growing unease she couldn’t quite name, exactly whose trap Chloe actually thought she was building.