Chapter 18 #3
“Yes?” he answers back. I move towards him, or he moves towards me, until my lips are so close to his I can feel the beat of his heart like ripples in the liquid dark.
Until the warm air is replaced with the graze of his teeth against my bottom lip and I’m unravelling, all of me, and melting into the luminous sea.
“Caleb… We can’t do this.”
The sound of my own voice takes me aback, and I have to repeat it in my head a few times to realize what I’ve said. When I grasp it, it becomes clear how right I am. I push him back, detaching myself like a barnacle from the rock of his body.
“Matthew told me how Patricia feels about the crew getting involved with guests,” I say quietly, the energy evaporating from me with his body heat. “Whatever this is, it’s not worth it.”
There are no sounds here to mask his heavy breathing but for the whoosh of the tide against the walls of the lagoon.
“Whatever you think of me, I am here for my sister. Not for me. I’m here to play nice with her new family so she can live happily ever after.”
Even in the night, I can see his expression darken.
“You think I haven’t thought about that? Do you think you’re the only one with something to lose?”
He pushes back towards me and I kick towards the kayak so I can catch my breath.
“No, but—“
“I don’t think this is about your family at all,” he interrupts me, covering the distance between us in a few short seconds. “I think you’re scared, and Jules’ happiness is a convenient excuse.”
I feel the rage bubbling up inside me like boiling water. Convenient? Nothing about my life, this family, is remotely convenient. And Caleb is the last person I would accuse of making it so.
“Can you blame me?” I practically shout at him, my voice echoing off the rock walls and amplifying it three-fold.
“One minute you’re pretending like I don’t exist, the next you’re screaming at me for being a liability.
You ignore me, you chastise me, you avoid me like I’m a leper.
You make it abundantly clear that you want me off this boat, and then you look at me like… like…”
Caleb hits me with that same look that infuriates me and turns my stomach to jello at the same time.
“Like that!” I bark. I have a death grip on the kayak now, my arms clinging onto the ropes for fear I might drop like an anchor to the bottom of the sea.
“If what you want is some forbidden tryst, Caleb, I guarantee there are a hundred girls who’d gladly sneak onto the yacht for a night with you. But don’t rope me into it.”
Caleb scoffs.
“You really think this is just a pash in the elevator to me? You think I would take a risk like this for… sex?”
I’m going to go ahead and assume “pash” is some Kiwi word for the most incredible, knee-buckling, swoon-worthy kiss of all time.
“I don’t know what you would do!” I practically shout. “Everything about you is confusing!”
Caleb takes a shallow breath, like whatever he’s about to tell me is physically painful.
“I don’t want a hundred other girls, Stella,” he says softly. “I want you.”
A pang shoots through my chest, and I shake it away.
“Since when, yesterday?” I ask, reminding him how ridiculous that sounds. “Up until I trapped you in the elevator, I thought you hated me!”
Somehow, we’re just inches from each other again—hopeless magnets that drift together whenever one of us lets our guard down. I can feel the walls I’ve spent precious years constructing crumbling like sandcastles to the sea floor.
“When you first came to the ship,” Caleb says quietly, “I was mortified. The things I said to you about the Warrens—you could have gotten me fired on the spot. I felt like I’d been caught with my trousers down, and I wasn’t sure how to handle it.
So I acted like an ass. By the time I realized how stupid that was, what a mistake I was making, it was too late. I didn’t know what to do.”
“You were embarrassed for helping me?”
“I was embarrassed for flirting with you! For complaining, for telling you my deep dark secrets about the drama on board, for lying about my position,” he growls.
“And ever since you set foot on the ship, it’s only gotten worse.
Do you know how hard it is for me to be around you?
How much effort it takes for me to keep my hands off you every second of the day?
Forget being fired, I could endanger the ship!
The other day when you came and stood up by the bridge in your big white t-shirt, I almost ran us over the reef. And before you go off on me—”
I was about to.
“It’s not just physical. I tried to convince myself it was after the elevator.
But you have this effect on me I can’t explain, Stella.
The way you laugh with your whole body; the way you look out for Jules; your absolutely insane plans to get the Warrens to care about biodiversity?
You are… relentless. In the best way. And I was wrong about you, Stella. ”
I’m not sure if it’s the late hour or the Avatar-worthy wonderland we’re swimming in, but I have to play what he’s saying over in my brain a few times to understand it. Did Caleb just say—
“Wait, what?”
“I know I can be… intense,” he doubles down. “I always have been. But I’m crazy about you. I have been from the moment I met you, and I pushed you away because I was worried what might happen if you got any closer. It was a cowardly thing to do, and now I’ve gone and cocked it all up. Unless…”
My brain skips over all of this information like a scratched-up record. He was a jerk because he didn’t want to get close to me? Because he didn’t trust himself? All of that animosity was actually… infatuation?
I look down at my glistening feet; at the explosions of neon that bloom as I kick to keep myself afloat.
If what Caleb’s saying is true, does it change anything?
Does it negate the fact that he made me feel like a pariah for the majority of the trip?
I’m still not sure. But what it definitely doesn’t change is the fact that Caleb and I live on opposite sides of the world, or that Patricia will literally keelhaul us if we’re caught.
This can’t go anywhere even if I want it to.
“There’s no unless.”
I mean it. At least, I’m pretty sure I do. But the air between us has gone stale, and even though the temperature hasn’t changed, I’m suddenly freezing cold.
“I don’t believe you,” Caleb breathes. “I think you feel it too.”
My lungs feel like they’re about to implode.
And for a second, I nearly take it back.
Don’t be weak, Stella. Because Caleb is right.
This isn’t just about my family—it’s about his.
He wasn’t the only one listening on our little jungle rescue mission—he needs this job.
This crew, this ship, is his whole world.
And I know better than anyone what it feels like to have that ripped away from you.
And if he’s is too short-sighted to recognize that, I’ll have to be the voice of reason for both of us.
So before Caleb can get his next words out, I make sure to hit him with something he can’t refute.
“I’m not risking Jules’ happiness for a meaningless fling,” I tell him, my voice almost robotic. “And if you’re willing to risk your job for this, you’re stupider than I thought you were.”
Caleb’s eyes burn into me, his face reddening as though he’s just been slapped.
“So that’s how you feel, is it?” he asks.
“It is.”
“Well then,” he says, his voice gravelly. He doesn’t make eye contact with me as he adds, “I guess I’d better return you to the ship.”
Caleb turns in the water, and I let my head plunge beneath the surface like a diving bell.
What the fuck! I want to scream, but instead I just stare at the bioluminescent bubbles churning around his body as he lifts himself onto the kayak.
Why did I have to open my mouth? Why did I have to follow him here?
Can we just rewind to the part where things were simple and we hated each other’s guts?
When I finally breach the surface, he doesn’t offer me his hand.
Instead, I awkwardly flop onto the plastic like a beached seal and slip into the seat in front of him.
I’m suddenly conscious of my white lacy bra.
It’s soaked through, and if there were any more moon in the sky, there wouldn’t be much point in wearing it at all.
He grabs hold of the paddle and digs it into the sea like he wants to teach it a lesson.
It doesn’t matter that Caleb has wanted me from the start.
Doesn’t matter that I had everything all wrong.
Whatever this attraction is between us, it’s just attraction, no matter what Caleb thinks.
And as soon as we’re back on dry land, we’ll forget about each other and go back to our lives.
Anything that’s happened between us will be just another fleeting vacation memory.
So why is it that I feel like I’ve just made a massive mistake?