Chapter 23 #2
He cocks his head towards the door behind him, and I notice it’s open to the balmy night.
“Are you ready?” he asks.
My stomach drops.
“Caleb, I swear, if you make me do any jumping—”
“Relax, Ariel,” he says before kissing the top of my head. “No water adventures tonight.”
Then he pulls me into the open doorway.
“Follow me, and step exactly where I step,” he tells me.
“Huh?”
“Cameras,” he whispers as he points upwards, and I remember the shoddy screen feed I noticed a few nights ago on the bridge. He motions for me to duck my head and sneaks me beneath the camera until we can scramble up to the center of the bow.
“My lady,” he says, gesturing down to a monogrammed Vela Bianca blanket that’s been laid out on the dash.
Above us, stars pepper the sky like tiny fragments of sunshine cast free for the night.
The thick smell of briney air fills my nostrils and wraps its misty tendrils around my bare skin.
He’s even brought out a single glass of wine, presumably for me, as I think Caleb would rather be sharkbait than let himself have a drink on the job.
A bioluminescent lagoon is hard to beat, but this has to go down in history as the second-best date ever.
Caleb lies down beside me and I nestle into his arms. This close to Caleb’s skin, stars are the last thing on my mind. But I follow his gaze upwards.
“See that?” He points to a five-star constellation that sits low on the horizon. “That’s the Southern Cross. It’s the constellation sailors used to navigate by.”
He holds my hand up and guides my fingers to trace it in the sky.
“Not the Big Dipper?”
Caleb shakes his head.
“Wrong hemisphere, love. But don’t worry. If we get lost out here, you’ve got a local looking out for you.”
“And a multi-thousand-dollar navigation system…” I remind him.
Caleb groans.
“We don’t need to talk about that.”
The end of his sentence gets lost in my hair as he buries his face in it.
A shiver bucks through me as his lips finally find mine, warm and unyielding, his hand pressing firmly against my back to pull me closer.
My body moves without asking my mind for permission, twisting over and curling into him like a vine reaching for the light.
His fingers trace constellations across my ribcage as I wrap my legs around him, desperate for more.
“Stella…” he moans, tracing some secret message into my skin with his lips. But if we might get caught in the engine room, surely he knows we can’t do this on the bow of the ship.
I try to think of something I can say that will cool this down, but I don’t want to. This thing Caleb does to me where my brain turns to mush has seriously got to stop.
He eases back without letting go of me and breathes out, slowly.
Even in the dark, I can see from the bulge beneath his shorts that I’m not the only one who needs to take a break.
He props himself up on his side, and I try to think of the least sexy conversation I can start. But Caleb beats me to it.
“Have you told Jules about your fellowship yet?”
That’ll do it.
“Nope,” I tell him, eager to change the subject. “I actually have an alternative plan. Now that I know how to navigate—thanks, by the way—I’m going to commandeer the tender and head for the furthest island I can find.”
Even if I feel braver around Caleb than I’ve ever been (tiger shark encounter, anyone?), when faced with this particular conversation, I still want to disappear. I bury my face in the soft fabric of his uniform as he rubs his thumb in circles around the heel of my hand. It’s strangely calming.
“Let me get this straight,” he says. “You expect me to believe that the girl who ran down to the sea in her underwear and jumped off the bloody ship is concerned about announcing a potential career change?”
“You don’t understand, Caleb. I’m not like these people. The only reason they’re giving me the time of day is because they think I’m doing something useful with my life.”
Caleb sits up so he can raise his eyebrows at me more effectively.
“Stella, can I give you some advice?”
“Could I stop you if I wanted to?”
As the oldest child, it’s my born right to think I’m hilarious. But right now, Caleb isn’t laughing.
“Your worth isn’t dictated by what you do,” he says slowly and deliberately, his eyes never leaving mine.
“Not by the degrees you collect, or by how many buildings have your name on them. It’s dictated by the kind of person you are.
By the effect you have on those around you.
You are kind, Stella. You’re curious and passionate and brave.
You convinced Patricia Warren to spend an afternoon elbows deep in a coral tank, for god’s sake.
If you think for one second I’m going to buy into this ridiculous idea that you have nothing to offer, you’re out of your goddamn mind. ”
My breath catches in my throat: not because of his lips, this time, but from the words coming out of them.
Passionate? Brave? I haven’t heard anyone describe me that way since…
well, since my dad was alive. But coming from Caleb?
Mr. upstanding? X-rated Eagle Scout Ken doll?
I can’t help but feel he truly believes them to be true. That somehow he believes in me.
There are these bracelets you can wear on ships, Gia told me, to keep you from getting sea-sick: they zap you with electric waves.
I guess there’s something about the steady thump of electricity against bare skin that tricks the body into thinking it’s on solid ground.
That’s what Caleb is to me in this moment.
The beat of his heart, pulsing and tangling with my own, is the anchor that holds me in my body.
The thing that makes me forget I’m supposed to be afraid.
I grab him by the collar of his polo and pull him back down to me, my lips finding his in the starlit dark.
The whole ship could be standing beside us and it wouldn’t stop me.
The last three years of my life are in full perspective now: the emotional cruise control I engaged seeming bleaker and blander than ever.
Compared to this passion, this fire—how could I ever settle for flatlining?
“Are you trying to distract me from this conversation?” Caleb asks when we come up for air.
“That depends,” I purr. “Is it working?”
“Immeasurably.”
He leans in to kiss me again, his body molding to mine like two pieces of the same cracked tile.
I think about how much space he’s taken up in my mind for the last ten days.
How torturous the last forty-eight hours without melting into his bare skin have felt.
What is it going to be like when it’s not just a security camera or shower wall between us, but an entire ocean?
I pull back, creating distance between us with my hand on his chest.
“Something wrong?” He asks.
“I don’t want this to end,” I blurt out. Oh god. That is not the smooth and sexy cool girl vibe I was going for. I fight the immediate urge to cover my mouth, suddenly terrified of what he might say back.
But Caleb just rolls over onto his back and pulls me toward him, his warm arms enveloping me like a cocoon.
He whispers to me softly, “What if it doesn’t have to?”
“Caleb. I’m being serious.”
“So am I,” he says, and I’m once again awed by the confidence that seems to come so naturally to him. “We could find a way to make it work. I’ll come to you in the off-season. You can visit me when the ship’s at port.”
“But the family… your job. Not to mention we live thousands of miles away from each other.”
“All solvable,” he tells me. “There are no rules about what we do off the boat.”
“Is that so?”
“I could run into you at a park,” he muses softly, twisting his fingers in one of my curls. “Or in an airport bar.”
“No,” I say, running through the fantasy in my mind. “At the Ballard art market. I’ll get a booth there, and you can come see your fabulous portrait on display. Fully nude, of course.”
Caleb laughs into my neck as he covers it with kisses.
“Perfect,” he says, and pulls me so close all I can smell is the earthy salt of his skin.
“I know some part of you wants to push me away, Stella,” he says softly.
“I know this scares you. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t scare the hell out of me, too.
But I’ve never met anyone like you. I love the way you challenge me.
The way you won’t back down. And neither will I.
You’re going to have to try a lot harder than spouting logistics to shake me now. ”
I smile, desperate to believe him. Because I don’t want to let go of Caleb.
I don’t want to lose the version of myself I am around him—the person he makes me brave enough to be.
I want to keep growing. To keep feeling like I can swim with sharks, and take the leap, and say whatever I’m feeling without my tongue petrifying in my throat.
Because as much as I’ve tried to ignore it, Caleb isn’t just a vacation fling to me.
He’s not just hot runner, or grouchy captain, or the sex god who, for some reason beyond my comprehension, wants me back.
He’s the person who’s woken me up.