38. CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
ETHAN
T en minutes earlier.
I pace the length of the boat and check my watch at least a dozen times before I finally catch sight of Kinzie. She’s walking toward the dock, wearing the same fitted pink dress she wore the day I saw her again less than two months ago. The memory of it makes me smile. She was gorgeous then, just as she is now.
“Your tie is crooked,” Julian, one of my buddies from the outreach program and driver of the water taxi, calls out.
I look down. It’s not just crooked, it’s loose. I hold the long end with my right hand while pushing the knot up with my left, but it’s damn near impossible when my dominant arm is still in a sling. One would think that after three weeks, I’d have better mobility, but the recovery has been harder than I imagined.
Shaking his head and laughing, Julian steps up in front of me and turns the mess I have into a perfect knot.
“Thanks,” I say, pulling the sling off and dropping it on the bench next to me.
“You sure she won’t recognize you?”
I push my shades over the bridge of my nose and pull my hat down over my face. It’s not an elaborate disguise, but I’m not hiding. I just don’t want her to recognize me until I make myself known.
“No idea,” I say truthfully.
With a nod, Julian bounces back over to the gate. He waits patiently as Kinzie ends a phone call and then shows him her ticket. As she boards, he locks the gate and begins unwinding the ties that anchor us to the dock.
When Kinzie passes by the helm without so much as looking up, I breathe a sigh of relief. I wink at Julian, and as he pushes off the ledge, I steer out into the middle of the harbor, away from City Market, and away from Patriot’s Point, where Kinzie thinks we’re headed.
As soon as we’re a few hundred feet out into the water, Julian takes the wheel, and I work to gather the courage to approach Kinzie. She may flat-out reject me, but I can’t go another day without being honest, to her and to myself.
“You got this,” Julian says.
I give him an appreciative grin and then turn toward the woman I’m crazy in love with.
Padding slowly toward her, I drop my arm to my side. It’s painful, but I have no complaints. I’m one of the lucky ones. I didn’t just get another chance at life, I got two. I allowed my experience in Afghanistan to mute me, to make me think it was okay to live life for somebody else. This time, I fully intend to live it for myself, which leads me to this very moment.
“It’s over,” Kinzie says to herself as I step in behind her.
I couldn’t have come up with a better cue if I’d orchestrated it myself.
In a low, deep tone, I respond. “It’s far from over.”
Kinzie startles, and her sunglasses slip out of her hand and over the edge of the boat. When she turns around, she gasps. “Ethan.”
“Before you say anything,” I begin, locking eyes with her, “hear me out.”
Kinzie has made it very clear she isn’t interested in talking. My unanswered calls and texts over the last several weeks are proof of that. But I don’t take that personally. She needed time to decompress and think things through. I respect that.
Her eyes bounce between mine. Shock, confusion, and worry cross her face at once. I hate it. I want all that to go away, so rather than reciting the speech I spent all day going over, I go with my gut and start from the beginning.
“I was angry. That day at the country club.” I pause to lick my lips. “You were sitting there with that stupid yellow martini. I was angry, but not in the way you might think. I was far more angry that you were so openly upset with me than I was about Victoria. And I deserved your anger. I did. But initially, when you turned around, I thought you were on a date.” I take a tiny step closer, inhaling as her coconut scent envelops me.
Her lips tip down in confusion, but she doesn’t speak.
“There’s something I didn’t tell you. Before Donnelly took his life, he and I spent a week at the hospital together, going in and out of surgery. We took turns wheeling into one another’s rooms when the nurses would allow it. I told him about you. I told him I wasn’t sad about being sent home because it meant I could look for you. That maybe we’d have another chance once I returned to Hope Island. And he told me things too. Things that, looking back, I wish I would have seen as red flags.”
My throat goes dry, and my stomach tightens the way it always does when I think of all the things Donnely is missing out on. The people he left behind. The dreams he had and the memories he’ll never make. I think about Kamilla and the sadness that consumed her for months. The guilt she had for never telling him how much she loved him.
“Losing Donnely felt like losing my dad all over again. I kept thinking, What can I do to make him proud of me? What would he be doing right now if he were still alive? It’s why I bought the boat. It’d been his dream to sail up the East Coast. He wanted to surprise Kamilla once she graduated and sail all summer. Before she started her residency.
“It was also why I proposed to Victoria. He never asked me to marry her, but he asked that I look out for her if anything happened to him. It felt like the right thing to do. It sounds stupid now.” I rough a hand over the back of my neck. “I know that. But I told myself that if those were his wishes, and I could grant them for him, then that’s what I would do.”
I take a step closer, then ease onto the bench beside her.
“But my wish? My wish has always been to find you.”
Kinzie sucks in her bottom lip. Her eyes soften, and her posture relaxes.
Taking her hand in mine, I lace our fingers. “And then, there you were. But you had that damn drink, and I thought you were there to meet somebody. I barely registered any of the Victoria stuff until you made Ramon repeat it.”
This gets a little laugh from Kinzie, but she doesn’t smile.
“My sister told me that you saw Victoria at the hospital. But you have to know, there is no Victoria and me. There hasn’t been since you dove headfirst back into my life.”
She swallows audibly, like she’s preparing to speak, but before she can, I squeeze her hand and duck lower, forcing her to look at me.
“I told her I was in love with you.”
Her mouth falls open, and a small squeak escapes her.
“I’ve been in love with you since we were kids. You make me feel alive, like every moment of my life has been leading to this one. So I’d have another chance with you.”
Kinzie cups my face with both hands and brushes the pads of her thumbs across my lips, but rather than kissing me like I want her to, she sighs. “Ethan,” she starts out softly. “I won’t lie and pretend I don’t feel something when I’m with you, but it’ll never work with us. You and I want different things.”
Rather than a punch to the gut, her words are fortification for my argument. I expected her to remain closed-off, but I came prepared.
“That’s not true.”
“Ethan,” she huffs out.
“No. I know your heart, and I’m pretty sure I know you better than you even know yourself.”
Her shoulders sink and her expression falls, but I press her. I’m not giving up. I love this woman too fucking much to not give it my all.
“You want to write meaningful stories and blog about your work. You want to help people end relationships that truly need your help. And you want to sculpt and carve and build things with your hands like Ezra taught you. I’m sure, under the right circumstances, you’d carve out a friend for Sir Arthur. Am I right?”
With a small giggle, she shakes her head.
“And you want Maggie’s farm and a big family with kids running all over the place, digging in the dirt and making mud pies. You want to lather them with SPF and chase after them at the beach, then show them how to make miniature Arthur babies all on their own.”
She stiffens beside me, but I continue anyway.
“You want campfires like the kind we always had at my house. You want the yelling and screaming and laughing and crying. You want it all.”
“Ethan,” she says again, her tone full of anguish and frustration.
“You don’t have to have biological children to have all that. We can adopt. We can foster. We can do anything short of kidnapping. Do you hear me?”
Eyes wide, she chokes on a breath.
Pressing my lips together, I nod. “Jill told me. I can’t pretend to understand what you went through, but I want to talk about it. I want to know every detail. Like what’s the likelihood of your cancer coming back? And where do you go for your checkups? Because if your doctor is not the best of the best, then I’ll find you the best, even if it means flying across the country.”
“You’re serious,” she says, more astounded than anything.
“Of course I’m serious.” I pull her face to mine. “I’m in love with you, and I want to spend my life making sure you’re safe and healthy and happy. If that means we need to move closer to a hospital, I’ll make that happen too.”
She pulls back. “What about your job? And your boat?”
“I can find a job anywhere. And I can sell the boat.”
Kinzie’s lips tug up at the corners, and her eyes sparkle. “You’d do that for me?”
“I’d do anything for you,” I whisper, leaning in so our lips brush.
Silence sits between us for a long while, her body humming against mine.
“What if I don’t want you to sell the boat?” she finally asks, her warm breath ghosting over me.
Lips skating over hers, I say, “Then I won’t sell the boat.”
“So,” she says hoarsely. “It’s not over?”
I shake my head. “It’s not over.” With that, I take her lips and kiss her.
On cue, the boat’s foghorn blares, triggering an explosion of police sirens from the shore, followed by the loud cheers of our friends and family and strangers who wanted nothing more than to make this day possible. Kinzie peels herself away from my body and turns, eyes wide, to the crowd gathered at the dock.
“What’s all that?” she asks, turning back to me.
But I’m up and on my feet again, reaching into my suit jacket to retrieve a small black box. “Julian over there got a little overzealous. They think you already said yes.”
She straightens, her mouth forming an O and her eyes going misty.
“I’m not asking you to marry me. Not yet,” I say. “One day. When we’re ready. But for now.” I open the box and hold it out to her. A single silver key sits on top of a pile of white tissue paper. “I want you to break your lease and move back to Hope Island.”
Kinzie stands, her knees wobbly, and stares down at the key, blue eyes sparkling and her hands plastered to her cheeks.
“Move in with me. Let’s figure all of this out one step at a time. Together.”
“Are you asking me or telling me?” Her voice cracks with emotion. A single tear slides down her cheek.
I laugh. “I’m telling you. There’s no other choice. I don’t want to wake up one more day without you in my bed. You just have to say yes.”
Another tear follows the same path as the first, and she chuckles. “Then, in that case, yes.”