Chapter 13
Hooked
Peyton
Three Months Later…
Three months ago I didn’t know how to drive a boat.
I still don’t, technically. Jake tried to teach me once, approximately two weeks after the Fourth of July, and the lesson ended with me overcorrecting into the wake of a passing vessel, a string of colorful words from the captain himself, and an agreement between us that I would remain a very enthusiastic passenger for the foreseeable future.
It’s an arrangement that works well for both of us.
The morning is cool and grey-blue, the tail end of summer breathing its first hints of fall across the water. I’m bundled in Jake’s flannel over my hoodie sitting at the stern with a fishing rod I have absolutely no idea what to do with while he moves around the boat.
This is our Sunday. Out on the water, nowhere to be, just the two of us and the ocean and whatever Jake decides he wants to teach me this week.
Last week it was reading the tide charts.
The week before, identifying birds by their flight pattern.
I retain approximately none of it, and he loves every second of my cluelessness.
I scan the water hopefully. Grey swells, a few whitecaps further out, the occasional flash of something beneath the surface that turns out to be nothing.
No whales.
Yet.
“You’re holding it wrong, babe,” Jake says, appearing beside me, nodding at the rod.
I pout. “I’m holding it exactly how you showed me.”
“I showed you, yes, and it seems you’ve already developed your own technique.”
“Maybe my technique is better,” I huff, smirking.
He laughs and crouches beside my chair, adjusting my grip with patient hands. His fingers close over mine, repositioning, and I lean into his shoulder.
“There,” he says, not moving away. “Feel the difference?”
“Mm.” I don’t feel any difference. “Jake?”
“Yeah?”
“Are there whales out here today?”
He sighs, but smiles. “We’re fishing today, sweetheart.”
“I know. I’m just asking.”
He doesn’t respond.
I narrow my eyes. “You know right now, don’t you. You can feel it or smell it or whatever it is you do.”
He chuckles. “Maybe.”
I gasp, looking all around us.
“Fish,” he says firmly, nodding at my rod. “Focus.”
I try to focus, hardly.
The line drifts in the water and I watch it with the dedication of someone who is absolutely thinking about whales and not fishing at all. The boat rocks gently beneath us. A gull calls somewhere overhead. Jake settles into the chair beside me, his own rod in hand, his shoulder warm against mine.
The line goes taut, tugging with a slight weight that wasn’t there before. “I think I’ve got something,” I say, sitting up straighter.
“Reel it in,” he says calmly.
“I’m trying.” I fumble with the reel, the rod bending slightly, my heart doing an embarrassing little leap of excitement. “Oh my god, it feels heavy. What if it’s a big one? I don’t want to kill it, babe…”
“Keep going.”
I reel and reel, the weight on the line steady and…strange. It’s not fighting the way I’d expect a fish to fight. I frown. “Jake, this doesn’t feel like a fish.”
“Keep reeling.”
The line breaks the surface, and there’s no fish on the end of it.
There’s a small velvet box.
I go completely still.
The box dangles from the line, dark navy blue, water droplets rolling off the velvet. My brain takes approximately five full seconds to process what I’m looking at.
Then I turn.
Jake is on one knee on the deck, the grey September sky behind him, and he is looking at me with the most devoted expression I have ever seen. No nerves. No hesitation.
My Jake. Steady, sure, and completely, utterly mine.
“Oh my god,” I breathe.
“Peyton.” His voice is low, laced with emotion. He pulls the ring from his pocket and a simple, solitary diamond on a white gold band winks up at me. “I don’t want to spend one moment navigating this life without you.”
The tears come before I can stop them, blurring his face into watercolor. I’m nodding before he finishes the question.
“Will you marry me?” he finally asks, grinning like the fool I love so much.
“Yes! Yes, obviously, yes!”
He slides the ring onto my finger with steady hands. When he stands, I launch myself at him. My arms around his neck, face buried in his shoulder, crying in the graceless, ugly way that I always swore I would never do.
He holds me with both arms, laughing quietly into my hair. He cups my face in his calloused hands and kisses me, slow and sweet, while the ocean rocks us. When he pulls back he’s smiling as he nods toward the horizon.
I turn in his arms just in time to see three humpback whales breaking the surface one after another, their backs arching dark and enormous against the grey sky before slipping silently back under.
I gasp.
“Perfect timing, boys,” he says with a chuckle.
I swat him playfully, leaning into him.
The water stretches out before us, endless in every direction, and I feel…whole. With the man I love at my side, and the quiet knowledge that I am exactly where I’m supposed to be.
The End.
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XO, A