Chapter Thirty-One #3
“The black mold is everywhere. The chimneys are a disaster. The foundation’s cracked.
The circuits keep blowing. Mice have found a new way into the attic.
If I had the money to fix everything, would I keep it?
Of course. However . . .” I glance past Dylan toward the door that leads to the hold and cabins.
“We can fit a lot of rum on this ship, and bookshelves, and a pair of laptops. Some truly terrible pasta, if you’re still into that.
Not sure how you’d run fifteen miles while at sea, so you might need to rethink your exercise routine.
Also, you can’t run away in the middle of the night unless we’re docked, so you’ll need to rethink that habit, too. ”
The furrows in Dylan’s forehead soften. “Are you suggesting . . . ?”
I lift my shoulders in a tight, uncertain shrug. “If you’d rather move to Idaho—”
I don’t finish the joke. Dylan pulls me into a hug and crushes me against him.
I hug him back just as tightly, gluing the pieces of my shattered heart back together with hope, love, and the curious magic my grandmother left behind in her house and in her books, magic that did far more than provide me a safe harbor.
It brought me back to life. It brought us both back to life.
“I love you,” I say. “I should’ve—”
“Don’t.” He draws back and meets my eyes. “We didn’t say it because we both knew. But I love you, too. So much.” And then he kisses me, soft and gentle and perfect, before pulling back to tip his forehead against mine. “Welcome home, Philippa Flynn.”
My heart doesn’t pinch this time. It swells to the point of bursting.
I know he’s talking about the ship, which we’ve agreed with shockingly little discussion and no planning at all will become our home for the foreseeable future, but as I look into his fathomless eyes and find a new sense of resolution in their depths, his welcome home takes on additional meaning.
“Welcome home, Dylan Harley Sterling.” I kiss him again, but the kiss is quickly interrupted by hooting and whistling down on the dock.
We turn to see my siblings shouting up at us, champagne in hand, beckoning for us to join the party.
I bite down a smile as I turn back to Dylan.
The poor man has no idea what he’s gotten himself into. “Ready to meet my family?”
He tenses, blowing out a nervous breath while dragging a hand through his hair, but he rallies and nods, so with a little reassurance and a promise that I won’t leave him alone with my parents, we climb down to the dock, where Dylan is subjected to enthusiastic introductions and hugs, and one indignant complaint that he arrived without a sword.
We leave the crew to show guests around the ship while we grab food, chat with my siblings and their partners, take a silly group photo at the floral arch, and slow dance to a specially requested string quartet version of “Iris,” which is so beautiful, I have to grab another tissue from Eleanor.
At the perfect moment, with precisely the right people within earshot, Louisa tells our mom it’s so cool that she’s supporting Dylan’s and my writing the rest of Grams’s Zane Scarlett series.
Haley chimes in next, followed quickly by Eleanor and Riley, all four of them chatting up the book Dylan and I wrote and our mother’s supposed excitement about it.
Soon everyone’s talking at once. With the Zephyr’s Revenge II at the dock, celebration in the air, and so many friends and neighbors perking up at the news, all our mom can do is smile and play along.
“Of course,” she says. “I couldn’t be more delighted.”
I know it’s not that easy. What she says here won’t necessarily play out when no one’s listening, but I hug her anyway, and when she hugs me back, I know Dylan’s and my dream is at least possible and that my mom is doing her best, with her own demons to fight.
I just hope they’re demons with a really good coffeemaker.
Soon after, I grow antsy to get away from the crowd, an impulse Dylan shares, even though he’s better with people than he once claimed.
We say our goodbyes and congrats. Then we head to the ship, where a well-fed crew helps us sail her north, illuminated for night sailing thanks to recent rewiring.
Dylan loans me his cardigan, a risky move since I might never give it back.
We stand at the wheel together, and he succumbs to a selfie, which I send to Amelia.
She responds right away.
Amelia: You’re my hero
Philippa: And you’re mine
I don’t know what happens next, but for the first time in my life, I feel okay not knowing.
Plans are wonderful, but so is love, and joy, and family, and friendship, and home, and making up stories, and reinventing ourselves when the world throws us curveballs and sinkholes, and being noticed, and the unexpected thrill of adventure, and fighting for what matters despite our fears, and second chances, and dreaming big, and learning to live with grief without letting it anchor us so firmly to the past we limit our future, and sailing into a beautiful night with a man I once mistook as a pirate, with a sense of boundless possibilities, on a ship made of dreams.