5. Maren
MAREN
The yacht is named Halcyon, which Sienna finds out from a deckhand within the first thirty seconds of boarding and announces twice, loudly, because it sounds like the kind of word she'll use in a caption later.
I am wearing a dress I did not buy. It is white, sleeveless, with a tie at the waist and a hem that flutters around my knees in a way that feels engineered for photographs, and when I went to the closet this morning it was hanging on the door with a note in handwriting I did not recognize that simply said Today.Sebastian’s, I assume.
Cassian, when he sees me in it, doesn’t comment. He just sets his hand lightly at my back and walks me up the gangway, and I can feel every staff member on the dock watching us keep up the performance.
The yacht is — there is no smaller word for it — a yacht.
Three decks. A crew of six. A long, low table on the upper deck already set with linen and silver, fruit arranged in a way that looks less like food and more like still life.
My mother makes a small noise of approval as she boards that I have not heard her make in twenty-six years.
"Cassian, this is extraordinary."
"I'm glad you think so."
"Maren, did you know it would be like this?"
"I — yes, Mom."
I did not. I am learning, this morning, that yacht outing is not a phrase Cassian uses casually.
He guides me to the bench seat along the rail and sits beside me, close, and his thigh rests against mine through the thin fabric of my dress.
Sienna is across from us, already aiming her phone at the horizon.
Owen is on Cassian's other side, which I do not like.
Owen has been quiet since last night. Quiet from Owen is louder than Sienna at full volume.
The boat pulls away from the dock. Gulls.
The slow, rolling lift of the deck under my feet.
My mother is laughing at something Cassian has said, and his arm is along the back of my seat now, not quite touching, but close enough that I can feel the heat off the inside of his elbow against my shoulder blade.
"So." Delilah leans forward over her champagne. "Wedding."
I freeze. Cassian does not.
"Mm."
"Have you set a date?"
“We’ve talked about timing.” His thumb settles on the strip of skin at my upper arm. His eyes stay on my mother, steady and untroubled, the look of someone answering a question he practiced in the car. “Late spring, most likely.”
"This spring?"
"Possibly. Maren is partial to a smaller ceremony."
"Smaller—"
"Family, close friends. A long weekend. We've been disagreeing about location, actually. I prefer the cliff at the property. She prefers the orchard at her grandmother's."
I have no grandmother with an orchard. I have never said the word orchard aloud in my life.
My mother's eyes go soft at the corners and I realize, with the queasy, sliding sensation of a lie catching wind, that he has invented a grandmother for me on the spot, and she is going to remember that grandmother, and I’ll have to carry her as well.
"That sounds perfect, doesn't it, Graham."
"Sounds nice."
"Maren, sweetheart, you didn't tell me you wanted the orchard."
"I — I wanted to think it through before I?—"
"She's been protecting the idea." Cassian's thumb sweeps once across my arm. "I keep telling her she doesn't have to. Her mother has excellent taste."
Delilah lifts her champagne to her lips to hide whatever her mouth is doing. Owen, on Cassian's other side, takes a long, unhurried sip of his coffee, sets the cup down, and says, "Where did you propose, again."
"The south terrace," Cassian says.
"Right. And which south terrace is that."
"At the villa."
"I thought it was at the resort."
"There's a south terrace at the resort as well. We weren't there."
"Mar said you were."
"Did I?" My voice. Bright. I hate it. "Owen, I — there are two south terraces, you're getting them confused?—"
"I'm not getting them confused, Mar. I have a very specific memory of you saying, "on Sunday, the one off the lobby."
"That was a different conversation."
"Was it?"
Cassian's hand slides down off my arm and finds mine in my lap. He laces our fingers — slow, deliberate, unmissable — and lifts our joined hands onto his thigh, where Owen can see them.
"It was the villa terrace," he says, easily. "I'd be happy to show you, if you'd like."
Owen looks at our hands. Then at Cassian's face. Then, briefly, at me.
"Sure," he says. "I'd love that."
The deck is teak and the deck is wet and I am, twenty minutes later, walking too fast across it because I have decided I need air on a boat that is, technically, all air.
The wave hits the bow at the same moment my heel finds a slick patch.
I go.
I don't even have time to swear. My feet come out from under me, my arms windmill, and I am in the process of becoming a deeply embarrassing story when an arm catches me hard around the waist and I am hauled upright against a chest that does not give at all.
"Easy."
"Oh — God, I'm?—"
"I have you."
"You have me."
"I do."
He doesn't let go.
I am pressed against him from collarbone to knee.
His arm is locked under my ribs. My free hand has found his shirtfront and is fisted in it without my permission.
He smells like clean linen and salt and something dark and quiet underneath.He is looking down at me with the same expression he had in the hallway last night, only now the sun is on his face and I can see the gray of his eyes clearly—paler than I remembered, almost silver in this light, the darker rim around the iris giving him the look of a man about to make a choice I’ll regret.
"Cassian."
"Mm."
"You can — you can put me down."
"I am holding you up. There's a difference."
"Sure."
"Are your legs working?"
"They — yes. Probably."
"Hm."
He lets go. Slowly. He lets his hand slide off my waist with a deliberation that is almost worse than the catch. His knuckles drag, briefly, against the soft place at the bottom of my ribs through the thin fabric of the dress, and I do not, technically, make a sound, but something in me does.
He notices.
I see him notice.
He turns and walks back to the rail and I stand in the middle of the deck with my heart doing something foolish in my chest and my mother calling, distantly, Maren? Honey, you all right? and I have to count to four before I can answer.
He comes to my room that night without knocking.
I am in the chair by the window, in the soft cotton shorts and the oversized t-shirt I sleep in because the silk things Sebastian sent felt like a costume, and I am writing — with an actual pen, on actual paper, like a teenager — the names he gave me at dinner.
The grandmother. The orchard. Tuesday-Friday. I look up, and he is already inside.
"You don't knock."
"I own the door."
"Cassian."
"Stand up."
"I'm in pajamas?—"
"I can see what you're in. Stand up, Maren."
I stand up.
He crosses the room without hurry. He stops a foot from me. He is in his shirtsleeves, the cuffs rolled, and there is a single line in his forehead I have not seen before — concentration, or irritation, or both.
"Your father's middle name."
"What?"
"My father's middle name. Your fiancé's father. What is it."
"I — Henry. You said Henry."
"I said Hadrian."
"You did not."
"I did. Tuesday. In the hall after dinner."
"That was not a normal conversation, you can't expect me to?—"
"I expect you to remember everything I tell you. Where did I go to school."
"Yale."
"Cambridge."
"You — Cassian?—"
"Owen will ask you tomorrow. He is the kind of man who asks. What is my mother's name."
"Helene."
"Good. What does she think of me."
"You — you don't talk about her."
"Better. Why don't I."
"Because—"
"Because what, Maren."
He has stepped closer. I have not stepped back, because there is the chair behind me and the window behind the chair, and there is, frankly, nowhere left for me to go.
He is a head taller than I am and he is using every inch of it.
The line in his forehead is gone. Something else is in his face now. I do not have a word for it.
"Because you and she don't speak," I say. "Because something happened when you were younger and you don't tell strangers what."
"Better." His voice has dropped. "Look at you. Quick when you want to be."
"Cassian—"
"Your pulse, Maren."
"What about it?"
"It is, currently, in your throat."
I put my hand to my throat without meaning to. His eyes track the movement. His mouth shifts—small, brief, self-aware—the smile of a man who’s clocked something and is, for now, letting it sit.
"Sleep," he says. "We're with your family at nine."
He leaves. The door shuts softly.
In the dark, I sit down on the bed and don’t move for a while.