Chapter 61
The Path Behind Them
The yacht eased out of the cove with the patience of a secret deciding whether it wished to be kept.
Nathan stood at the rail with Marissa tucked before him, his arms around her waist, the faint tremor of the kiss still moving between them like the last ring of a bell.
Behind them, the hidden water glowed blue and impossible, stirred into a luminous path by the turning propellers.
Ahead, the open sea waited in darker shades, less enchanted and more honest.
Marissa leaned back into him.
He felt the question in the shift of her shoulders before she asked it.
"Are you angry?"
The old Nathan would have answered too quickly. He would have chosen the reply that sounded noble, or the one that protected him, or the one that made her feel guilty enough to step back from the edge. He knew all three languages. Marriage had taught him their grammar.
Tonight he tried a fourth.
"I am not angry at you," he said.
Her fingers covered his at her waist. "That is not the same as no."
"No," he admitted. "It is not."
At the helm, Dane kept his eyes forward. He gave them the courtesy of pretending the wind was louder than their voices.
Nathan looked over Marissa's shoulder at the receding cove.
The place seemed smaller now that they were leaving it, no longer a doorway into another world but a crescent of shadow between cliffs.
He knew that was a lie. Some doors did not look significant after you passed through them. They simply remained open inside you.
"I am jealous," he said. "I am confused. I am... awake, I think. More awake than I have been in a long time."
Marissa swallowed. He saw the movement in the moonlight.
"That scares me," she said.
"Me too."
The yacht shifted gently beneath their feet as Dane guided them past the mouth of the cove.
The blue fire faded into sparks, then into ordinary darkness.
Nathan expected loss. Instead, he felt a strange relief.
The magic had not been the water. It had been what they had dared to say while they were there.
Marissa turned within his arms, facing him now. The wind lifted a strand of hair across her cheek.
"I do not want to become someone you cannot look at," she said.
The sentence cut him cleanly.
Nathan touched the hair away from her face. "I have been afraid of the same thing. But the truth is, I have looked away from you for years whenever wanting you became too complicated."
Her eyes shone.
"And tonight?"
"Tonight I could not look away."
She smiled, not because the answer was easy, but because it was real.
Behind them, Dane reduced speed as they reached open water. The engines softened to a low, steady hum. The coastline was a dark ribbon in the distance. The marina lights were nowhere in sight.
Marissa glanced toward the helm.
Nathan followed her gaze.
Dane stood with one hand on the wheel, linen shirt moving in the wind, his profile cut in silver. He looked like a man who belonged exactly where he was, which made Nathan aware of all the places he himself had stopped belonging without noticing.
"He is not pretending this is simple," Marissa said.
"No."
"That matters to me."
Nathan breathed through the sting. "I know."
She looked back at him quickly. "Not more than you matter. Different."
That word again. Different. It kept opening little chambers in him.
He bent and kissed her forehead.
"I am trying to understand the shape of it," he said.
Marissa closed her eyes beneath his mouth.
Dane called from the helm without turning. "You two all right back there?"
Nathan almost laughed at the absurdity of the question. All right felt like too small a boat for the sea they were in.
"Still aboard," he said.
Dane looked back then, just enough for the moon to catch his eyes.
"That is a good start."
The yacht continued into open water. The cove disappeared behind the cliffs. The line they had named came with them, invisible and bright, drawn now not in the sand or the glow of strange water, but through the center of Nathan's chest.
He held Marissa as the wind rose.
For the first time all night, he understood that returning did not mean going backward.