Chapter 64
A Husband's Question
Nathan asked Dane to take the wheel manually.
The request came without planning. One moment he was standing at the rail beneath the shared blanket, and the next he heard himself say it.
Dane looked over. "You want to drive?"
"No." Nathan's laugh came out rough. "I want to ask you something while you do."
Marissa straightened beside him.
Dane studied Nathan's face, then nodded. "Come up."
The helm sat beneath a sleek hardtop, half sheltered from the wind.
Screens glowed with maps, depth lines, weather, fuel, bearing.
The instruments made Nathan feel strangely exposed.
A boat did not travel by vibes. It required numbers, corrections, awareness, humility before forces larger than pride.
Dane disengaged the autopilot and set one hand on the wheel.
"Ask," he said.
Nathan stood beside him, close enough to see the small scar crossing the captain's knuckle.
"Why us?"
Dane did not pretend not to understand.
"You booked the charter."
"That is not what I mean."
"I know."
Behind them, Marissa had remained near the rail. Nathan felt her attention like a hand between his shoulder blades.
Dane made a small adjustment to the wheel. The bow shifted a few degrees. "Your wife looked at the water like she missed herself."
Nathan was not ready for how much that hurt.
"And me?"
"You looked at her like you knew it and did not know how to help."
The engine hum filled the pause.
Nathan folded his arms, then unfolded them. Defensive posture. He knew it. He set his hands on the edge of the console instead.
"So you helped?"
Dane's jaw tightened. "I offered a door. You both chose whether to open it."
"Convenient distinction."
"Necessary one."
Nathan looked at him sharply.
Dane kept his gaze on the water. "If I convince myself I am the reason someone crosses a line, I become dangerous. If you convince yourself I am the reason, you get to avoid asking why the line called to you in the first place."
The answer angered Nathan because it was too useful.
He turned away, looking over the bow at the dark water.
"I do not like how calm you are," he said.
Dane's mouth twitched. "I am not as calm as I look."
Nathan glanced at him.
The captain's hand remained steady on the wheel, but his throat worked once before he continued.
"Your wife is beautiful. You know that. She is also honest in a way that makes a man want to be worthy of the room she gives him. That is not nothing."
Nathan heard Marissa inhale behind them.
Dane did not look back.
"But I am not here to take what she has not given," he said. "And I am not here to steal what you are brave enough to hold."
The words struck Nathan differently than any flirtation could have. They made the captain less fantasy and more man, which was somehow more threatening and less.
"What do you want?" Nathan asked.
Dane finally looked at him.
There was no smirk. No challenge. Only the quiet danger of a truthful answer being considered carefully.
"Tonight?" Dane said.
"Tonight."
"I want to kiss her again if she wants it. I want you present if you choose to be. I want no one to wake tomorrow feeling tricked by their own silence."
Nathan swallowed.
"And after tonight?"
Dane's eyes returned to the water.
"After tonight belongs to tomorrow's people. I do not make promises for versions of us who have not arrived yet."
Nathan hated that he liked the answer.
Marissa stepped closer then, joining them at the helm. The blanket hung around her shoulders. Moonlight softened her face but did not hide the intensity there.
"Nathan," she said.
He turned.
"Ask me too."
The simplicity of it stopped him.
He had been interrogating Dane because Dane was safer to blame, safer to study, safer to measure. Marissa was the center, and asking her meant accepting that her answers were not accidents caused by another man's gravity.
"Why him?" Nathan asked.
Marissa did not look at Dane.
She looked only at her husband.
"Because he looked at me like I was still arriving," she said. "And because you looked at me watching him, and for the first time in years, you did not disappear."
Nathan closed his eyes.
The yacht moved forward under Dane's steady hand.
There was the answer, clean and merciless and tender.
It was not only the captain who had tempted her.
It was Nathan staying.