“Stay with me this weekend,” he said, the words a rasp against my lips as his thumb pressed into my hips, fingers urging me somehow closer to him. It was the question I wanted him to ask in the ocean, the one he’d been asking all week even when he wasn’t actually saying it, in lingering glances and the way we spoke to each other, in elbows bumped together in the kitchen and invitations to teach me how to surf. It was pointless to deny wanting it, and as his other hand raked up my side, drew circles over the damp fabric of my bikini top, I wondered if we even needed to. If it could just be instinctive. He kissed me again, tongue dipping into my mouth. That sound came out of me again and he drew back, leaning his forehead against mine. “Sutton.”
“Okay,” I said, nodding. I didn’t even think to say no. Of course I was always going to say yes. “I’ll stay.”
fifteen
This Summer
Everett stretches up to try the knob, but it is, in fact, locked.
“Can you seriously still lock people in?” I ask. “Is that legal?”
“Yes, it’s legal, Sutton,” Everett says flatly.
I narrow my eyes at him as he sits on the edge of one of the narrow bunks. There are two facing each other, a row of cupboards the same dark wood as the floors at the end, a small porthole on either side. The rocking of the boat is more noticeable down here, vaguely like I’m being tossed around in the waves, and I’m suddenly very aware of how little separates us from the miles of deep, dark water below us.
Everett looks up at me as I cross my arms across my chest and pace to the end of the cabin. “Are you okay?” he asks.
“Fine,” I say. I glance out the porthole, which is a mistake because there’s water halfway up it, which means that we are, literally, partially submerged in the ocean. Which, clearly. I know how boats work. But that doesn’t mean I like it. I feel much more comfortable aboveboard, with my whole body bathed in air and sunlight.
“So,” Everett says as I pace back to him.
“So, what?” I ask.
“So, we talk,” he says. I eye him skeptically. “Right?”
“We have talked,” I say.
“Are you referring to what happened up there?” he says, which sends a roil through my stomach. Words likeup thereare not helping my nerves right now. “I think you could loosely categorize that as anattemptat talking.Biting each other’s heads offmight be more accurate.”
“Look,” I say, stopping in my pacing to face him from the end of the bunks. “We sit down here for thirty minutes and tell Laurel everything is great when she opens the door. Okay?”
Everett looks like he doesn’t want to agree with me, and I sigh, slumping my hip against the mattress and pressing a hand to my face. “I’m sure you have some witty comeback ready to go right now, but can you please just save it for later?”
“What’s wrong?” Everett asks. “Are you feeling seasick?”
“No.” I shake my head, face still hidden in my palm, so I only hear Everett move. I think maybe he’s going to check the door again, so I jump a little when I feel a hand against mine, lowering it from my face as the other rubs over my shoulder.
“Your head?” he asks, and I’m so startled by the gentleness in his voice, the soft way he’s touching me, his proximity, that I almost forget I’m mad at him for a minute. A memory flashes through me: a migraine the kind of which I hadn’t experienced in years, a cold morning with Everett, feeling cared for.
I swallow, shake my head, try not to breathe in too deeply, lest I be lured further in by Everett’s historically intoxicating scent. “No.”
“Is Cousin Hugh’s wine still iffy?” he asks, which prompts a small laugh out of me. I watch as one corner of his mouth lifts.
“I’m sure it is,” I say, forcing my gaze up to his. “But that’s not it.”
Everett nods. For one quiet, breathless moment, his eyes skim down my face, and I’m questioning if it really is just thewaves and the small space that has my stomach doing somersaults.
Everett’s expression goes cloudy, whatever was there suddenly blotted out. He clears his throat and drops his hands from me. I miss the warming pressure of his palm against my shoulder. But that realization sends a shock wave through me, and I step back—or try to, but there’s only bed behind me, so it seems more like I’m rearing away from him.
Everett appears to take the hint, because he nods toward the bunk. “Why don’t you sit down,” he says, voice returned to its previous flat tone.
I sit and watch as he wanders into the space at the end of the cabin, bends to look out the porthole, hands in his pockets; he straightens again and tips his head back, squinting at the ceiling. It feels like five minutes must pass, but in reality, it can’t be more than a painfully quiet sixty seconds.
“I keep thinking about the water,” I finally say. Everett’s attention snaps back to me.
“The water?” he asks.
I nod. “How deep it is,” I say. “If there’s some shipwreck or giant shark or dead body beneath us.”
