I turn and look at him, caught off guard.
“What if we stayed out here? No fixed place. No fence for people to stand outside. No one knowing where we are at any given time.” A slight shift crosses his expression. “We could disappear from the public eye, Charlotte. We could be us again.”
“What about Grandad? Your mum and sisters? They just got us back.”
“I love my family. But I love you more.”
I’ve never felt more loved in my life.
I cross the deck and settle into his lap, his arm coming around me.
“I love you the most,” I say.
He presses a brief kiss to the top of my head. “Promise me you’ll think about it.”
“Of course I will.”
Dane drops anchor late in the afternoon, far enough out that the shoreline is barely visible—a faint line on the horizon—and water stretches in every direction. I stand on the deck and look out, feeling the difference straight away. No eyes. No watching. It’s like something restrictive has been taken off. I hadn’t realized how much I’d been holding in until it stopped.
I bring dinner up as the sun starts to go down. Just reheated pasta with a sauce I made before we left. Salad. Fresh bread from this morning. A bottle of wine we open like we know what we’re doing, pouring it into glasses with a kind of ceremony.
I take a sip. So does Dane. We look at each other.
“Hmm,” he says.
“Give it a second,” I tell him.
We wait a minute and try again.
He shakes his head. “Still not good.”
“No.” I set mine down. “Definitely not better.”
“Maybe it’s an acquired taste.” He reaches for his water instead. “Didn’t like the beer either when I went out with Lachie. He took that personally.”
I laugh. “We’ve made it this far without developing a taste for alcohol.”
“Seems that way.” He twirls his fork. “Reckon we’re not missing much.”
We eat, and the sky darkens, stars coming out one by one. I watch them appear and think about the island—same stars and stretch of ocean.
“You’ve obviously given this some thought,” I say, twirling my fork through the pasta. “What would living on the yacht look like? How would we do it? Where would we go?”
He shrugs, putting his fork down. “Head up the coast, maybe. See what’s out there.”
“We would just keep going until we felt like stopping?”
“That’s the beauty of it, Charlotte. We can do whatever we want.”
“What happens when the weather turns?”
“We keep an eye on it and deal with it.”
“That sounds very much like you’ll figure it out as it happens.”
A grin tugs at his mouth. “That’s how we lived for years. I’m very comfortable with the philosophy of figuring it out as it happens.”
I huff a quiet laugh. “So we’ll live on a boat and drift around?”
