Page 100 of Fixed Asset

What can I say? I’m not a boat person.

Seeing as I’d been sitting on the edge when I pushed off, my head barely went under water. But when I popped up, Pete was right next to me with a hand around my upper arm, guiding me away from the boat and the rocks.

Jack jumped in next and came right to me, followed by Calista, with Mason indeed taking up the rear.

“Do you know how to sidestroke?” Jack asked.

“That’s the doggy-paddle thing on your side, right?”

“I thought you said you knew how to swim?”

“Yeah, in a pool.”

Jack let out a string of expletives.

“I’m screwing with you,” I told him.

In the moonlight, treading water, I watched Jack shake his head in exasperation.

“Ready?”

I ignored his question and kept staring.

“Baby?”

The timing was strange, but the feeling wasn’t. It was the kind that dug in and settled deep. The kind that warmed you to your core. Not contentment or happiness or anything as simple as that. It was bigger than that, so huge it filled my lungs and fed my soul.

This was life—my life—it was unpredictable at best. After losing my grandmother and the foundation she’d given me, moving on to not so great until Lina, I’d never been settled. When I got older that had translated into me craving the thrill of the chase. I didn’t know why and it didn’t much matter, I just knew I liked the excitement of the hunt. I liked moving around. I liked knowing I did a job that made a difference. I needed these things to define me. My job was my identity.

But right then, treading water off the rocky shore of a Mexican village, I came to the realization I no longer needed the chase or the rush. I wasn’t ready to give it up, I loved what I did, but I didn’t need it—I wanted to continue because it helped good people who’d found themselves in impossibly heinous situations, but I was more than the human-lie-detector soldier, the agent, the federal law enforcement officer.

I was just me.

Catarina, the friend, the daughter, the granddaughter, Jack’s woman.

There was nothing to prove to anyone.

Not even myself.

I sucked in a breath . . . all mine.

The feeling of freedom I’d discovered all those years back was now accompanied with a sense of completeness.

I was whole without Jack.

But with him, I was complete.

“Ready,” I told him.

It was his turn to stare at me.

“Move it, Donovan. We don’t have all night, and now my jeans are wet and sticking to all the wrong places,” I bitched.

“Catarina—”

“Jack.”

His lips tipped up into a smile.