Page 29 of Redemption Island

“I wish we had a boat,” he said, and I twisted to look at him.

“Why?”

“I’d like to go sailing out there.”

“On a night like this?” I choked.

“No, Mouse, during the day. It would be cool to skip across the water, especially when it’s so calm.” He held up his hands, palms down, and spread them apart as if imitating the ocean. “I’d like to take you sailing.”

“Why don’t you ask Garvey for one?” I snorted softly. “You have the whole country club thing going here anyway.” She twisted to glance over her shoulder, admiring my extravagant beachside tent with camp furniture and the hammock in the trees.

“You’re the one with a real bed,” Tack teased. “But honestly, I don’t think they’d give me a boat. They’d be afraid I’d try to escape.” He leaned back on his hands and let his toes slide in the sand.

“Would you?” I asked. He let his chin fall to his shoulder as he looked at me.

“Not anymore.”

My lips curled slowly in response. My mouth moistened with need. I wanted to taste him again, when we were like this, when he was sweet.

“Why don’t you build one?”

He laughed with a puff of air. “How?”

“Well, I don’t know,” I said. “You’re the ship builder’s son. Don’t you know how to build one?”

He stared at me a long moment before turning his eyes back to the ocean.

“Huh,” he huffed.

“What?”

“You’re right.” For some reason, we let those words linger between us before he walked me back to my tree house.

+ +

“I found it,” he shouted the next day when I came to his camp. His voice trilled with excitement.

“Found what?” I laughed, joining in his enthusiasm before I even knew what brought it on. I liked when he laughed. His face brightened and he looked less edgy, younger even.

“The perfect tree. I bet we could scoop it out somehow and attach some smaller limbs to work as double outriggers.”

“Like a canoe?” I laughed again.

“Sort of, but with outriggers for balance, like they use in the Philippines.”

“Have you been to the Philippines?” I intended to laugh, but then I remembered his background. He’d probably been to every corner of the world when I was just happy to escape a trailer park in Alabama.

“I have.” I shook my head in response.

“Come on, Mouse,” he said, holding out his hand, and I couldn’t deny him with the eagerness of his voice.

For a week, we worked on gutting the large log he found from a downed tree. He was patient as he explained what he needed me to do to help build the long, strap-like arches that stretched over the canoe-shaped boat for balance.

“I don’t know if this will hold both of us,” I said skeptically, as we grew closer to our finished product.

“Well, it just has to, because I’m not testing it without you, first mate,” he teased. He was playful, like a child, like a thousand little princes, I thought, and I warmed to him more at his enjoyment in building something from scratch. For a man who said he thrived on tearing things apart, his hands were equally diligent at putting something together.

“We won’t go far,” he promised, looking up to see me staring at him. “I won’t let anything happen to you,” he promised once again. He must have questioned something in my expression. I was beginning to think it was ominous as if something bad were coming, and he kept wanting to assure me he’d protect me. I shook off the thought and continued with my twisting and tying of long grasses and stripped leaves that we were using as rope to secure the outrigging.