Page 121 of Meant to be Mine

Once we were far enough out that the coastline was just a hazy line on the horizon, I cut the engine and let us drift. The silence was immediate. Just the gentle lap of water against the hull and the distant cry of seabirds.

I joined Kensey up front, dropping onto the seat beside her. She’d taken off her tank top and was down to her bikini top. I tried not to stare.

“This is amazing,” she said quietly. “I finally understand why you bought a yacht. It’s just us out here. No phones, no people, no obligations. Just ocean.”

“That’s exactly why I bought it.” I stretched my legs out and let the sun warm my face. “I needed a place to escape to. Somewhere I could think without the family or the business or any of it following me.”

“Did it help?”

“Sometimes.” I reached over and took her hand, lacing our fingers together. “But it was always missing something. You weren’t here.”

She squeezed my hand. “I’m here now.”

“You are.”

We sat like that for a long time, just holding hands and listening to the water. The boat rocked gently beneath us. I felt the tension I’d been carrying for years—hell, maybe my whole adult life—finally start to dissolve. This was it. This was what I’d been searching for. Not success or validation or proving myself to the family. Just this. Kensey beside me, the ocean stretching out in every direction, and nothing but time.

“I could get used to this,” she said eventually.

“Good. Because I’m planning on bringing you out here a lot.”

She turned her head to look at me, shading her eyes with one hand. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. I figure we’ve got a lot of lost time to make up for. Might as well do it somewhere beautiful.”

She smiled, that slow, genuine smile that always made my heart skip. “I love you.”

“I love you too.”

She stood and walked to the railing, looking out at the water. I watched her, committing the image to memory. Kensey on my boat, sun-kissed and happy and finally mine.

“Come here,” I said, standing and crossing to her.

She turned into my arms easily, pressing herself against me. I kissed her slowly. Her hands slid up my chest to loop around my neck.

“What do you want to do for the rest of the day?” she asked against my mouth.

“This,” I said. “Just this.”

And we did. We spent the afternoon drifting, swimming in the ocean when we got too hot, making love in the master cabin when the need became too much to ignore. We ate sandwiches from the galley and drank beer and talked about nothing important. As the sun started to set, painting the sky in shades of orange and pink and purple, I held her on the upper deck and watched the colors shift and change.

“Thank you,” she said quietly.

“For what?”

“For this. For giving up your job. For being willing to follow me to New Jersey if that’s what it took. For loving me enough to change your entire life.”

“Kensey, you’re my life. Everything else is just details.”

“Do you miss it?” she asked. “The store?”

I thought about it for a moment. “A little,” I admitted. “I liked building something with the family. Getting it off the ground, proving it could work. That felt good.”

“But?”

“But the day-to-day got tedious. It was important work, but it wasn’t my work, you know?” I pulled her closer. “Unemployment is a lot better when you have someone to be unemployed with.”

She laughed and kissed my shoulder. “We’re quite the pair. Two unemployed adults floating around on a yacht like we don’t have a care in the world.”