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The houseboat was completely gutted and revamped, sporting clean, white cabinets, beige walls, a comfortable couch, and a huge dining room table that had maps of the inlet spread out on top of it.
There were groceries on the shelves, a nice-sized refrigerator, and coffee cups hanging on hooks on the wall.
It looked clean and modern and not at all what I would’ve expected from Cassius.
The icing on the cake, however, were the photos on the wall of the ocean.
“Who took these?” I asked curiously.
The one I was currently standing in front of was a wide panoramic of the inlet. It was gorgeous and looked like it’d been professionally done.
“Me.” He crowded close. “Are you hungry? Do you want to shower?”
I shook my head.
The shower at his mom’s house had been enough.
“No,” I said quietly, my eyes still on the photo. “You have a lot of skill. This is amazing. When did you take it?”
“About two years after my family died, I thought about going into photography, but it’s not really sustainable when you’re in a small town like this. I could’ve traveled and gotten a little more experience elsewhere, but this is my home. I wouldn’t want to leave it. Hence, now it’s just a side project that I enjoy doing.”
I turned to go to the next photo. It was a black-and-white photo of our town from the top of our tallest building, which happened to be a granary. It was a great shot of everything that was spectacular about our town.
“This one is great,” I admitted. “I think I like it better than the inlet. Look, there’s The Marina.”
“If you look closer,” he said, sounding embarrassed. “I’m pretty sure that dot beside the front door is you.”
I frowned, leaned close, and laughed.
Sure enough, the dot was wearing my favorite ever bikini. A hot pink number with neon yellow polka dots.
“Wow.” I laughed. “Did you know I was in that photo when you took it?”
He shook his head. “No. But I hung it up because you were in it.”
I blinked, turned, and found him only a few feet away from me, staring at me intently.
“What are we doing here, Cassius?” I asked him. “What am I allowed to do? Because I don’t know.”
His head tilted sideways, just enough to make it cute.
“I’m not sure you can handle hearing what I want right now,” he admitted.
I closed my eyes, inhaled deeply, then said, “You know what would be great? Getting a straight answer out of you. Because right now, I’m really freakin’ conflicted.” I drew in a deep breath. “My very first instinct was to run to you.”
His breathing hitched.
“Every single day, I wake up, and my first thought is about you. You show up, and my first thought is, I missed him. You’re mean to me, and I think even him being angry at me is worth it. I get mauled by jellyfish, and I think, oh, man. At least I get him to share this pain with.” I looked down at the floor. “I’m tired of thinking about you, Cassius.”
Because that was literally all I freakin’ did. Think about him. All the damn time.
“Even while I was being attacked, I thought, would he even care?” I rasped.
He was in front of me then, his eyes intense. His voice raw, he said, “I fuckin’ care.”
I felt my own breathing hitch.
“I care so fuckin’ much that you’re all I think about every single second of every single day,” he snapped. “Do you know how uncomfortable it is to think about you, but tell yourself that you can’t have what you so desperately want?”
“Why can’t you have it?” I asked.
He cupped my jaw with his hand then, moving close enough that I could feel his warmth, but far enough away that I didn’t feel trapped.
“I told myself at first it was that I couldn’t handle it if anything happened to you. One more person I cared about dying, or leaving, or getting hurt in some way, would rip my soul out.” He leaned forward until his forehead was on mine. “But then, today, I realized that my soul can be ripped out, even if you’re not a part of my life.”
I felt tears once again well in my eyes.
“If you want me, you can have me,” he said.
I said the only thing I could say. “I want you. I want you real bad.”
I wasn’t too sure who moved first, him or me. But all of a sudden, we were both in each other’s arms.
I’m not sure he’d intended to kiss me like he did, mostly because I could almost feel the hesitation when our mouths met. As if he was wary about how I would react due to what had happened to me tonight.
But when I pulled back and said, “Don’t hold back,” he didn’t.
