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Before more can be said, Sophie appears in front of me.
“Swim time!” she announces.
My arms fold over my chest. Stripping down to a bikini in front of my boss was not part of the plan. “That was before you cajoled your way onto someone’s boat.”
Caleb laughs. “It’s okay. I like it out here.”
“Fine,” I say to Sophie with a sigh. “But you’ve got to keep the life jackets on because I’m not going in with you.”
“You said we didn’t have to!” Sophie cries. “And you put on your suit.”
“Go ahead,” says Caleb, who probably thinks I’m simply being polite. “Seriously. Just remember this the next time you start crafting some plan that’s going to cost me ten grand.”
“I’ll cancel the poetry center,” I reply, turning away from him to shimmy out of my clothes.
The twins jump in, and I follow. The water is freezing, but when my head reemerges to find them waiting for me, small limbs flailing as they propel themselves around, I can’t help but smile. Black storm clouds roll behind the mountain, but here on the lake, the sun beats on my face and my children are happy. No matter how many things I’ve messed up, I’ve createdthemand we’re all okay. Right now, it’s enough.
When I glance back at the boat, Caleb’s leaning against the rail, his gaze trained on the three of us as if he might have to jump in to save us in a second. I like it. I’d like to have someonewatching over us all the time. Even when I was married, I felt like I was alone. I don’t want to be alone anymore.
We don’t stay out long. Within a few minutes, the twins’ lips are pinched and blue, and when I tell them it’s time to go, Sophie doesn’t even argue, which means she must be on the verge of hypothermia. They splash their way back to the boat and climb the ladder, with Caleb waiting to help them in before wrapping a towel around each of them in turn.
It's another of those moments that make me ache. The twins deserve to have more than just me in their lives. They deserve to have another parent who can care for them when I’m tired, when I’m busy, when I’m still climbing into the boat. If I’m going to find that person, I can’t keep waiting for some family-focused version of Caleb to appear. I need, as Molly said, to fuck a few frogs.
I grip the base of the ladder to follow them up, my foot slipping on the final rung. Caleb’s hands come under my arms, but when he hoists me in, I stumble, my whole body falling into his before I can right myself. He’s so firm, like a fucking statue. His smell—some combination of soap and salt—should be bottled.
And I’ve been noticing it all instead of pulling myself away like a normal person would. He’s staring at me wide-eyed, an animal in a trap. He steps away quickly, but not before I feel the hard press of his erection against my stomach.
A verysizableerection.
“We should get back,” he says, gruffly, heading for the front of the boat. “It’s about to storm.”
By the time we reach the dock, it’s all behind us. Sophie is telling Caleb about the intelligence of cephalopods—“And that’s why I won’t eat calamari,” she concludes, and he grins at me over her head.
But then he reaches out a hand to help me out of the boat and our gazes lock and....no, it’s not entirely behind us. There’ssomething here now, and maybe it was always here, but whatever it is, I think I’m ready to give into it, if he is.
He ties off the boat while the kids run ahead to the shore. “If this house is for your mom,” I ask, “then where will you live once she’s here?”
His tongue prods the inside of his cheek, as if he’s considering his answer carefully when the question didn’t seem all that complicated. “I think I’ll be moving to New York,” he says quietly.
I stare at him. “New York?Why?”
He swallows. “The board knows this but it’s not public knowledge yet—there’s a much larger company interested in merging with us and putting me in charge of both, as long as I can clean up TSG’s shit between now and then. You might have heard of the CEO—Brad Caldwell?” I nod and he continues. “He’s planning to retire. If it all works out, he’ll hand the reins to me at his place in Maui this summer, and we’d start the transition afterward. I’d be in New York by late fall.”
No. It’s bizarre how fast my brain puts up a fight for this man who was never really a possibility, but no, I don’t want him to leave. I don’t want to walk into TSG and report to anyone but him. I don’t want to see some other man out on this dock.
No.
I shove my hands into my pockets, staring at the wooden boards beneath my feet, not quite able to meet his eye. “And you...want that?”
“TSG can’t grow the way I’d like without an influx of capital, which this other company would provide. And I’m only thirty-one. It would be pretty huge to be a CEO of a company that size at my age.”
“Wouldn’t it just mean...more work?” More work when he has so little time to himself as it is.
He grins, giving me a flash of that dimple that has nevernotmade my heart race, even if it shouldn’t. “You’ve got your fairy tale—I’ve got mine.”
I force a smile in response. I can’t escape the thought that what he believes is his fairy tale is actually the opposite. That nothing is less likely to bring him happiness than moving away from the town he loves and all his friends to go somewhere with greater demands.
And I also can’t stop thinking that somehow, his fairy tale and mine were meant to be one and the same.
