But the view was so stunning it held her at the rail. The illuminated Golden Gate Bridge arched high over silver-tipped, black water. Traffic wound along the bridge in a long, undulating ribbon of incandescence. Lights blazed everywhere on both sides of the Bay underneath a night sky draped with moody clouds. She could feel the magic of the Other land shimmering in the distance, and she was so happy to be exactly where she was in that moment, all of her senses were wide open.
She felt Sebastian’s forceful presence a moment before a wool blanket settled around her shoulders. He moved to stand at the rail beside her, and she grabbed at the edges of the blanket before it could slip to the deck.
He asked, “You weren’t interested in going into the city with the others?”
“Not in the slightest,” she said. She made a conscious effort to relax her jaw so that her teeth wouldn’t chatter. “Especially not when there is a breathtaking view like this one. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. When you’re through with the blanket, you can fold it up and put it back in the storage box.”
She looked where he pointed at an oblong white container set in the shadows behind a steeply slanted ladder that led to the pilot’s cabin. Then she glanced back at him. He had slipped on a worn leather jacket but hadn’t bothered to zip it closed. Underneath he wore the same gray T-shirt that he had earlier, the thin material molding against his muscled chest and flat abdomen, yet he appeared perfectly comfortable in the chilly night.
He still wore his sunglasses. As certainty settled into place, she felt an unexpected pang. She had seen him do any manner of tasks that said he was sighted, such as reading off his laptop, but something must be wrong with his eyes.
She turned to face the water, pulled the blanket tighter around her and said, “It’s so beautiful out here, I don’t want to go in.”
He stayed silent for so long, she began to wonder if he was through interacting with her. When he finally replied, he sounded reluctant, almost as if he spoke against his better judgment. “There are deck chairs in storage too, if you want.”
She decided she was being too fanciful. After all, he didn’t have any reason not to speak with her, and he had, after all, been the one who approached her with the blanket.
She gave him a sidelong smile. “Would it be too odd for me to huddle under blankets and sleep on the deck all night?”
His hard-planed face turned toward her. “I have done so many times.”
Her smile turned wistful. “How lovely. I imagine you’ve traveled all over the world.”
“I’ve spent most of my life traveling for one reason or another.”
Even though she barely knew him, once again she heard layers of nuance in his voice. Not regret, necessarily, but some emotion close to it.
He shifted into a more casual stance and rested his weight on both hands as he gripped the railing. Surreptitiously, out of the corner of her eye, she studied the hand that rested closest to hers. It looked strong and as beautifully proportioned as the rest of his body, broad, with long fingers, and a tracery of veins along the back.
“I like home life, and I like to nest,” she said. “I don’t think I would be happy living a life like yours, but it’s fun to hear stories and to daydream.”
“It gets tiring,” he said. “You can have too much of any one thing, and then it all runs together into sameness.”
Ah, she recognized the emotion in his voice. Resignation.
“I think so too, which is why I want to make a point of traveling a bit more. I don’t want to look back on my life and have any regrets.”
“Good for you,” he said. His head turned as he looked out over the rippling water of the Bay. “You should make a point of doing things that you want to do. Regrets can be a bitch.”
She remembered her bottle of beer, finished the last few swallows and set the empty bottle at her feet to dispose of later. Then, because he seemed halfway approachable, and she enjoyed standing beside him and talking, she confessed, “I’ve been so excited at this trip, I don’t think I’ve slept a full night in months. As much as I love my job, I spend most of my life in a library. I’ve never traveled down a crossover passage or been to an Other land.”