“You just want me for my body, don’t you?”
Her fingers dip down my chest and over my abs. I flex them under her touch, just so she sees how ripped I am. I didn’t do a hundred pushups this morning for nothing.
“No, not just for your body. But it doesn’t hurt.” She settles against me again, her hair draping over my shoulder. I draw little obscure pictures on her stomach and listen to her little breaths. “How long are we staying at sea?”
“As long as you want.”
“When do you have to go back to work? You said a couple of weeks when we left.”
I shrug. “I hired Duke full time at Nzou. He can handle most of the shit. I check in every morning while you’re asleep. So as long as nothing catastrophic happens, I could stay here forever.”
“I don’t know about forever.”
“I could stay wherever you are forever.”
“Now that I could do,” she grins. She locks her hand with mine and rests them on her stomach. We feel the anchor being pulled up and we will be starting our departure for the next island. “Where do we go now?”
“Such a loaded question.”
“I know,” she laughs nervously. “You can take that to mean either thing—where are we going in this boat or, you know, where are we going in life?”
I think about it before responding. I know what I want to say, to the last part of that specifically. I want to go into the rest of my life with her by my side. I can’t see it any other way. I won’t have it any other way.
I wait until she almost gets antsy before answering. “You got one thing right.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s where we are going in life.” I watch her face light up and it makes me stupidly happy. “Me and you, Brynne. Wherever one of us goes, the other has to go too.”
She kisses me gently, her hand playing in my hair. “I was hoping you’d say that.”
Her eyes shine almost as brightly as the smile on her face. I take a deep breath before tossing my next words into the world. “I’d like to try that.”
Her brows pull together. “Try what?”
“Try . . . forever.”
“Fent!” She scrambles into a sitting position, a hand clutching her heart. “Are you serious?”
I nod slowly. I hope this is a good reaction, but I can’t tell. My hand shakes slightly as I brush a strand of hair out of her face. “I’m completely serious. I know we haven’t known each other a long time and you’ve been pissed for a lot of what we have—”
“Fent. Shut up,” she giggles, pressing her lips against mine. When she pulls back, she locks our hands together. “I love you. Of course I’d like to try forever with you. But I have to admit one thing.”
“What’s that, rudo?”
“I thought we already were.”
Pulling her into me, I kiss the top of her head. “I think we have been since that day in the market. There’s been something about you from the start and it’s just gotten deeper and deeper. I kept thinking it would go away or I’d get distracted or see the foolishness in my thinking, but I didn’t. Instead, I fell farther in love with you.” Squeezing her tight, I can’t fight the grin on my face. “But, yeah, we are. I just needed you to know it officially.”
We sit together for a long time, the yacht starting to move again. Brynne’s hand splays across my chest, right above my heart. I almost tell her how fitting it is, that she holds my heart in the palm of her hand, but I don’t. I figure she already knows it and, if she doesn’t, I’ll make sure to show her every day for the rest of my life.
“So . . .” she says, tilting her chin to face me. “Forever means forever.”
“It does.”
“Does this mean, you know, you’re going to ask me to marry you?”
I laugh. “It means you shouldn’t be so nosey and try to spoil surprises.”
“So there are surprises?” She squeals like a little girl and it makes me laugh harder. “Do you have a ring already? Do you have a spot picked out?”
“What part of surprise do you not understand?”
“The part that means I don’t know! Presley doesn’t know, does she?” she gasps. “She better not!”
“Will. You. Relax?” I pull her on top of me so that she’s straddling me. “Let things work themselves out.”
“But what if they don’t? What if something happens and—”
“They always work out, don’t they? All the bad things that have happened to you—they got you here. With me. Right?”
She nods, still unsure.
“You have to have some trust in life, Brynne. A little hope that things will work out as they should. Look at Brady. He’s off banging your best friend—”
“What?” she shrieks.
“I talked to him today. He and Presley are having quite a little getaway in Lake Tahoe. It’s been a long time coming, I think.”
“I . . .”