Page 48 of Falling Overboard

I did not have a plan. I had end goals. Like staying away from tempting boys and keeping my job. “I, uh, was going to watch a movie.”

“Which one?”

“I was thinkingGuys and Dolls.” There was an awkward silence and I felt obligated to invite him to join me. “Do you want to watch it with me?”

“Yeah. But I’m going to shower first. Walking around in that heat ...” He let his voice trail off as his gaze flicked over me. He took a step toward me and there was a look in his eyes that I hadn’t seen before.

It was . . . smoldering.

He pointed his thumb toward the bathroom. “Do you want to—”

And suddenly I was terrified of what he was going to say next. My anxiety wrapped itself around my throat like a giant snake. I couldn’t find out how he intended to finish that sentence.

“I’m going to get snacks!” I announced and left the cabin as quickly as I could.

As I went into the crew mess and started gathering up chips and popcorn, I wanted to kick myself. I had totally overreacted in that moment. He had probably meant to ask me if I wanted to use the bathroom first.

But a part of me was absolutely convinced he’d been about to ask me if I wanted to join him.

And I didn’t know what my answer would have been.

Chapter Seventeen

Lucky

As I made my way back to the cabin, my arms laden, I had convinced myself that I had imagined the whole thing. I was definitely conjecturing.

This was another situation where we probably should have gone into the crew mess to watch the movie, but the captain was still on board, and if he saw us sitting in there alone together, he might come to some incorrect conclusions. Not to mention that everyone would return wasted at some point and I didn’t want to deal with them.

When I got back to our room, I heard the shower still going. I dumped the snacks onto my bed, pushing them down toward the foot so that he wouldn’t crunch them when he joined me.

This entire evening might have turned out differently if I weren’t weighed down by my past, if I hadn’t loved and lost so many times. I would have been excited by the opportunity to get to know Hunter better. To see if we could become something more.

It wasn’t only the captain’s rules that made me keep Hunter at arm’s length. My own screwed-up past played a very big part.

I was setting up the movie when he came out of the bathroom with only a towel on.

Again.

My stomach clenched. Did he not understand the way that he pushed my willpower to its absolute breaking point?

He went over to the closet to grab some clothes. A still-working part of my brain noted that he could have initially brought the clothes in with him so that he could get changed in the bathroom, but he didn’t.

I always took my things with me into the bathroom so that I could change after I showered.

Was he just so comfortable with himself and with me that it didn’t matter if he paraded around in a towel in front of me? That was a foreign concept to me.

Did the man not realize the potential danger he was placing himself in?

This was why I couldn’t consume alcohol around him. When he’d asked me earlier why I wasn’t drinking, the wordsthe better to keep my hands to myself, my dearhad popped into my head. And I still wanted to go a little Big Bad Wolf on him.

He got his clothes and went back into the bathroom. I let out a very deep breath because I’d apparently stopped breathing the minute he’d walked into the cabin. I was relieved he was changing in there.

And not out here, where I was pretty sure I would have watched even though I knew I shouldn’t.

My phone beeped and I had a message.

From François. I frowned.

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