Page 125 of Ten Years and Then…
That earned him another splash, right in his face. He laughed as he wiped the water from his eyes. He definitely deserved that.
“What about Benny having good taste, too?”
Benny hadn’t left Nora’s side the whole time. Daniel didn’t blame him one bit.
“That goes without saying.”
But not everything could go unsaid. Not anymore.
He paddled slowly beside her, Benny and Annie bobbing between them.
“Nora,” he said, barely above a whisper. “What do we do when this is over?”
Nora, a few seconds later
Why did he have to ruin this moment?
Because he knew, just as well as she did. This was their only chance to talk about what had to happen. And he was right.
“I hate it, but …” That was all she could get out.
He met her eyes. “I do, too, Nora. It’s horrible. I don’t even want to think how much it’s going to hurt Leanne.”
It would break Greg’s heart, too. Wouldn’t it?
He loved her. He’d never said the words. She suspected he was waiting for her to say them first. How could he have known she never would? She hadn’t known it herself, not until she saw Daniel across the atrium a few nights ago.
“It’s going to be just as bad with Greg.”
What would he do? Would he scream, or cry or just take it in quietly and walk away to collect himself?
He’d shown a flash of jealousy in Charleston, when she’d crossed paths with Daniel at the market. Just a flash, but that was more than she’d ever seen from him. Then again, she’d never given him any cause to feel jealous—until this cruise.
Which only showed how much she didn’t know about him. And how much of herself she’d kept hidden from him.
Somewhere deep down, she must have always known: Greg wasn’t the man she could trust with her whole heart. There’d only ever been one man, and she’d handed him her heart—all of it—in a dorm room nine years ago.
“We have to tell them,” Daniel said quietly, “no matter how hard it is.”
Annie was nuzzling up against him again. Of course she was. Even the dolphins knew they belonged together.
“When? There are still four more days after today.”
And four more nights.
If she told Greg this afternoon, he wouldn’t want to spend another minute with her. She wouldn’t, in his place. It wasn’t like they could switch cabins, or hop off the ship and drive home separately.
Daniel nodded; he must have thought the same thing. “It would be—I don’t even know a word for how awful it would be, making Leanne stay in the cabin with me for four more days after I tell her it’s over.”
She chuckled, not that there was anything funny about any of this. “If this was a movie, you’d switch cabins with Greg, and the Captain would perform a double wedding on the last night of the cruise.”
He smiled, but there was no humor in it. “Yeah. I could see that. But—there’s not going to be any wedding at all.”
No, there couldn’t be. She loved Daniel with all her heart. But they couldn’t jump into a relationship after this. How could they?
“Nothing good could come of it,” she said. “It would be poisoned from the start.”
She ran her hand along Benny’s back, in hopes he’d somehow pass on some dolphin wisdom. “But that still leaves the question—when do we tell them? If we don’t tell them today, then, what? We keep lying to them for four more days?”
