Page 72 of The Best Wild Idea
When he’s done, he carefully makes his way back to me, stooping and stepping over and under random ropes and pulley systems until he’s beside me again.
“We’ll anchor her here for a bit. It’s calm enough right now,” he tells me.
“What do I do with this?” I ask, still gripping the wheel like our lives depend on it.
“Lock it in place, so we can go up front.”
A moment later, Silas has my hand, carefully leading me up to the front of the boat. I hadn’t noticed before, but there’s a dip in the bow, a little cut-out meant to lie or sit back on, it seems. He grips my hand tightly for balance as I make it over to the cushy spot, ready to sink lower when I make it there safely.
We sit down beside each other, and once I’m feeling steady enough, I allow myself to look around.
“Wow,” I gasp, taking in the view around us. The sea is the deepest blue out here where we’re anchored, but it grows lighter as it heads into the shallows leading up to shore. The city of Cádiz looks even smaller from out here, with its rocky coastline and whitewashed domes, like a medieval dollhouse showing off across its light, sandy shore.
“You should see it at night,” he says, admiring the view beside me. “The lights reflecting off the water are unreal.”
“I can’t believe you stayed out here for a month,” I tell him, pushing on his arm gently, hoping he’ll tell me more about that time of his life.
“Off and on. I’d go into town when I needed more supplies. But mostly, I stayed on the water. Drove everyone at Davenport Media crazy.” He laughs. “This was the one place they couldn’t get to me with endless meeting requests and Zoom calls. The board was threatening to vote me out if I didn’t, in their words,grow upand come back to run the family business. I almost didn’t.”
I stare at him, bewildered.
“You almost let it all go?”
All I saw of Silas back then was this cocky, arrogant, filthy rich playboy. Cruising in and out of our lives with a thousand-yard stare, dishing out shit as if his life depended on it. I didn’t realize he’d been so painfully close to losing everything.
“I was numb. Numb and dumb . . .” He pauses, lost in the memory, but I continue staring at him, wondering how in the world he got it together enough to be as successful as he is now.
I stay silent, hoping he’ll go on, but when I can’t wait any longer, I ask, “What happened to make you come back?”
“There came a point when I realized that I either had to let it all go once and for all, or I had to do exactly what they told me to do: grow the fuck up and take what my dad had spent his entire life building.”
“How did you decide?”
“Grant.”
My heart twists at the mention of his name.
“And you,” he adds.
“What?” I snap, wondering how in the world I had anything to do with the decision that saved him and his company when I didn’t even know he was out here.
“I knew I was losing you. Both of you. I knew I’d fucked up past the point of forgiveness roughly eight thousand times already, and if I had any chance of earning back trust — yours or Grant’s — then I had to dockViviand get back to my life. I hadto go back to Boston. I had to try. I couldn’t lose you guys. You were the only family I had left.” He pauses, then side-eyes me as if he’s about to confess something else. “That and he tracked me down.”
I blink back at him.
“He — who?”
“Who do you think?”
“Grant washere?” I ask, dumbfounded. “When?”
“It was some long weekend that you were doing wedding prep with your girlfriends.”
I stare at him. “The weekend Emma and Molly took me to New York?”
“For some dress shopping or something, yeah.”
“And Grant flewhere?” I press my finger into the wooden deck of the boat.
