Page 68 of The Captain
“It’s not that simple.” He squeezed my thigh, not hard. “But we’re closer than you think. And when it’s time to move,I’m going to make sure there’s muscle behind it.”
“Plan,” I said, mocking him a little to save myself from being touched by kindness. “We make one and then we follow it.”
He grinned, not fooled. “We make three and pick the one that’s best.”
“That’s better,” I said, and took a drink of my fake soda.
The door swung and a schlump of fishermen in sunburn and exhaustion staggered in. On the far side of the room, a man in a ball cap clocked Jacob and then clocked me and then decided the floor was his best friend.
Karl.
I nudged Jacob with my knee. “Your fan club’s back.”
He didn’t bother looking. “Which one?”
“The one with the sternum you made a lesson plan out of.”
At that he flicked a glance, weighed the man, dismissed him. “He’s smarter from the neck down. Good for him.”
I sipped and let my smile go crooked. “You know he’s going to tell someone in town that you walked in with me, and you’ll be making me look like a woman who can’t walk across a bar without a chaperone.”
“I know,” he said, and the warmth in his voice put the edge on the right thing. “And I know you can walk anywhere you want. I also know what happens inside me when a man decides not to take your no the first time. That part’s mine.”
He leaned, just a little, so his shoulder brushed mine, so his next words belonged to my ear more than the air. “You’re my woman,” he said, low. “Karl, the moon, the guy at the bait freezer—they can all steer clear of what’s mine.”
A blush is a stupid, teenage thing. Mine came, anyway, traitorous and hot. “Possessive,” I said. I meant it like a reprimand. It came out like a smile.
“Correct,” he said, not apologizing, eyes laughing at me a little. “You made me that way … by existing.”
“I was dangerous before you,” I said. “You don’t get the credit.”
“I get the pleasure,” he said, and that shut me up more than it should have.
Our food arrived and we ate hungrily. Grease and salt and that particular relief your body feels when someone else has done the alchemy of hot oil right. The room hummed. The dock kept doing what docks do—letting things leave and letting them come back.
“Do you ever think about that night at the beach?” I heard myself ask, mouth already full of the answer.
His eyes heated. “Every hour.”
“We were lucky,” I said. “Salt, wind, a blind patch on the walkover camera. We got away with it.”
“Mm,” he said. “Or the ocean approved.”
“Don’t bring magic into my bar talk,” I said.
He chewed, swallowed, leaned back. “We can risk it again,” he said, no hesitation. “Night swim. No witnesses. I can be decent at stealth when naked.”
“That’s not stealth,” I said dryly. “That’s felony.”
He made me laugh. With him it’s easy. “Then maybe we stop acting like teenagers who need sand on their knees to remember they’re alive,” I said. “Maybe we do civilization. Bungalow only. Clean sheets. Doors that lock.”
“We can do both,” he said.
“What are we going to be?” The question left my mouth before I had time to dress it. “You and me.”
He set his beer down like the act needed his whole attention. Then he looked at me the way he looked at the water before he dove in—deliberate and unafraid. “We can be the kind of people who don’t go looking for trouble,” he said, “and still handle it when it walks through our door. We can be the kind who start coffee and carry coolers and have the same bad joke about semicolons for forty years.”
“You really listened when I said I hate semicolons,” I said, surprised again by the small ways he was paying attention.
