Page 126 of If All Else Sails
“Let’s finish and get back inside.” Wyatt leans closer but still needs to shout over the wind. “Then we can talk, Rookie.”
I grab his arm as he starts for the bow, tugging him back. “I don’t want to wait!”
“Whatdoyou want, Josie?”
The bravery that fueled me to start shouting at Wyatt in the first place ebbs, and with the next boom of thunder, I jump.Tucking me closer to his chest, Wyatt holds me steady. I’m no longer sure if the wetness on my cheeks is rain or tears.
Wyatt bends, placing his ear near my lips with a simple command: “Tell me.”
“I’m scared, and I don’t want to be. I don’t want to mess this up. I don’t want to keep running. But I don’t know how to trust this when...” I swallow around a growing lump in my throat, temporarily losing my ability to form words.
“When what?” Wyatt says, and I realize he’s not shouting anymore. That the storm, though still raging, has suddenly lightened up a bit.
I rest my cheek on Wyatt’s, feeling the slight burn of his closely shaven skin as I force myself to say the words that scare me most.
“It’s hard to trust this when you’ve hated me for so long.”
He reacts as though I’ve struck him, rearing back until those gray eyes—almost black in the darkness—practically burn into me. His hand on my back flattens, pressing me closer, holding me tighter. “I—what?”
“Just because I helped you through a hard time, and you flipped a switch—”
“Flipped a switch?” Wyatt practically bellows.
“You used to hate me; now you like me. A switch flipped.”
“That’s really what you think?”
“Isn’t that what happened?”
Wyatt stares at me for a very long moment. There’s a feeling not unlike dread swirling in my gut like water around a slow drain. What I don’t understand is why.
Or why he looks like I’ve just stolen his puppy.
“Am I wrong?” I ask.
IknowI’m not. I know how things have always been with us.
Don’t I?
I think back to what Jacob said about that night so long ago, how different it seems with a new perspective. I remember Wyatt telling me he has a problem saying the wrong thing to me.
Though it feels like entering an alternate reality, I realize it’s entirely possible that I’ve read things wrong for years.
Droplets of water fall from Wyatt’s hair into his eyes, but he doesn’t take his hands off me to wipe them clear. It’s like he’s frozen, staring at me with a look I can’t understand. My stomach flips right out of my body and lands with a softthudon the deck.
“You couldn’t be more wrong when it comes to how I feel about you,” Wyatt says, then leans closer, pressing his wet forehead to mine. “How I’vealwaysfelt about you.”
The deck moves underneath me. But this time, it’s not the storm. No—it’s the world as I know it, tilting sideways. Collapsing.
Sucking me through a black hole and shooting me out the other side into a whole new galaxy.
Wyatt has feelings for me—hasalwayshad feelings for me?
I—
He—
We—
