Once Katie was dressed and had dried her hair, she texted Ben that she was leaving the room so he could come and shower. Then, she wandered around the ship, lost in her own thoughts without any particular destination in mind.
She believed her sister was telling the truth. Maya may not have revealed all she’d known, but Katie didn’t think she’d plotted to get her and Ben together.
She also had no doubt Maya had threatened Ben, and she wondered if that was why he seemed to hold back despite his obvious interest. It could also explain why he was more willing to be open with her when he was pretending to be a fictional character, though he was nuts if he thought Maya would let him off on that technicality.
Of course, then again, Katie could just be making excuses for Ben and trying to justify his actions—something she’d sworn she wouldn’t do anymore after Grant.
As though she was autopilot, she’d gone to the rear of the Lido Deck. It was packed with an evening crowd, and the domed seat where she and Ben had snuggled was taken.
Moving to the railing where they’d watched the moon, she looked out over Coconut Palms Cay. It was like a postcard with its white sandy beaches, swaying palm trees, and the vivid pastel and jewel-toned buildings the Caribbean was known for. The water surrounding the island had been a pale turquoise earlier when the sun was at its highest point, but now that its light had faded with it sinking toward the horizon, the waters had taken on a deep teal hue.
“I hoped I might find you here,” Ben said as he came to stand beside her. “I tried to text you, but you didn’t respond. I didn’t know if that was because you didn’t want to talk to me or because you didn’t have a signal. I figured I’d find you and ask directly rather than making an assumption either way.”
“I turned my phone off. I kind of, sort of hung on Maya. I guarantee you I have at least ten voice mails by now telling me to pick up the phone.”
Ben’s lips formed an “O” with his exhale, but then he grinned. “I wouldn’t be surprised if a helicopter lands on this ship and she jumps out of it looking for you.”
“Yeah, neither would I.” She refrained from telling him Maya would probably be looking for him too, but somehow, he guessed it.
Resting his forearms on the rail, he cocked his head to the side as he looked to her with a lifted a brow. “Should I be worried?”
“That she’s going to come in a helicopter?”
“No. That she’s going to come after me.”
Katie turned to lean back against the railing so she could face him, but she’d misjudged how close he was.
The scent of his cologne washed over her in the breeze, and her body reacted immediately before her mind could clamp it down.
“You tell me, Ben. Why would my sister be upset with you?”
“I suppose it depends on why the two of you talked.”
“Do I need a reason to call my sister?”
He looked down at his foot as he tapped the toe of his leather sandal against the rail post, and then he straightened and shoved his hands in his pockets as his somber eyes met hers.
“No, but considering that you chose to do so from the middle of the Caribbean, I’m assuming you had a reason.”
As she considered what to do with her predicament, she took a moment to just look at him.
His hair was damp from the shower, and though he’d combed it back, a few loose strands had fallen over his brow in the evening breeze. He’d changed into a pale ivory linen shirt with cuffs folded neatly against his forearms, and the brown cargo pants he wore fit slim through his hips. If he’d been standing on some random rock staring off into the distance, he’d have looked like a cologne model in a GQ magazine.
Her heart fluttered, and her body overruled her mind and began to burn for him.
“Did I do something to upset you, Kate? Did I say something to make you mad?”
She shook her head, biting down on her lip to keep from spewing out every thought she had.
He tilted his head again, bending slightly so they were almost eye to eye. “Now before I ask if that’s your final answer, don’t forget we have a rule. No lies between us.”
She spun to face the island again, unable to continue staring into his eyes.
“Do you want me to leave you alone? Give you space?” he asked after a while when she didn’t answer.
She ignored the voice in her head telling her to say yes and said no instead.
“Then tell me what’s going on inside here, please.” Ben tucked her hair back behind her ear as he gently tapped her head. “What did I do? I thought it was Laura because that’s when everything changed, but I grilled the hell out of her, and she swears she didn’t say anything. So, either she’s lying—which, unfortunately, could be a possibility with my sister—or it’s something I did.”
“You didn’t do anything.” Which was true, for the most part. He’d made her fall for him when he was geographically unavailable, and he’d come along at a time in her life when she’d committed to do soul searching without another soul involved, but as far as her mood swing today, Ben had done nothing wrong—she’d just realized that it would never be right.
“Then what happened? We had a great day, didn’t we? I thought you had fun. I had fun! I can’t remember the last time I laughed that much or when I last felt that comfortable in my own skin. Maybe not ever.”
“But it wasn’t real.” She turned to face him again. “I felt comfortable too, and yes, I had fun. Obviously. But I feel like I don’t know how much of that is make-believe. Part of it? All of it? None of it? What’s real? What can I trust? There is so much about you I don’t know. And when we pretend we’ve already been together for years, it might be easier to kiss and hold hands without any awkwardness that way, but there’s a lot we’re skipping over. There’s a reason it takes a long time to feel comfortable with someone. There’s a reason it takes time to trust. I feel like there are things I don’t know that maybe I should know. And at the same time, I feel like it’s none of my business to ask, because, again, none of this is real. When we step off this ship in three days, you go back to your life, and I go back to mine. So does it even matter?”
He turned, leaning forward to brace his elbows on the rail as he stared down at the water lapping at the sides of the ship. “What do you wanna know?”
Everything, she wanted to say. What he was feeling in that moment. What he had carried forward from his past and what he wanted for his future. Why he looked at her sometimes like he wanted to devour her but then at other times like he was on the verge of crying.
She wanted to know what he felt when they touched, if he yearned for her the same as she did for him, and if he was just as conflicted as she was about the idea of a future together.
But what good would it do for Ben to bare his soul to her? Nothing he could say would change where he lived or who his best friend was or the fact that Katie had no idea what she wanted to do with her life. And it certainly wouldn’t change how crazy his family was, though knowing the truth about what had happened might help her understand some of the why.
So, instead of saying everything, she said nothing.
“Please tell me what you want from me, Kate,” he said after a while, shifting so his side was against the rail and he could face her again.
His eyes were dark with emotion but impossible to read. Was that fear? Hurt? Frustration?
Whatever it was, it wasn’t joyful, and she was causing that pain.
Why put him through this when she already knew what the outcome had to be?
“An escape,” she said, offering him a partial truth. “I want to escape with you. I want to laugh. I want to be happy. I want to forget there’s a world we have to go back to at the end of all this. Can we just go play again?”
His gaze didn’t waver, and his expression didn’t change. She feared he was going to call her out for being dishonest. That he was going to tell her he knew she wanted more.
But he didn’t. He just took her hand and started walking, and she had to wonder if that was because he knew it was hopeless, too.
After grabbing a pizza at the gallery, they left the ship to join the beach party already in progress. As a DJ blasted out reggae tunes, a group of revelers danced in the sand, while others played games led by the ship’s entertainment crewmembers.
Lasers and spotlights filled the air around them with colors and shapes, and the entire vibe was so festive and fun that it was impossible not to feel lighter.
She didn’t ask Ben what he’d told his family regarding dinner, and she tried not to feel guilty that he was with her instead of them.
She tried not to think about his family at all, or any other real-life obstacle she and Ben faced. Any time her mind drifted to doomsday plotting, as Ben had called it, she brought herself back to the present and focused on having fun.
They took the second-place ribbon in the three-legged race, and then they danced to the Electric Slide and the Macarena. When the Cuban Shuffle music began, Katie motioned to Ben that she was thirsty, and they walked hand-in-hand in search of a bar.
With bottled waters in hand, they began to look for empty chairs along the beach.
“Those people look like they’re leaving.” Ben pointed to a couple who had just stood. “Not chairs though. It’s one of those beanbag things. Is that okay with you?”
“Sure,” Katie replied after chugging the last of her water. “I just need to sit down before my legs go out from under me. I had no idea it was such an aerobic workout to line dance in the sand.”
Ben took her hand and led her to where the couple had departed, and then he plopped down on the beanbag, spreading his legs and patting the space between his knees. “C’mere. I want to hold you.”
She turned her bottom toward him and eased her aching legs down, and once she was seated, she nestled into his arms, wriggling her rump back between his legs so she could rest her back on his chest.
“Is this okay?” she asked. “Are you comfortable?”
He tightened his arms around her, pulling her even closer, and then he nestled his nose against the soft skin of her neck just beneath her ear.
“Sweetheart, I am more than comfortable.” He nibbled at her earlobe with a grin. “Why was I ever looking for chairs?”
She pulled her head away with a giggle, and then she rested it against his shoulder, turning so she could see his face.
“Happy?” he asked.
“Very.”
With a feather-light touch, he reached to stroke his knuckles along the line of jaw, and then traced his thumb over her bottom lip.
Smiling as she shivered, he said, “I swear I could stare into your eyes forever and never tire of the view.”
Her heart skipped a beat, her breath catching in her chest, but then she reminded herself that they were playing the game. “Why, thank you, Cruise Ben. What a lovely thing to say!”
She pressed her lips to his, and his hand cupped her face as he coaxed her to open up to him, deepening their kiss.
Every other time their lips had met as Cruise Katie and Ben, it had been pleasant, enticing, but tame. This was like nothing she’d ever experienced before, not even with the dizzying first kiss they’d shared in front of his mother.
His mouth was demanding and hungry, as though he couldn’t get enough of her and feared she’d be taken away. She met his hunger with a ferocity of her own, twisting her upper body so that she could reach up and thread her fingers into his hair, clinging to him like her life depended on him.
As the tension they’d been holding at bay threatened to fully unfurl, they decided that a public beach might not be the ideal spot for them.
With a fevered urgency, they rushed back to the ship and made their way up to the room, barely able to keep their hands and lips to themselves along the way. At any opportunity when no other passengers were around in a hallway or the elevator, one of them would grab the other, and they’d be up against the wall, stoking the fires to keep them burning.
As soon as they crossed the threshold and the door had closed behind them, Ben put his arms around her waist and lifted her, their mouths never parting as he carried her to the bed and laid her upon it.
Lying down next to her, he pulled her into his arms, and then he brushed her hair back from her face and tucked it behind her ear as he rested his forehead against hers.
“Kate?”
“Yes?”
“Are you sure about this?”
Planting her hands in the center of his chest, she applied enough pressure to make him pull back without pushing him away.
“Are you?” she asked.
“Yes. God, yes.” He took her hand in his and brought it to his lips. “But I need to know that you are, too.”
She swallowed hard as she considered the question, running her fingers through his hair. She rested her hand on the back of his neck, and then took in a ragged breath.
“You asked me earlier what I wanted from you. Honesty. No more pretending. No alter-egos or fake personas to hide behind. If we do this, I need to know it’s us. The real us.”
His eyes were so intense that it was difficult to look into them without feeling overwhelming emotion. Or maybe she was already feeling it, and both of them were intense.
“I would be willing to give you whatever you wanted,” he said, tucking his knuckle beneath her chin to lift her face to his. “My honesty, you already have. The only one pretending tonight was you. I never mentioned the game, or Cruise Katie and Ben. You asked me earlier how you can know what’s real. It’s been the real me by your side all night, and it’s the real me lying here with you now. What I feel for you is real, Kate.”
She had no idea if they could ever have a future, and she still worried about the things she didn’t know from his past.
But New Katie was willing to live in the moment. She might not have him forever, but she had him for tonight.