A panicky feeling began buzzing in the pit of my stomach. The ship’s horn sounded, drowning out my heartbeats.
“How about we meet somewhere else? I can wait for you by the spa center on the nineteenth deck.”
“The decks only go to eighteen, Mom.”
“Nonsense, Cruzy. You’d think a man who finished med school would know how to count.”
The panic in my abdomen slithered up, up, up toward my sternum, making it almost impossible to breathe.
Cruz stopped pacing, rubbing at his face tiredly and shaking his head.
“It’s right in the brochure, Mom. The Elation has eighteen decks. Look it up.”
“The Ecstasy has nineteen decks. Check for yourself—why are we even having this conversation?”
The panic ball inside me was now blocking my throat.
I couldn’t draw a breath.
Nausea washed over me.
Pluck, pluck, pluck.
Cruz slowly turned toward me, his bottomless ocean eyes flaring with accusation. Meanwhile, the Elation chose this exact moment to begin sailing, leaving the port while hundreds of vacationers lazed against the bannisters, watching as it drifted farther from land.
“The Ecstasy?” he repeated, for my ears, not hers.
“Yes, darling. Why? Wait, what ship are you on?” There was a little, nervous, what-are-the-chances laughter at the end of the sentence.
“The Elation,” he said point-blank, his gaze not leaving mine, growing hotter, darker, scarier.
I want my mommy.
“Why on earth would you be on the Elation?” his mother exploded.
Around her, our families had begun conversing hotly. The words “why?” and “not again” and “her fault” were thrown in the air.
“That’s a very good question, Mother. Why don’t you let me get back to you with the answer after I find out for myself?”
With that, he killed the call and turned fully to me. My only consolation was that we were in front of a lot of people, so it was unlikely he was going to throw me overboard.
Yet.
“The Elation,” he said simply. His voice rough and dead and so chilly, a shudder rolled down my spine.
I bit my lower lip. “I remembered something with an E.”
“You remembered.” He strode toward me, cool as a cucumber, but also formidable as Michael Myers. “But you didn’t think to, oh, I don’t know, double-check?”
I stepped backward, retreating toward a raised ramp on which a wet t-shirt contest was taking place, trying to avoid his wrath.
More than stupid, I felt hopeless, because I knew everyone was currently discussing how useless I was. How it was probably a miracle I could even hold a tray and take a pancake order.
“Perfectly capable of booking two tickets to a cruise,” Cruz mimicked my voice and did a good job of it, as he took another step in my direction, like a predator zeroing in on his prey. “That’s what you said at the diner. Should I have specified that I meant OUR FAMILIES’ CRUISE?”
“I…I…I…”
But the excuses died in my throat.
There was no justifying what had happened.
I’d been drunk, flustered with Rob’s return, and made a huge mistake. I’d confused the Elation with the Ecstasy, and now I remembered why: as soon as my parents had told me the Costellos were booking us a cruise, I’d begun researching the different cruise ships.
The Elation was the one I’d kept coming back to, because it seemed the nicest and came highly recommended. Though it didn’t do me much good now that I was sharing it with a man who wanted to drown me.
“Can I have the nice and phony Cruz back?”
I winced when he was so close, I could practically smell him. The tantalizing scent of sandalwood with leather on a moneyed man, and the sharp, potent musk of male.
His body was hard and large and flush with mine, humming with the need to break something. Preferably my bones.
My back was plastered against the raised ramp. Behind me, women were giggling and comparing wet t-shirts. I had nowhere to go.
“No,” he whispered, his minty breath fanning my three-tiered cake beehive. I squeezed my eyes shut. Maybe if I didn’t look at him, he’d disappear. “Nice Cruz is dead to you, Turner. Jesus. I can’t believe you’re actually so…fucking…stupid!”
Out of all the offensive things people had said about me along the years, I genuinely thought this was the most cutting.
First of all, because it came from Cruz, a man who was notoriously incapable of hurting a fly, even if the darned thing was me, and who’d specifically dedicated his life and work to making people feel better.