One More Time

CHANEL

I walked around the ship all morning, playing and replaying the conversation in my mind. He had been so sincere, so unwavering in his gaze. Rhett had taken my hand and gently led me through the peaks and valleys of his emotions that morning, and I had gotten up and walked away. Granted, I needed space and air to breathe. Everything was happening so quickly, and things were turning out exactly the opposite of how I imagined they would in the very beginning of this whole thing. I saw myself chewing him out. I saw myself coming on this cruise, berating him for fucking up the last ten years of my life, and walking off this ship with my head held high. But nothing about this cruise turned out the way it was supposed to.

Including things with Rhett.

Instead, I had fallen right into his arms. I had been sucked in by his brooding brown gaze and his sinewy muscles. I had been taken by his warmth and thrown back into a time when I had been happy and when I hadn’t had a care in the world. I’d been open to its possibilities. Rhett had made me feel alive in high school, beautiful and wanted and cherished. There wasn’t anything he had pressured me to do, and even from a young age, he knew how to articulate himself. Even though he didn’t know what he wanted to do with the rest of his life, I didn’t care. I didn’t care where he was going. All I knew was I wanted to be with him.

Knowing that he hadn’t actually cheated on me that night helped make it all a little better. But even so, knowing that he probably would have broken up with me soon after that anyway still hurt. It hurt to know that he had thought so little of himself back then that he had convinced himself that he had cheated on me for my own good. He had always seemed s

o sure of himself. To know that he had been just a scared teenage boy, made my heart ache.

Maybe Ana had been right, that we had both needed time and space away from one another to become who we were going to be. I still couldn’t help but think it shouldn’t have been that painful to experience though.

And Rhett had been in just as much pain as I’d been.

I wanted to see where we could take this thing after we got back on solid ground. I wanted to see what would become of us. Night after night, I had dreamed of Rhett, of where he was and what he might’ve looked like. I thought about what he was doing, if he was happy and if he thought about me as much as I thought about him. I’d spent hours dreaming about the way he used to make me feel, about how his body would writhe against mine and how his high school hands were so gentle, even though he wanted to be so rough.

And now I had my answer.

He had been thinking of me too.

I didn’t know what was going to happen with anything else, but I wanted to tell him the truth – that his initial declaration scared me, but not in the way he thought. It scared me not because I didn’t feel the same way, but because it had taken me years to finally admit to myself that I, too, had never stopped caring about him. The daydreaming was harmless. I could get by on those without having my heart broken again but confronting him and opening myself up to being vulnerable again meant taking a chance on him.

He needed to know I was willing to do that.

I ran around the ship, my legs carrying me as fast as they could. I took the elevator up to the gym and walked around the pool deck. I knocked furiously on his room door and even poked my head into my own to see if he was there. I went back to the piano bar to see if he was having a drink and backtracked to the dining hall to see if he was still sitting there.

Then, I made my way to the casino.

It was the last place I could think where a man on this ship would go. I stood at the entrance, my palms sweating as I drew in a deep breath. The last time I had been in this part of the ship, Luke had been hunting me, stalking me like a piece of meat he thought he could own. My eyes darted around all the lights and sounds, taking in all the colors and people. But finally, I drew up the courage to step in.

It didn’t take long for me to find Rhett.

He was sitting with Evelyn.

I froze and my heart stopped in my chest. Evelyn was talking with him, scooting her stool closer and closer. His eyes were hooked on her face, listening to her intently as his eyes moved up and down her body. I felt bile rising in my throat as tears crested my eyes. I watched as Evelyn leaned into him, and I watched as he didn’t lean back.

Even though I knew that they hadn’t slept together that night, the sight of them sitting so close brought the doubts I had about Rhett and me to the forefront. I turned on my heels and headed out of the casino. Tears were dripping down my cheeks as my heart splintered in my chest. How could he sit next to the bitch that had ruined us all those years ago and look so damn cozy doing it? A sudden, sick thought stuck in my brain. Maybe he had told her to say she lied, just so he could sleep with me.

Would he really do that? I tried to tell myself no, but how well did I really know Rhett anymore? Just because I wanted him to be the same thoughtful, chivalrous guy he’d been in high school, didn’t mean that he actually was. He’d spent years as a Navy SEAL, in some of the worst places in the world, doing God only knows what. The Rhett I remembered hadn’t been capable of that. Had he? Or had he fooled me all along?

I choked on my tears as I headed for the elevator. All I wanted to do was lock myself in my room until this fucking nightmare of a cruise was over. My emotions were at war inside me. Part of me screamed that Rhett would never hurt me, that he loved me the way he said he did, and that I should believe him. The other part of me was too goddamn damaged by the shit that had gone down in our past.

I stepped out of the elevator and stopped at the door to our room, fumbling for my keys. I wanted to get inside and bury myself under the covers in my bed until this big stupid boat docked in Miami and I could get the fuck out of here.

I slowly opened the door, hearing Ana’s soft snores in the room. When I heard footsteps come up beside me, I pulled the door closed again so as not to wake her.

“Chanel?”

I groaned when I heard Tommy’s voice.

“That you?” he asked.

“It is,” I said.

“Hey. Good. I was wondering if you’d seen Ana?” he asked.

“She’s sleeping.”