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“You wouldn’t want your family to suffer for the sake of a few principles, would you? Family is all that matters in this world. The one you’re born to and the one you make your own.”

Footsteps are followed by the squeal of wood against wood as the hatch is released and Lance reverts to a gentleman, helping her up the steps and back onto the deck. I stay still for another minute, making sure they’re truly gone before I walk through and collapse onto a seat, trembling from head to toe.

It’s hard to catch my breath. I hold the bottle to my forehead and cheeks, cooling them until my pulse settles enough to take a sip.

My mind swims with the eerie familiarity of Lance’s manipulation. Leverage. Terms of commitment. The gentle push of coercion that soon becomes a tidal swell that’s impossible to resist.

I can’t judge how to react. Whether to pity the boy who had this man as a role model, to be appalled at the carbon copy, or to appreciate the simplicity of the exchange.

“Hey,” Kincaid calls from the entryway, taking one step inside and stopping there, leaving me space.

With the low light fracturing into a dozen different colours in the deepening sunset, he’s never appeared as handsome. His masculine beauty makes my breath catch.

“Are you staying down here? I could ask one of the salesgirls to bring in a display case.”

“I don’t know anything about jewellery.”

He glances over his shoulder, then wrinkles his nose and takes another step into the cabin. “Neither do I. You don’t have to take anything. You don’t even have to look if you don’t want to.” He lowers himself to sit on the shallow steps, dwarfing the entryway, and I walk across to him, putting down the bottle to cup his face between my hands, letting our foreheads kiss.

I don’t care how we began. Today has been wonderful and not because of the extravagance or the glimpse of a lifestyle I’ve never dreamed of attaining. It’s because Kincaid wants it to be wonderful that makes it that way.

I remember how my eyes were always drawn to him on the rugby field, attracted by his magnetic presence.

If that was a crush, right now I’m being pulverised.

For years, I trudged through life, head down, using bland expressions as a disguise to hide my misery. The past few months, happiness hasn’t just been unattainable, it felt undeserved; forever barred to me because of the terrible thing I’d done.

Now there’s a boy who planned an entire day for no other reason than to make me happy. A boy who proudly strides through each day wearing a suit stitched from red flags, not bothering to hide who he is, not caring what others think.

We shouldn’t fit together, but the longer I spend with him, the more I understand we do.

Not just fit… we fitperfectly.

A warm amusement fills my chest. I’ve got it so bad for him, I can’t remember why I ever resisted. Just the flex of his muscles makes my lips throb, wanting to taste him, to bite his throat and mark him the way he sometimes marks me.

Time will prove if we’re correct and I can offer him that. Time to let Kincaid show me exactly who he is and what we are. A six-month contract like his uncle… or a lifetime.

“Come on,” I say, grabbing the discarded water and taking another sip because I’m far, far too thirsty. “Let’s go enjoy that sunset.”

CHAPTERTHIRTY-FOUR

KINCAID

I’m notsure what tipped the balance, but after our return from Auckland, Francesca is openly warm and affectionate. The emptiness inside me is healing, the edges stitching together quicker than the wound on my arm.

It happens each time I catch her smiling at me when she doesn’t know I’m looking. Intercepting glances in class that make her blush, and snap back to what she should be doing.

She’s a lens, adjusting my sight until everything good comes into sharper focus. I have a clarity to my thinking that didn’t exist before.

I love rugby but it never made me want to be a better version of who I am.

I seek out Coach Jenkins on Monday and apologise, telling him whatever decision he’s made is fine by me. A move that helps keep the captaincy firmly in my hands.

On game day, when I answer the tentative knock on the changing room doors, I open them to see Francesca standing there, looking as beautiful as I’ve ever seen her. The long gown she wears is in a shimmering emerald colour, matching her eyes and offsetting the warm fire of her hair.

I drag her through the doorway, and push her back against the door, closing it with her body weight.

The bracelet dangles from her wrist and it fills me with a calm glow of possession. One day I’ll get a matching collar for her neck or a ring for her finger to possess her completely in every way that matters.