Page 89 of Only Between Us

Aidan strolls out from aisle three with impeccable timing. “Hey, man. You ready for today?”

“Born ready.”

He turns to Siena. “The live bait delivery comes at five thirty. You’ve got Ben coming at one for maintenance on the securitysystem. I’m going out back to wait on the shipment of waders right now. Have a good day on the water.”

Siena watches, wide-eyed, as Aidan claps me on the back on the way to the back of the shop.

Look at me, so generously mature. Making nice with her ex-fuck-buddy instead of snapping his fingers for having previously touched her, like I’ve fantasized about doing since I learned of his miserable existence.

Nice guy, though.

“Brooks, this kind of sounds like a date. You see that, right?”

“Of course it’s a date. There’s nokind ofabout it.” I’ve rendered her entirely speechless and I’ve achieved no bigger thing in life. I hold out my hand. “You with me, Pippen?”

They say even the best laid plans are flawed.

Apparently, that’s absolutely true.

When I came up with this idea, I’d been laser focused on my goal: getting Siena to let go of the self-imposed responsibility of running that business, and getting a day on—specificallyin—the water.

The flaw in this particular plan happens to be the dark, bottomless pit of doom that is Oakwood Bay.

I fuckinghateopen bodies of water. I don’t know who I thought I was, going out there with my chest puffed up. Trying to save my girl from her own dissatisfaction, when I’ve actively avoided any type of water that doesn’t come out of a tap since I was about ten.

It’s hot and humid even for July. Though I wouldn’t be surprised if meteorologists declared a strange heat phenomenon originating on this very sailboat, in the form of the dark-haired stunner sitting on this wooden swim platform with me.

Siena swishes her feet in the water. She’s the picture of relaxationcompared to me, with the breeze in her loose hair and the way she lifts her chin to the sun, soaking in its heat. She’s wearing this insane blue bikini we picked up at a shop down the boardwalk, on our way to the marina. She’s already been in the water twice since she sailed us out here, while I’ve been content to watch her float.

She really is at home on the water, on this boat.

“I have to say, paying off an entire bachelorette party to charter their ship is unhinged behavior. But it’s also the sweetest thing anyone’s ever done for me.”

“You’re worth every penny, Pip.”

It’s not lost on me that, other than the moment she’d stuttered at the shop, Siena hasn’t once told me how unnecessary it was to have done this for her. Hasn’t asked how to repay me. I hope it means her thinking is shifting, that she understands she’s perfectly entitled to take from me.

I can’t come up with a single thing I wouldn’t give her. I’d spoil her rotten if she’d let me.

Even if she didn’t.

I trust her not to take advantage of it, the way my ex did.

I pick at the assortment of food I packed us for the day. Brownies I baked from my mom’s recipe. Pretty much the entire menu from the diner back in Oakwood. I covered all my bases, in case she was craving something specific.

“You look so good out here, Captain. The water suits you.”

“There’s no place I love more.”

“I can tell. You belong here.”

Siena’s chin touches her shoulder when she looks at me. “Whenever I was able to visit LA and needed to kill time alone”—she doesn’t specify, but I assume she means visiting herex—“I’d sit on the beach in Marina Del Rey watching charter sailboats go past and wishing I was behind the wheel. There was this one I used to drool over with a teal hull. Just so pretty. And I became obsessed with this idea that Icouldtake the helm one day. Got certified and everything.”

“And then what?”

“You know what.”

“Right.” Her father passed away and she inherited a family business that seems to be slowly draining the soul from her body.