Page 41 of The Best Wild Idea (Off-Limits #3)
“Wow,” I gasp, taking in the view around us.
The sea is the deepest blue out here where we’re anchored, but it grows lighter as it heads into the shallows leading up to shore.
The city of Cádiz looks even smaller from out here, with its rocky coastline and whitewashed domes, like a medieval dollhouse showing off across its light, sandy shore.
“You should see it at night,” he says, admiring the view beside me. “The lights reflecting off the water are unreal.”
“I can’t believe you stayed out here for a month,” I tell him, pushing on his arm gently, hoping he’ll tell me more about that time of his life.
“Off and on. I’d go into town when I needed more supplies.
But mostly, I stayed on the water. Drove everyone at Davenport Media crazy.
” He laughs. “This was the one place they couldn’t get to me with endless meeting requests and Zoom calls.
The board was threatening to vote me out if I didn’t, in their words, grow up and come back to run the family business. I almost didn’t.”
I stare at him, bewildered.
“You almost let it all go?”
All I saw of Silas back then was this cocky, arrogant, filthy rich playboy. Cruising in and out of our lives with a thousand-yard stare, dishing out shit as if his life depended on it. I didn’t realize he’d been so painfully close to losing everything.
“I was numb. Numb and dumb . . .” He pauses, lost in the memory, but I continue staring at him, wondering how in the world he got it together enough to be as successful as he is now.
I stay silent, hoping he’ll go on, but when I can’t wait any longer, I ask, “What happened to make you come back?”
“There came a point when I realized that I either had to let it all go once and for all, or I had to do exactly what they told me to do: grow the fuck up and take what my dad had spent his entire life building.”
“How did you decide?”
“Grant.”
My heart twists at the mention of his name.
“And you,” he adds.
“What?” I snap, wondering how in the world I had anything to do with the decision that saved him and his company when I didn’t even know he was out here.
“I knew I was losing you. Both of you. I knew I’d fucked up past the point of forgiveness roughly eight thousand times already, and if I had any chance of earning back trust — yours or Grant’s — then I had to dock Vivi and get back to my life.
I had to go back to Boston. I had to try.
I couldn’t lose you guys. You were the only family I had left.
” He pauses, then side-eyes me as if he’s about to confess something else. “That and he tracked me down.”
I blink back at him.
“He — who?”
“Who do you think?”
“Grant was here ?” I ask, dumbfounded. “When?”
“It was some long weekend that you were doing wedding prep with your girlfriends.”
I stare at him. “The weekend Emma and Molly took me to New York?”
“For some dress shopping or something, yeah.”
“And Grant flew here ?” I press my finger into the wooden deck of the boat.
“Ryan had called him as a last resort. Knowing if anyone was going to get me back home, it was going to be him. He flew Grant out here to talk some sense into me.”
I narrow my eyes at the depths of water around us, then lie back, my face growing hot beneath the sun.
“I wasn’t sure if he ever told you that.”
“No, he most certainly did not.”
“That’s the only thing he ever kept from you,” he assures me, watching how my face has morphed with this unexpected news.
“How would you know that? He also planned this whole bloody trip right under my nose without me knowing.”
“Because Grant always told me everything. Regardless, it worked. I flew back with him and got to work. For some things, it was already too late. By the time I returned, you wanted absolutely nothing to do with me. Grant and my friendship was hanging by a thread. I don’t think he wanted me around you any more at that point.
I was unpredictable , in his words. And now I’m aware that he always knew how I—” He stops talking to push a hand through his hair.
“Knew what?” I ask.
Silas lifts his eyes toward mine. He somehow looks apologetic and unapologetic at the same time.
Startled, I watch him until it becomes clear. He doesn’t have to say the words out loud for me to know what he’s thinking.
Neither one of us feels the need to confirm it.
He runs his tongue along his teeth then turns out toward the sea. I don’t press him more, but my heart thumps louder.
“I get why you weren’t okay with me by that point,” he adds.
“I wanted nothing to do with you by then,” I say quietly, feeling gut-punched. “I remember now. It was after that dress shopping weekend I had in New York.”
He glances down at the deck, nodding.
“I deserved everything I had coming,” he says, finally smiling ruefully.
“I’m so sorry,” I tell him, shaking my head. “I didn’t know what loss felt like back then. I had no idea how much it could change you. Like the actual DNA of who you are before and after can morph into something you don’t even recognize in yourself.”
“The whole time I was out here, the only thing I wanted to get back to was you—”
“And Grant,” I finish for him, not allowing that sentiment to stand alone. Even for one second.
He laughs gently. “And Grant,” he agrees, nodding.
“So, you came back.”
“And the first thing I did was give Grant that building, hoping it would show you guys how much I’d changed. That, and I was trying to help.”
“The Smithfield.” I exhale the word.
“When you told me that you thought it could have had something to do with his illness—”
“But it didn’t,” I interrupt. “I’m glad I know the truth, but I do regret bringing it up like I did.”
“It could have been the biggest fuck up of my entire life, Jules.”
“It wasn’t though. I wish we hadn’t lost so much time to stupid mistakes and assumptions.
We were so close,” I say, sadly, wishing I could take back all those years we drifted apart over something, in hindsight, he had such little control over.
Something I shouldn’t have blamed him for at all.
“I was too hard-headed to give you another chance,” I admit. But then I add, “Until now.”
He grins, looking like years of stress is finally draining out of him.
“Right,” he agrees, leaning back so the sun washes over him. “Until now.”