At Sea
“You’re looking at another five days at least,” the on-ship doc told me, putting another bandage over the seventeen neat stitches in my arm.
“And other than that?” I asked, already doing the math for the Jakarta stunt.
He typed into his computer and then looked over the screen at me. “Other than that, Mr. Rhodes, you have a clean bill of health. How did Mr. Darro fare?”
Every muscle in my body locked, including my jaw. I took a deep breath to loosen up. “He won’t be coming back with us. Too many broken bones, and he’s still recovering from surgery. But we have friends with him, and his parents are on the way to Kathmandu.”
“Well, I’m sorry you boys got into trouble. Ever think about avoiding the trouble to begin with?” he asked without looking up.
“That never did suit me,” I answered and glanced up at the clock. “If that’s all, I really need to get to class.”
“Off you go. Come back in five days and we’ll look at your arm again.”
“Four days?” I pushed.
He looked up over his glasses at me and sighed. “Four days.”
“Thanks, Doc.”
I said my good-byes and ran out of the infirmary, clutching my Civ books with my good arm. Not that the right one hurt too much, but I figured if I gave it some time off, I might get those stitches out before the next stunt.
Especially since I’d just blown the one I’d been planning for a year. It wasn’t just an accident, it was an epic failure that was no doubt going to be a great teaser for the documentary—where I would get to watch myself fail over and over again…with an audience. Unacceptable. What the hell was I going to do? I couldn’t get back to Nepal until after we finished the program, and by then it would be too late to put it into the documentary. It was bad enough that I’d failed myself, but to fuck up the one thing we’d been doing for Nick was incomprehensible. I was going to have to get ahead in all my classes and then pray I could find a couple days somewhere to get back up on that ridgeline. That was the only acceptable option.
Of course the cameras had been waiting for me outside the infirmary, but at least Bobby was quick with the questions about how I was healing.
An elevator ride later, I hit the eighth deck and headed for class. Five minutes early. Even Rachel will be impressed.
“Hey, Nova,” a girl’s voice called from behind me.
I turned to see a pretty brunette catching up to me with a sly grin, and the cameras still following me. Shit. What the hell was her name? Sandy? Sarah? It came to me with the memory of having her in my cabin one of the first nights on board.
“Hey, Sabrina, how’s it going?” I asked, more than aware that we were being filmed. Shit, I was going to have to talk to Bobby about the image he wanted me to play.
She looped her arm through mine, and I felt an odd twinge of unease. She wasn’t doing anything she hadn’t done before, but now it felt wrong. “I was wondering if you were going out tonight? I haven’t seen you at the club in forever.”
Because I hadn’t been there. Since Rachel had come on board, I hadn’t gone in search of a woman, which meant I hadn’t gone to the club, much to the chagrin of Bobby, who was dying for more footage.
“Yeah, it’s been a while. I spent break in Nepal. How about you?” I asked as we approached the door to Civ, which was propped open. Just a few more feet and I could slam the door in the camera crew’s face.
“I did the Mumbai excursion,” she answered. “So I was wondering if you’d be at the club tonight.”
“Actually, I will.” Mostly for work stuff. I’d promised Bobby a couple shots. I’d give him what he wanted one last time, but we were going to have to come to a new agreement.
“Then I’ll see you later,” she said with a bright smile, then headed down the hall to her next class.
“My God. Do you even realize the effect you had on that poor girl?” Rachel asked, leaning against the wall near the door to our class.
“Well, good afternoon. What are you doing out here?” I asked as she pushed off the wall. She had part of her hair pulled up today, but there were strands that framed her face, drawing all of my attention to those warm brown eyes that were currently narrowed at me.
“I was waiting for you, but I see you were otherwise occupied.”
Wait. Had I been flirting and not even realized it? Huh. If I didn’t know better I’d think she was…
“Jealous?” I asked as I followed her into class.
“Hardly,” she shot over her shoulder as she sought her seat.
Oh, this was too good. I couldn’t remember the last time Rachel had been worked into a tizzy over me.
I slid into the one next to hers and turned my baseball hat backward. “Really? Not even a little?” My tone was joking, but damn if I wasn’t curious. I was jealous of anyone who had the right to breathe in her general direction.
She shook her head as she opened her book. “Not one bit. Jealousy implies that I’d have a reason to be.”
She trusts me!
“And since I have no claim on you, or vice versa, and we’re not together, then there’s really no reason for me to give a hot damn who’s snuggled up on you. Right?” She gave me a smile that I couldn’t read.
Well. Shit. That backfired.
“So you—”
“Welcome back from fall break. I hope you all had fantastic trips and chose to spend your time to its best advantage,” Dr. Messina said, cutting me off as she took the podium. “Anyone want to tell me how you spent your break? Diving into Indian culture? Hopping a flight to the Maldives? What about you, Mr. Rhodes?”
I gave her a smile. “Took a little trip to the Taj Mahal with Miss Dawson, and then hit up Nepal, where I climbed to twenty-one thousand feet and had my ass handed to me by an avalanche.”
Her eyebrows rose. “Well. Not quite what I was expecting.”
“I can say exactly the same. What about you, Dr. Messina?”
She smiled with a look of appreciation. I’d learned early that women didn’t just like to be heard, they needed to know you were listening. “Well, I was actually ship’s faculty during this break, so I mostly saw the port. Thank you for asking.”
As she launched into our lecture today, this time focusing on the seven indigenous Indonesian tribes, I took careful notes, knowing we’d have a paper assigned after our shore excursion next week.
“I’ve arranged for us to visit an isolated tribe, so make sure that your schedules are clear for the second day in port. This will count as class credit and you are expected to attend. This is quite an honor,” Dr. Messina told us. “Also, don’t forget that your outlines for your term research papers are due to me by the Sydney port, which is only ten days away. If your outline is approved, then you can begin your rough drafts. If not, it’s back to the drawing board.”
“How is yours coming?” I whispered at Rachel.
She shrugged. “I’ll let you know if I can open that line of communication with my mother without her sobbing hysterically that she’s not enough for me.”
I cringed, remembering just how protective her mom was. “She loves you.”
“She does,” she agreed.
“That’s all I have for you today. Make sure you’re caught up on your reading, and I posted an interesting article on eCampus that I’d like you to read before class on Wednesday. You’re dismissed.”
Rachel gathered her books, and I did the same, getting to the door before she did and waiting for her.
“Does it ever feel like we have two lives?” I asked as we walked down the hall. Thank God there were no cameras.
“What do you mean?”
“Like in one life we’re college students, going to class, doing our homework, writing papers, and the other is out there on a limb somewhere snowboarding the Himalayas?”
She glanced up at me briefly. “Yeah. I get that. At least for you. It’s like you’re two different people.”
I hit the elevator button, and we waited with a group of students. “Like student Landon and extreme Landon?” I asked, side nudging her.
She kept her eyes on the elevator doors. “Like Landon and Nova,” she said quietly.
“Nova!” another girl called my name from the left.
“Hey, Mandy,” I answered with a wave and polite smile to my physics partner.
“Did you want to work on that project later?” she asked with a smile that said studying wasn’t all she had in mind.
The elevator dinged, and Rachel got on, shooting me a look that said she’d heard Mandy’s implication, too.
“You know, I have plans later, but maybe tomorrow?” I told the redhead as the crowd passed me to pile into the elevator.
She twirled her hair as her gaze darted between me and Rachel. “Right, but it’s due in two days and we’re barely drafted. Not sure about you, but I can’t afford a bad grade on this.”
Neither could I if I wanted to find some sliver of time to get back to Nepal.
I sighed and looked into the elevator where Rachel stood, a single eyebrow arched.
“Rachel…”
“See you later, Nova.”
Alarms blared in my head. Fuck. She called me Nova.
The door closed.
Never thought I’d wish to be back in that Himalayan blizzard, but she’d been warmer at eighteen thousand feet than she was at sea level.
The music thrummed through my body, the base line moving the ginger ale in my glass. Usually I had something a little stronger, but the waves in the Indian Ocean were hellacious tonight, and I wasn’t risking my much-needed faculties for dealing with Rachel. She was still irritated, if her icy demeanor at dinner was any indication.
“Could you at least pretend to have a good time?” Bobby asked after pointing out where the cameras were around the room. “With Wilder going monogamous and shit, you’re all I’ve got on the other aspect of this show.”
“The man-whore aspect?” I asked.
He scoffed. “Since when do you object to being a ladies’ man?”
Since I realized there’s only one woman I want.
“Look, Bobby. We’re going to have to sit down later and talk this out, because I’m not comfortable with this. Not with…” Rachel.
He ripped his hand over his thinning hair. “Seriously? You, too? Your contract says—”
“That I’ll let you film just about every facet of my life for these nine months except when I take a piss. It says nothing about scoring chicks in a bar. I know you want the party part of this trip to play a role in the documentary, and I get it, but I’m drawing the line.”
“Un-fucking-believable. Half the reason you’re gods to your followers is the extreme way you take on every part of your life, and you’re just going to turn it off? Penna’s sitting on the sidelines, and Wilder’s…well, what does that leave me with?”
“Every other Renegade,” I said as Alex made his way across the club to join me. “I’ll do your shots, come to your parties, but don’t expect any action. I’m not leaving with anyone.” Nick, of all people, would understand the line I was drawing. What Bobby was about to miss out on with my social life, I’d make up in stunts.
“Just give me a few good frames, and I don’t care what the fuck you do with your night,” he said by way of farewell.
“What’s up his ass?” Alex asked as he leaned against the bar.
“We fucked up in Nepal, and now he’s feeling short of shots. He’s got the dramatic failure, but no comeback and triumph to follow it up.”
“We didn’t fuck up; Mother Nature took our asses out.”
“Yeah, well, either way, that was supposed to be the money shot for this term. We didn’t get it, and we lost Gabe.”
“What do you expect?” he asked. “We’re on a hellacious schedule. The shit you guys have us doing would need an entire year of planning, and we’re pulling this stuff off at least once a week. Not everything is going to go perfectly. We needed more time up there.”
Time was the one thing we didn’t have on this trip. Already we’d turned our attention to the Jakarta stunt, always looking forward. I was the only one even thinking about going back.
As Alex turned around to order a drink, Sabrina walked up with another girl. Thank God I hadn’t slept with this one yet. With Rachel on board, I was beginning to feel more than a little dirty over what I’d been doing while we were apart.
“Hey, Nova,” Sabrina said, leaning against the bar so that her breasts pushed up out of her low-cut top.
Funny, it didn’t bother me when she called me Nova, when any other girl reminded me of how I got to be called Casanova, really, but Rachel saying it always felt like a kick to the balls.
“Hey, ladies,” I said with a practiced smile. “How are you tonight?”
“Better now that you’re here,” she answered with a sly grin. “I was beginning to think I’d never get you alone again.”
Shit. She wanted a repeat performance.
“It’s been a busy term,” I said, then slammed my hand on Alex’s back as he choked on his drink. “How was your excursion week?”
“Oh, I took the Mumbai trip, and then we headed down to the Taj Mahal.” She batted her eyes up at me. “You know, it’s a huge monument to love.”
“Yeah, we made a stop there before flying to Nepal.” Even after her death, he protected her. That is love, or at least the kind of love I want. Rachel’s words came back to me, and everything finally clicked. She might have wanted the space she asked for, but she needed me to fight for her. Not just to sit back and wait for her to make a choice, but to show her that I’d protect her heart the way I should have the last time I held it.
I had to get out of this damn bar and find her.
“It really has been a busy term. You need some stress relief?” she asked, her eyes making clear what her offer really was.
This was the shit that was going to lose me any chance of being with Rachel.
“I need some stress relief,” Alex muttered.
“I actually need to g—” My words failed as I caught sight of Rachel across the bar. She had on some kind of getup that must have qualified as a dress, and it gave her super-petite frame million-mile legs.
Fuck me.
Her hair was down, sleekly brushing just under her chin, the purple highlights caught in the club’s lights. She looked like every man’s untouchable dream, the girl you knew would either give you the best sex of your life or the fastest ass kicking you’d ever receive.
To me, she’d always been an intoxicating combination of both.
She smiled at some overgrown meathead who leaned on the table next to her, openly ogling her breasts between comments that made her laugh.
My Rachel, laughing. Smiling. Did she just touch his arm? Look up at him through her lashes? Holy shit, was she flirting with him?
He brushed her hair back behind her ear.
Oh, hell no.
I was halfway across the club before I realized I’d taken a single step. Rachel did a double take when she saw me, her eyes raking up and down my body. Even though she arched that damn eyebrow at me, her lips parted.
That’s what my Rachel looked like when she was interested.
Not this smiley, flirty version this guy thought he was getting.
I didn’t stop until I was within kissing distance of her. She tilted her head at me, her lips curving at the edges.
“Can I help you?” Meathead asked, puffing out his chest like I gave a fuck who he was.
“Nope,” I answered without looking away from Rachel.
She shifted her weight and held my gaze. So damn beautiful.
“Is this guy bothering you?” Meathead asked Rachel.
“Every day of my life,” she answered.
“Look, I don’t know who the hell you think you are,” Meathead started.
“Hers. I’m hers,” I finished. There. Line drawn in the fucking sand. I was here to fight.
Her eyes widened, and all trace of playing left her face. “Landon…”
“Rachel.”
She looked over to Meathead. “Can you give us a second, Thomas?”
He looked between us and then swore under his breath. “Yeah. Sure.” He grabbed his beer bottle and left.
“Seriously?” I asked her.
“What? He’s in my geography class, and he asked me out this afternoon.”
“And you said yes?”
“Apparently,” she answered. “Just like you said yes and ran off with physics girl this afternoon.”
“She’s my lab partner.”
“Sure, that’s all,” she said sarcastically and took a sip of her cider before putting it on the table next to us.
Why the fuck didn’t she believe me? Because you haven’t given her a reason to.
“It is all. And what is this? Payback?”
“This is me living.” She shrugged.
I tucked my thumbs into the front pockets of my jeans to keep my hands off her. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to kiss her or throttle her, and neither was a good option. “I thought you were thinking about us?”
“Thinking means weighing my options.”
“And he’s an option?”
“Everything and nothing is an option,” she answered, sipping from a bottle of hard cider. “And if I marched over every time a girl had the nerve to touch you, I’d live plastered to your side.” She peered around me. “As a matter of fact, I think you’re being missed right now.”
“I don’t give a fuck.”
“You’d hate to miss an opportunity to uphold your name, wouldn’t you?”
I would have fired back if that little comment hadn’t been accompanied by a flash of pain in her eyes. “I’m exactly where I want to be.”
“Sure. For this five minutes, because I’m shiny and fun to chase. Every girl has fallen in your lap the last couple of years, right? I must be an intriguing little challenge.”
“Damn it, Rachel. I thought we made some progress in Nepal. Is it always going to be one step forward and two steps back with you?”
“In Nepal it was easy to remember why I fell for you. Here on the ship, it’s so much easier to see what you’ve become. How many have there been, Landon? How many memories are in your bed nowadays?” She forged on ahead, her eyes glossing over with a layer of what I was hesitant to call tears. “Can you remember them all?”
Heat rushed through my veins, a nauseating mixture of anger, shame, and the bitter taste of regret. My brain screamed at me to retreat and lick my wounds, to try again with her when she wasn’t on offense.
My heart reminded me that I was going to have to fight for this woman with every weapon in my arsenal if I wanted her.
And damn, I wanted her. Craved her. Needed her.
She was the only one I’d ever felt connected to—the only one my heart woke up and shook off the ice for. The only woman who challenged me and took me down in the process.
I stepped forward and clamped both of my hands on the table, boxing her between my arms. She craned her head to keep my gaze, unwilling to back down. It was the quality that both frustrated the hell out of me and turned me on faster than anything—her constant refusal to yield for just a fucking second.
“Can I remember them all? Probably not.”
She snorted.
“You want to know why?” I didn’t wait for her to answer. “Because blonde, redhead, brunette—I saw their features for a millisecond. The moment I had one of them in my bed, they all had eyes the color of dark chocolate and hair so black it was almost blue…” I glanced at her hair. “Or purple. I never needed to remember them, because they were always you.”
“Don’t say things like that,” she begged. As if I could physically see her walls start to crumble, she softened. “You don’t get to say things like that to me. Not anymore. Not when everywhere I go on this ship there’s a bevy of girls you’ve fucked, Landon.”
“Yeah, well, I was a stupid asshole. And the worst part is that I used every single one of them to try to forget you, only to turn them into you in my mind. I have no excuse.”
“What do you want me to do with that?”
“Forgive me. I want you to forgive me. Not just say it, but mean it. Do it. I want another chance with you, because I promise I won’t fuck it up. Not this time.”
She swallowed, and my breath caught as I saw her—my Rachel—the side she protected and hid away from the world. The one she’d been before I’d destroyed her.
“Did you ever stop to think that there’s a difference between me forgiving you and me trusting you? I do forgive you for what happened with us years ago. We were kids. I don’t need to forgive you for becoming Casanova, because you didn’t do anything wrong. But that doesn’t mean I can trust you now.”
“You can,” I urged. “I lost you once. I’m never going through that again.”
“So what? You’re going to promise me forever? We’ve been breathing the same air for three weeks, Landon.”
“I didn’t need three minutes. The minute I saw you on that deck I knew I wasn’t letting you get away. Fate brought us—”
“Wilder brought us together!” she shouted. The music kept its driving beat, and it struck me as almost hilarious that I was having the most important conversation of my life in a damn club.
“Yeah, he pulled the strings—”
“You don’t get it, do you?” she cried, her hands fisting in the front of my shirt. “I loved you. I gave up everything for you, and you chose him. You don’t get to just jump in and get me back because Paxton Wilder snapped his fingers and offered me to you. I’m not his to offer, or yours to take.”
I blinked. “That’s what you think? That I only want you now because Pax says it’s okay?”
“Isn’t that the truth? Two years of silence from you, and then he serves me up on a platter for your dinner, so now it’s okay. Do you seriously not understand how badly I want you? How much I want to trust you? To try with you? Being with you again isn’t just a rush, it’s intoxicating. It’s like coming home—that’s how well you know me—but you burned that home down, and while I’ve accepted the past, that doesn’t mean I’m going to hand you the gasoline to torch my future.”
Out of the corner of my eyes, I saw a flash, the reflection of the light on the camera lens. “Damn it. Let’s go somewhere more private.”
“No,” she refused, letting go of my shirt. “The minute that happens, you’ll kiss me, and I can’t think when you do that.”
“Doesn’t that tell you something? That one kiss and we’re both lost?” I challenged. There was nothing compared to touching Rachel, to finding myself while I was exploring her.
“That we’ve still got some insane chemistry? That we’re still really attracted to each other and had some mind-blowing sex?” she threw back. “You’ve had sex with easily a dozen girls on this ship, Landon. What the hell makes you think I’m signing up to be added to that number?”
“You are the number!” I yelled, my temper finally snapping. “I can’t change what I’ve done. But I can tell you that there’s been no one since I saw you again. I haven’t touched, kissed, or even thought about sleeping with anyone else.”
She wavered, her shoulders slumping. “And how long could that possibly last?”
“Forever.” I answered instantly, and knew it to be true. “You’re it. You’ve always been it, and I don’t care if I have to prove it to you over the rest of this damn year—you’re the only girl I’m going to touch.”
She stared up at me silently, and I saw the war raging within her, hating myself for having put her in the position in the first place. Hating that I’d left her, thinking that it would be better for both of us in the long run, and yet wishing I could go back and tell the world to fuck off, to quit being Nova and just be Rachel’s Landon.
“If you’ll let me prove it to you, I swear that I will keep a personal bubble around me big enough for only you to fit into. And you’re pretty tiny.”
She glared up at me, that fire sparking back in her eyes at me calling her tiny.
That’s my girl.
“I’ll show you,” I promised. “I’ll wear you down, I’ll get past all those goddamned walls you can’t stop building, and I’ll earn your trust…and your heart.”
Her lips parted, and her eyes went liquid.
I lifted one hand to her cheek and stroked the softness of her skin, resolve filling every single one of the holes I’d felt since I’d left her. I felt whole, determined, and strong enough to be whatever she needed.
“I’m still considering my options,” she whispered, letting me know that I might have gotten close to her defenses, but she wasn’t tearing them down yet.
Then I conquered my own desire, and instead of kissing her lips, I brushed mine against her cheek. “Consider, if that’s what you need to realize that there’s nothing in the world like what we can have together. Have a nice rest of your date.”
Then I walked away, but I felt her eyes follow me past the other girls and out the door.
She’d better remember what I’d just told her, because I meant every word.
And I was ready to prove it.
