Love Me if You Dare

by Toni Blake

  “Maybe I just don’t like the idea of floating around out here helplessly,” he snapped at her. “Maybe I don’t like feeling I can’t take care of myself, or you. A person shouldn’t be on the water if they can’t be a responsible sailor.” He knew he’d spoken the words with too much vehemence, but there was no calling them back.

  Cami had never seen Reece like this before. What had happened to her slightly arrogant but easygoing beach bum? What had happened to her sexy, playful lover?

  “I’ll be fine, I promise,” she told him, wanting to make him feel better. “And you’re perfectly responsible. Sometimes things just happen, that’s all.”

  He looked up at her. “I should have checked the motor, I should have checked the wind report. I always check the weather before I go out on the ocean—always. It’s completely irresponsible not to.”

  With that, he pushed to his feet, turned to face the water, and wrapped his hands around the white railing, appearing more distressed than she would’ve even believed he could. He seemed to get lost in the view then, looking as if he were suddenly somewhere far away. And when he spoke, it came out so low that she wasn’t sure he’d actually meant to say the words out loud. “I thought maybe this would fix things. But maybe some things just can’t be fixed.”

  “What are you talking about?” she asked gently. “What are you trying to fix?”

  He let out a sigh, didn’t look at her as he murmured, “Nothing.” Then shook his head.

  Cami couldn’t help feeling suddenly uncomfortable. This wasn’t the Reece she knew. She’d seen different sides of him—the friendly, laid-back side; the cocky, confident side; the seductive and even surprisingly romantic side—but she’d never seen a dark side, and what had fallen over him now struck her as so dark that it conflicted with the bright sun shining down on them as it began to dip slowly toward the horizon.

  What is so very wrong, Reece? Because yeah, she knew this situation was troubling—she wouldn’t even deny that it really sucked—but his eyes right now . . . his eyes conveyed something far worse than what they were experiencing.

  She had a feeling this had something to do with the loss of his parents, but she wasn’t sure how it all fit together. And she wanted to know. But not because she wanted to use the information to get him to sell the Happy Crab—she wanted to know because she cared about him. And she wondered what he’d been through. She sincerely wondered what kept him holding on to a place that was dying. And what else he might be holding on to too tight. Upon meeting Reece Donovan, she’d have thought he was the last man who’d be harboring secrets, and yet she had a feeling there were even more of them than she’d realized up to now.

  So finally she decided to say what she was thinking. “You know, I’m not the only complex one here. For a guy who’s usually so relaxed, there’s a lot more happening inside you underneath the surface.”

  At this, he looked up, clearly snapping out of his malaise—or trying to anyway, trying to act normal. “Not really,” he said. “I’m an open book—what you see is what you get.”

  But she wasn’t buying that. And she supposed her eyes said so, because after they exchanged a long, almost uncomfortable look, he tried to excuse his reaction. “I’m just worried about Fifi,” he claimed.

  She raised her eyebrows emphatically, silently expressing her skepticism.

  But he argued, “There’s more to owning a giant iguana than you’d think. I’m just hoping Riley realizes we’re not back and feeds her and makes sure she’s in for the night and cleans up after her. It’s important.”

  She tilted her head. “Why?”

  “Most iguanas can carry a strain of salmonella,” he explained. “I get her tested a lot, and she’s being doing fine lately, but I still have to be sanitary with her. I’m pretty careful about it—I just don’t make a big deal of it because I don’t want people to worry needlessly.”

  “That’s why you made sure I washed my hands after I petted her,” she realized.

  He nodded.

  Finding out there was more to being an iguana parent than met the eye, and that it sounded like a lot of work, made her remember, “She really is lucky to have you.”

  “Thanks,” he said quietly, but she could see that his thoughts had already turned back to their predicament—and despite having learned something interesting about Fifi, hers now came back to his overreaction to it all. And to what she really wanted to find out, what she really wanted him to want to tell her.

  So she carefully considered her next move for a long moment before saying pleasantly, “Tell me about your family.”

  “Didn’t we already have that conversation?”

  “Yes,” she said. “But I mean . . . the parts you didn’t say. There’s more to know about your family than your dad losing his hair and you getting a puppy.”

  She could sense him weighing his words, too—looking into his warm eyes, she could practically see the thoughts and memories flying around behind them. Finally, he told her, “Okay, you want to know more—here’s some more. We loved the beach. We lived in a little house on Sea Shell Lane—and it was small, but perfect for us because we didn’t need much. We ran the Crab with my uncle and it was like my second home growing up. The beach was, too.

  “We loved to go sailing, all four of us, even though my mom never learned much about it—she just liked to come along for the ride, and she always said it was the one time when she let the rest of us do all the work and take care of her, not the other way around. My mom and dad were great parents, and my sister and I were close. It was . . . a pretty great life.” He concluded with an affirming nod. And she’d noticed that while he’d started out sounding terse, the longer he’d spoken, the more sincere and . . . perhaps reverent he’d become.

  Even so, though, all Cami could hear was one word, the one he’d said over and over again. Was, was, was. Everything in past tense. And she knew his parents were gone now, so maybe the past tense made perfect sense—but why wouldn’t he just tell her? “Was?” she asked.

  “What about your family?” he shot at her instead of responding to what she’d said. “You haven’t exactly told me much, either, you know.” Now he’d resumed sounding tense, defensive, and it was an obvious attempt to change the subject.

  But that was fine. Maybe if she opened up to him, maybe if she told him the hard parts of her life . . . he’d tell her the hard parts of his. And she wasn’t even sure why she wanted to put them through anything hard, but when you cared for someone, she was coming to realize, it just made sense to share your life with them, to share yourself with them—the ups and downs, the good and the bad.

  “I don’t talk about this a lot,” she said, “but okay, I’ll tell you about my family.”

  Then she sat back down on the blanket where she’d been sunning and sleeping only a little while ago, and she again lay back on it and closed her eyes. Because this was hard, and it was the kind of hard she didn’t consider herself very good at, so shutting her eyes made it a little easier.

  “I told you I was raised in Michigan,” she started, “but the stuff I didn’t tell you is . . . my parents were . . . unhappy people. My father worked at the same factory as his father, and his father before him, scraping to get by, being fairly miserable and bitter, feeling that life is just a thing you struggle to get through.

  “And that’s what they taught me, he and my mom both. That no matter how hard you work, you never have enough. That life is about money, and that if you don’t have it, you can’t be happy. I think my mother actually had higher hopes at one point, when she was young—she wanted to go to college and become a teacher—but then she married my dad and I guess she became resigned to living a hard, thankless sort of life, too.

  “They spent twenty years together thinking they couldn’t have children, but then they did—me. All in all, though, I’m pretty sure I was a disappointment to my dad because I wasn’t a boy. And like I said, there was never any money to spare—no fancy presents, no dre
sses for school dances, no money to go see a movie with my friends. At least until I turned sixteen and was able to get a job. And to be honest, I don’t know why they even wanted kids—they were already very set in their ways by the time I came along, and . . . content to be discontent, I guess would be a good way to describe them.”

  She stopped for a moment, realizing how quickly thinking back on her girlhood could deliver her back there, even still. She was so different now, so evolved from that life—and yet she supposed some things never left you and were actually as near as just closing your eyes.

  So now she opened them, peering up at the blue sky and white clouds above the boat. She would tell him the rest, but maybe it was easier to do so remembering that it was in the past, that she wasn’t there anymore, and that being stranded on a boat with a guy she was crazy about was far preferable to being stranded in a disheartening life you couldn’t escape.

  “They weren’t people who . . . celebrated anything in life,” she went on. “We never had a birthday party—barely even a birthday cake. We never had a dog or a cat, and I didn’t have friends over. And again, I think my mother would have been a different person, a happier person, without him, but he wore her down, made her be like him.

  “My dad always pressed me to work very hard, but in a way that made me feel like I owed him, like I was supposed to make a lot of money someday so he could finally rest, like I was supposed to pay him back for supporting me or something. So there was a lot of pressure to make good grades and never have too much fun or take life too lightly.

  “Going away to college freed me, showed me how much more hope life could hold. Or . . . maybe I always knew deep down and was just glad to find out I was right. I was convinced that if I worked hard and worked smart that I could get a good job, but one that would be about more than just money—one that would let me be happier than they were, too.

  “And so I did that. And I moved far away. And I found a new sort of family at Vanderhook. And if it seems like I take my job pretty seriously, it’s because . . . because it’s important to me to have financial security, and also because . . . it’s really all I have. And . . .” She still stared up into a wide blue sky and took in the hugeness of it. “And this isn’t so bad, Reece. Being stuck on a boat, even if we get a little hungry, even if it takes a little while to get rescued—it’s just not so bad. I mean, look at the sky. It’s incredible. And it looks far more incredible from this spot, right here, than it ever did from my front yard growing up. I just couldn’t see anything there. Not clearly. But now . . . now I’m able to see the beauty in things.”

  Oh boy. Had she really just gotten that maudlin about her past? Had she really just completely spilled her guts that way? Once she’d gotten started, it was like having turned on a faucet she couldn’t turn off. I went way, way too far there. Ugh, I’m pathetic.

  That’s when Reece’s handsome, unshaven face appeared above her, blocking out the blue. But she didn’t mind—he was the one thing that looked better to her right now than a beautiful swath of sky. “I’m sorry, Tink,” he said.

  She blinked up at him, a little dazed from her confession combined with the late day heat. “Sorry? But you didn’t—”

  He interrupted her. “I’m sorry you had to go through that, sorry you didn’t have a great family, sorry you didn’t have a great life growing up.” He took her hand, squeezed gently, sweetly. “I’m just . . . sorry. Because it sounds really shitty. And you didn’t deserve that. And . . . I guess it makes me see how far you’ve come, and how really amazing you are.”

  She blinked again, this time as she absorbed the unexpected compliment, and then tried to reclaim a little of the dignity she feared she’d let get away from her these last few minutes. “I . . . I’m not one to feel sorry for myself—it was what it was, nothing more, nothing less. I just . . . wanted to make sure you know that I’m not upset to be stuck out here. In the big picture of my life, it’s . . . nothing. It’s truly fine. And . . .” She managed a small laugh for him as she added, “I really do like Fritos. So it’s all okay.”

  Reece peered down on her. From the moment they’d met, he’d thought she was beautiful. But right now, he thought her so much more beautiful than ever before. It was one thing to have a pretty face, a rockin’ body. It was nice to be likable and fun and funny and sweet. And it was admirable to take your job seriously and do it with passion. But it was another to have all those qualities when you were set up for failure, when life could have more easily made you cold and angry and heartless. So to know she’d responded to that situation by becoming the person she was just made him all the more in awe of her.

  And God—she’d really . . . told him stuff. Serious stuff. And he had a feeling if he asked her more, she’d answer—openly. She’d laid herself bare before him—in a different way than previously, in a way that went way beyond the nakedness of sex.

  And maybe that meant . . . it would be okay. To tell her his stuff. To tell her the real reason getting stranded at sea was eating into his soul. God knew he didn’t want to think about it, of course. But the fact was . . . she probably hadn’t wanted to think about the stuff she just had, either. And since it was already boring into his gut, it wasn’t like he hadn’t already gone there in his head.

  He’d let her see there was something wrong, reactions he usually kept buried deep—so he supposed it only made sense that she’d asked him about it. Maybe he should just appreciate the fact that she cared. Enough that she’d just shown him maybe she wasn’t always quite as strong as she liked to act in certain ways.

  And yeah, he’d seen her softer sides before, but this . . . this was different. This was openness. This was trust. This was . . . being real.

  But . . . he didn’t even know how to begin. She might not talk about her past much, but he was betting she did it more often than him. Around Coral Cove, people knew his past and they were polite enough not to bring it up. And the women in his life since then had all been transient, never around long enough to get into this stuff—and hell, maybe that was why he liked it that way; vacation flings didn’t ask big questions.

  His heartbeat had slowed as he’d listened to her talk, but now it picked up again. So he stood up and walked to the rear of the boat where the rest of the food and water was stashed. He opened the cooler and took out two bottles of water, then grabbed up the large bag of Fritos he’d brought along but which they hadn’t yet opened.

  Returning, he tossed the bag down on the blanket next to her, then handed her one of the waters. “Since you like these so much, figured we’d have dinner.” He tried to say it in his usual jocular way, tried to give her a grin, but wasn’t sure either effort succeeded.

  She was still nice enough to reward him with a small smile anyway. “Thanks,” she said quietly, opening the water and taking a drink.

  “I . . . appreciate you being so cool about this,” he told her, sitting down across from her on the blanket.

  She just shook her head, fluffing it off. “It’s really fine. Like I said, I’d rather be stuck on a boat all night with you and some corn chips than stuck back in Nowheresville, Michigan—trust me.”

  He managed a little chuckle this time, a sincere one, as he said to her, “Nowheresville—that’s the official name of your hometown?”

  She smiled in response. “Yeah—ever heard of it?”

  And they laughed a bit, and their eyes met, and he got a little crazier about her than he already was.

  He wordlessly tore into the Fritos bag and held it out for her to reach in, and they both began to feast on the chips. And without warning or prelude the words left him. “My family is gone.”

  “Gone,” she repeated, her eyes calm but wide and intense on him.

  “Dead,” he clarified. It was a harsh word—he felt a little stabbing sensation in his chest to say it, even now—but it was the fact. They’d been dead a long time now.

  He sensed her tensing slightly. “I’m sorry,” she said quickly, softly.
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  And he could almost feel the sweetness and care in her eyes, but he didn’t dare look there, not right now. “It’s . . . it’s okay. It was a long time ago.”

  “Your . . . whole family?” she asked. “Even your sister?”

  He nodded. And the very air around them seemed to hold a weight it hadn’t before. Their silence was thick with the reality he’d just laid out between them.

  “But . . .” she began slowly, “it’s not . . . really okay, is it?”

  He drew in his breath, tried not to react to that. “Like I said, it was a long time ago. Ten years.”

  Cami pulled in her breath. Something about hearing him tell her even this much made her begin to feel his heartbreak. “But if it was okay,” she told him gently, “it wouldn’t be so difficult to talk about. And . . . I’d like to know about it if you want to tell me, but if you’d rather not, Reece, I won’t press. I don’t want to make anything worse.”

  “No, it’s all right,” he insisted again quickly. And he wasn’t even sure where the words came from or why they’d tumbled from him so instantaneously.

  Maybe it was a gut reaction, a defense mechanism—maybe he didn’t want to appear weak before her. Or . . . maybe deep inside, there was some part of him that just wanted to be real with her, too.

  “The thing is,” he began, aware that the sky was changing now, that the first hints of twilight were upon them, “it happened here, on this boat.”

  She sat up a little straighter at the news. “Oh. Wow. Now I get why you don’t bring it out much.” Then she cringed. “And I’m sorry if I twisted your arm on that.”

  But he shook his head. “No—you didn’t. I decided it was a good thing to do.” Then he stopped, rolled his eyes. “Maybe not the best decision I ever made, but it was mine.”

  “What happened? To your family, Reece?”

  He met her concerned gaze only briefly, then had to look down. The truth was—he didn’t mind telling her, didn’t mind her knowing. He supposed he trusted her now. But none of that made it easy to talk about, and the more time had passed, the less he’d been required to do that with anyone. Once upon a time he’d had set, simple, rehearsed things to say about it, things he could spit out by rote. Only now he’d gotten rusty.