Captain

by Lauren Rowe

  “Ryan?” Tessa says, her eyes hardening. “It’s a simple question: who’s the woman you called the day you arrived?”

  I take a deep breath. “Baby, I can’t answer that right now—you just need to trust me that it wasn’t anyone I was romantically interested in. Look, I know you’re a ‘just gimme the facts’ kind of girl—I know that about you—but I really need you to take a leap of faith here and trust me. I promise I’ll answer your question—”

  She throws up her hands, grunts in frustration, and begins marching back toward the entrance to the beach. “Goodbye, Ryan. ‘What happens in Maui stays in Maui.’ Let’s just leave it at that.”

  I chase her and lurch in front of her, impeding her forward progress.

  “Did you not hear me? I told you I love you, Tessa.”

  “I heard you. Let me pass.”

  “What the fuck happened to you to make you this jaded about love? I know the soccer-douche cheated on you, okay? I know he broke your heart. But I’m not him. Haven’t I shown you who I am this week? Hasn’t my entire family shown you?”

  Tears flood her eyes. “I don’t know what to believe anymore, Ryan. Every time I let down my guard with you, nothing is ever what it seems. You’ve obviously omitted telling me certain things in order to manipulate my feelings and make me fall for you. And guess what? It worked. I fell for you. Hard. But now I don’t know if my feelings are real or the result of some sort of manipulation.”

  I grab her shoulders. “Your feelings are real. We’re perfect together, and you know it.”

  “I don’t know it. I can’t trust my own feelings. Clearly, I have horrible judgment.”

  “Okay, then, if you can’t trust yourself or me, then trust my family. Do you know how many members of my family came up to me this week and told me we’re perfect for each other? And not just my mom and Kat, baby—everyone wants us together because they can see we’re made for each other.”

  She looks like she’s about to pass out from the stress of this situation. Clearly, her brain and heart are waging a fierce battle inside her. “Everything’s happened so fast,” she stammers. “I haven’t had time to process. How could anyone fall in love in a week, especially like this—when it turns out they’re being lied to? We’re in a bubble—it’s just a fantasy.”

  “Baby, no. We fell in love for real. You like facts? Okay, then look at my parents. In college, my dad saw my mom in a lecture hall on the first day of school, sat down next to her, and they fell in love right then and there. That very night, my dad told his roommate he’d met the woman he was gonna marry. Or, fine, fuck my parents, you want more facts? Then look at your own parents.” My voice is edged with barely contained panic. “Remember what you told me? Your dad knew your mom was rightfully his the minute she walked into his studio and, to this day, he still thinks she ‘hung the moon.’ Well, that’s you and me. I saw you in that bar and, instantly, I knew you were rightfully mine. And, I promise, thirty years from now, a hundred years from now, a thousand years, I’ll still think you hung the moon. Baby, we could have it all, just like your parents.”

  She throws her hands over her tear-streaked face and shrieks, “Stop! Please, Ryan, just stop!”

  “Tessa, I’m not gonna stop. Your parents have it all and we could, too.”

  “Stop!” she shrieks, clearly distressed. Tears flood her eyes. “My parents don’t have it all, Ryan! Not even close!”

  I press my lips together, rendered completely speechless.

  For a long beat, the sound of crashing waves fills the awkward silence.

  “Tessa?” I prompt, my heartbeat pounding in my ears. “What happened?”

  She takes a deep breath. “He cheated on her,” she whispers, her entire body trembling. “My dad says my mom ‘hung the moon’ but he cheated on her and broke her heart.”

  The hair on the back of my neck stands up. “When?”

  “It happened twenty-something years ago, but I only found out about it this past year.” She takes a deep, shaky breath. “I was looking through boxes of old photos to make an anniversary present for them, and I found a stack of old letters in a box—letters that shattered everything I thought I knew about love and marriage and the ability of any man on this planet to stay faithful.”

  I’m too shocked to speak.

  She takes a deep, shaky breath and wipes fitfully at the hot tears streaming down her cheeks. “They separated for six months, but I was too young to realize it. She kicked him out and wouldn’t return any of his calls, so he wrote letter after handwritten love letter, begging for forgiveness, pleading with her, swearing it had been a one-time, drunken, stupid moment of weakness with a dance partner. So finally, after six months of letters and begging and pleading, she finally took him back.” A sob lurches out of her throat. “A year ago, I found out the man I’d thought I loved for two fucking years, a man who said he loved me and wanted to marry me and start a family with me, had been cheating on me throughout our entire relationship—and then, three months after that, I found out the father I worshipped had cheated on my beautiful mother and, by extension, on me and our entire family and everything we were raised to believe, because, apparently, getting laid by some nobody was more important than honoring his sacred vows.”

  I open my mouth and close it.

  “I gripped that handwritten letter in my hand and looked at my dad’s familiar, sloping script, and I just couldn’t believe my eyes. If I hadn’t read his words with my own eyes, I never would have believed them possible. I would have defended my father’s integrity to my dying breath.” She swallows hard. “I confronted my parents about it, and they told me it was a lifetime ago, that it ultimately made them stronger, that it was actually a blessing in disguise and opened up lines of communication and blah, blah, blah. They said marriage is hard and people are flawed and nobody’s perfect—that to forgive is divine and so many other platitudes; but, golly gosh, I’m sorry if I can’t so easily move past it and pretend it never happened when my whole life I’ve worshipped the ground my father walks on and idolized my parents’ marriage and based my entire conception of marriage and what I’m looking for in a man on my father.” Tears are gushing out of her eyes. She’s a dam breaking. A rambling mess. “My whole life, whenever anyone else was jaded or skeptical about love or marriage, I was always the one who said, ‘But fairytales really do exist!’ Because, no matter what, I always knew my dad thought my mom ‘hung the moon’ and that my mother was worthy of his undying devotion—which gave me hope that maybe that kind of love might one day be possible for a mere mortal like me—that maybe I’d find a man who thought I hung the moon one day.” Her chest is heaving. “Their marriage is what I’ve always aspired to have, Ryan, my whole life—but now I don’t know what the fuck I’m aspiring to anymore.”

  “Tessa,” I say softly, taking a step toward her, my arms open, but she lurches backward, her eyes glinting with fury and hurt.

  “You lied to me,” she hisses. “If you’re willing to hide certain facts from me to create an optimal environment for me to fall in love with you, then how the fuck can I ever fully trust anything you say or do—let alone trust my feelings for you when your plan eventually works?”

  I can’t fathom how she’s blowing up my slight omissions this past week into a betrayal of this proportion, especially when the only thing I failed to tell her is that I moved heaven and earth to find her because I fell in love with her at first sight. “Tessa,” I say. “Calm down. I was scared the hacking thing would freak you out right outta the gate, that’s all. I always intended to tell you before leaving Maui.”

  She wipes her eyes and looks out at the ocean. “It’s exactly what Stu did—he showed me some perfect version of himself—a version he wished he could be, I suppose—but that version never really existed.”

  “Babe. No. This is nothing like that. I’m not Stu. Everything I showed you this week was exactly who I am. I told you the complete truth; I just didn’t tell you a few things at first, f
or the greater good.”

  She narrows her eyes. “If your definition of telling the truth is hiding certain things from me ‘for the greater good,’ then you’re not someone I want to be in a relationship with.”

  My heart feels like it’s shattering and gushing blood onto the sand. Tears prick my eyes. “Please, baby. I haven’t been with anyone else since I met you. I couldn’t stand the thought of touching another woman since I laid eyes on you. I saw you and fell in love with you and knew you were rightfully mine. You own me, Tessa. Mind, body, heart, and soul. Please, you gotta believe me.”

  She puts her hands over her face. “I don’t know what to believe. This is too much for me to process. I need time, Ryan. You’re Josh’s brother and you two are going into business together and Josh is thinking about having me work with you guys and—”

  “Josh wants you to work with us on Captain’s? Oh my God! That would be a dream come true. Tell him yes.”

  “It’s not that simple now. What if I give this a chance and we don’t work out? I don’t want to fuck things up for you or for Josh and Jonas. And I certainly don’t want to fuck things up for myself, either.”

  I put my hands on her wet cheeks and, thank God, she doesn’t pull away. “Stop thinking so much, love. Get it through your head: I love you. That’s not gonna change. Ever. Come to my room with me right now. Let me make love to you. Let me show you how much you mean to me. And then we can lie in bed and talk things through calmly and I promise all your worries and concerns will melt away.”

  She looks deeply into my eyes for a long beat, and, for a split-second, I think she’s gonna throw her arms around me and declare her love for me. But she doesn’t. “Who’d you call that day, Ryan?” she whispers.

  I open my mouth and close it.

  She smiles wanly. “I thought so.”

  I sigh loudly. “I tell you what, my love. I’ll come to your room first thing in the morning to answer that question. We’ll talk then. Okay? You just need time to think and process. So go back to your room and I’ll come see you in the morning. Spoiler alert, though—no matter what you say to me tomorrow, I’m not leaving ’til I’ve convinced you we’re meant to be.”

  She shakes her head. “I’m gonna need more than a night to get my thoughts straight. I need to go back home and get back to real life and see how I feel about things then.”

  I exhale with relief. If she’s negotiating the number of days she needs to work through her shit, as opposed to my underlying assumption that I’m ultimately gonna convince her to be mine, that’s a very good sign. “Fair enough. How much time do you need, sweetheart?” I ask gently, stroking her cheek. “We can take things as slow as you need.”

  “I don’t know. As it turns out, I’ve been having sex with a crazy stalker all week. Who knew?”

  I laugh, despite myself.

  She smiles—which I take as another very good sign. “I need a week,” she says. “When I get home, I’m gonna be slammed with work while Josh is on his honeymoon. Plus, I’ll want to talk to Josh about me working on Captain’s. Things could get dicey from a business perspective for him if things don’t work out romantically for us and he and Jonas deserve to know exactly what they’re getting themselves into.”

  “Baby, are you not listening to me? There’s no way things won’t work out for us. That’s what I’m telling you. I love you. You’re The One. We’re gonna have it all, baby. You and me.”

  She fidgets.

  I sigh. “Okay. Here’s what we’re gonna do: You’re gonna take eight days to think things through in the ‘real world’ because you’re a fucking loon. That gives you a week on your own plus one day to talk to Josh when he gets back to Seattle. And then, the afternoon of the eighth day, no matter what the fuck you think you’ve decided about us, I’m gonna hunt you down and do whatever the fuck I have to do to convince you to be mine. Sound good?”

  She nods. “Okay.”

  Warmth spreads throughout my body. Oh my God. This woman’s a fucking bunny-boiling loon. Truly. And, oh my fucking God, I love her more than life itself.

  Chapter 64

  Ryan

  “Is he mad? Anyway, there’s something on his mind, as sure as there must be something on a deck when it cracks.”

  I’m insane. It’s official.

  It’s been four days since I’ve been home from Maui and I’m most definitely not right in the head. Why the fuck did I tell Tessa I’d give her eight fucking days to “process”? When I said that bullshit, I thought for sure I was actually gonna speak to Charlotte that very night, get her permission to tell Tessa the truth about our phone conversations, and then head straight to Tessa’s room to tell her everything and make sweet love to her all night long.

  But it’s been four fucking days and Charlotte still hasn’t called me back—and I can’t understand why she’s ignoring me. All I can think is Tessa must have called Charlotte and told her everything that happened... and Charlotte misunderstood and thought I threw her under the bus? Or maybe Charlotte confessed everything to Tessa and the two of them got into a big fight? I just don’t know. Either way, Charlotte’s radio-silence is driving me mad—especially when I haven’t talked to Tessa, either.

  I’ve texted Tessa every day since I got back to Seattle, of course, just to tell her I’m thinking about her and can’t wait to talk to her and can we maybe speed things up a bit here, despite what I said in Maui? But she’s replied to insist she needs to talk to Josh about the Captain’s thing before she has “full clarity.”

  Fuck! If only she’d trust me, or, fuck it, if not me, then my entire family. Because, oh my God, if I’d had any doubts about how perfectly Tessa and I fit together (not that I ever did), those doubts would have been laid to rest during my flight back to Seattle, when at least fifteen members of my family berated me, telling me “not to be an idiot” and to “close the deal on that girl.”

  “I’m with you, guys,” I told everyone. “You’re preaching to the choir. But she’s a tough nut to crack.”

  “Well, crack that dang nut,” Mom said emphatically. “I swear, Rum Cake, if you don’t have babies with that girl, I’ll never forgive you as long as I live.”

  “I’ll do my best, Mom.”

  And now, here I am, lying on my couch in sweats and bedhead, just back from a particularly grueling workout at the gym, feeling too sorry for myself to do a damned thing except lie here and flip channels.

  My phone rings and I quickly grab it, hoping it’s Charlotte (or, better yet, Tessa), but, unexpectedly, the name on my display screen says “Josh.”

  “Yo, Lambo,” I say, answering the call.

  “Yo, Captain.”

  “Aren’t you and Kat still on your honeymoon?”

  “Yeah. We’re still here, having a blast. I’m calling because I was just telling my lovely wife about Captain’s, and I mentioned I’ve got this fantastic idea to cut T-Rod in as a part-owner (out of Jonas’ and my share, don’t worry), so that T-Rod would have some skin in the game—but only if that’s something you’d be comfortable with, you know.”

  “Yeah. Great idea. Do it.”

  “Great. So, anyway, I was telling Kat about all that and...” Josh sighs. “Ryan, Kat spilled the beans. She told me everything.”

  The hair on my arms stands up. “Everything?”

  “That T-Rod’s Samantha and you two were having a torrid love affair all week in Maui. And that you love her.”

  My stomach ties into knots.

  “Ryan, I owe you a huge apology,” Josh says. “Jonas and I really torpedoed everything for you. So, I’m calling to find out if there’s any way I can help make things right. Dude, let’s figure out how I can help you get your girl.”

  Chapter 65

  Ryan

  “Hello?” a male voice says into the phone.

  “Mr. Rodriguez?” I ask.

  “Yes.”

  “Hi, Mr. Rodriguez. My name is Ryan Morgan. You’re familiar with Josh Faraday, your daughter Tessa
’s employer?”

  “Of course, yes,” he says—and, for the first time, I’m making out his slight accent when he speaks.

  “Josh is my brother-in-law,” I say. “He married my sister, Kat, last week.”

  “Yes, I heard about that. Congratulations to all. Tessa said the wedding was beautiful.”

  “Yes, it was.” I clear my throat. “Sir, I’m calling because I just spent a week in Hawaii with your daughter, along with Josh and Kat and my entire family, and now, sir, I’m in love with her. Deeply, totally, and completely in love with her. Sir.”

  “Oh.”

  “Tessa and I had met prior to the Hawaii trip—about three months beforehand, just by random chance—and the minute I saw her back then, I felt like I’d been struck by a lightning bolt. I’ve never felt that way before with anyone, but the minute I saw your daughter, I instantly felt like she was rightfully mine and I didn’t want anyone else.”

  Mr. Rodriguez pauses and then says softly, “I know the feeling well.”

  “So, fast-forward three months after that initial lightning bolt, and I’ve had the good fortune to spend an entire week with your daughter in paradise, getting to know her well, hanging out with her and seeing how she interacts with my family—they all love her, by the way—and those initial love-at-first-sight feelings I had for her have grown exponentially, and now I can confidently tell you, sir, without equivocation or a shred of doubt, your daughter’s the one I want to spend the rest of my life with. The woman I want to raise a family with.” I clear my throat. My heart is racing so fast, I feel like I’m gonna faint. “I know it’s been a short amount of time, sir, and that marriage is hard and not a fairytale, but I’m positive I want to make a life with Tessa and no one else.” I inhale and exhale a shaky breath, emotion suddenly overcoming me. “Sir, I want Tessa to be my wife and the mother of my children, if God blesses us that way.”