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“Will you let me see your boat?” Violet asks in the dim light of morning.
She’s only slept in my bed twice, but I already feel like she belongs there permanently. Her disheveled hair on my spare pillow, her sleepy smile as she looks at me, eyes half hooded with the gentle tiredness of early dawn—it all makes me happy. I never want to stop seeing her like that.
“You want to see my boat?”
She nods. “If you’ll show her to me. Please?”
I let out a puff of air, lying back so I’m beside her again instead of perched on the edge of the bed. “I’ll show you,” I agree, delighted to see that infectious grin of hers. “But…why?”
“Sailing is a part of you,” she says simply, as if that’s a fact that people say every day. “I knew it the first time I kissed you. Your skin tastes like salt and sunlight and man…you. And I want to know all of you. If you’ll let me.”
Whatever I had done, or failed to do, that gave me this woman, I will never let her go. Twisting onto my side, I rest my hand against her face, cradling her jaw. I rub the soft skin of her cheek with my thumb. “Ask me anything, Violet. I’m an open book for you. I’ll show you my whole world if you want to see it.”
Then she surges forward to kiss me, and we fall back into the rhythm of the night before, a familiar dance that neither of us wants to end.
—
We walk along the pier hand in hand. Violet wears a floppy sun hat that matches the sheer coverup she’s tossed over a floral tank top and green shorts, swinging a picnic basket in her other hand. She looks like she belongs here, which of course she does. Sailor’s Reach is her home. Has been for much longer than I've known it existed here on its tiny island.
It still boggles my mind that she and I found one another. This place was supposed to be an unfortunate assignment from my father after my grandfather's passing, a quick in and out, no feelings. I was only supposed to get Grandpa's affairs in order and get some so we could get our profits and move on.
Boy, did I get that all wrong. I have feelings for Violet. A lot of them. I have since the moment she knocked on my front door.
We turn to the left, taking another dock closer to the water until the mast and pearly white sails of my boat come into view. She isn’t much; she was the only thing I inherited from my grandfather that I truly wanted. Well, until I docked in Sailor's Reach and met my gorgeous next-door neighbor. The cabin here I have grown to love, and I'm not sure I’ll be able to part with it when the time comes. But I have a while to consider how to handle that; my departure date isn’t for another nearly four months.
“Is that her?” Violet asks as we approach, despite my little boat being the only one tied at this particular dock.
“Yes. That’s her. The Honeybelle.”
“Why is she called that?” Violet asks immediately. She reaches out, running a gentle finger over the warm brown railing of the little boat as I push open the tiny half-door in the side of the boat, stepping onto her deck.
“She was my grandfather’s,” I say, trying not to think about all the ways he brought me into Violet’s life, how grateful I am now despite my initial anger and frustration. “He named her after his late wife. He didn’t get this particular boat until after my grandmother passed, but he said that by naming this boat after her, he was keeping her with him.”
Violet’s face melts into one of those “so sweet” expressions I see so often directed at me. The first few times I saw it, I blushed profusely. Now, though, I feel my heart flutter with appreciation for how she wears her every emotion on her face for me to read. I need that more than she could know.
“So, your grandmother's name was Honeybelle?” Violet asks, her eyes taking in the little boat, the small wooden deck made of lightly stained, sunkissed blonde wood, the slightly darker wood of the masts and railings, and the gorgeous, gleaming white of the sails just waiting to be opened and push us out of the harbor and toward the open water. She steps carefully onto the deck, fingers still trailing over the railing.
“No. Her name was actually Laura-Belle, but Grandpa called her his honeybelle. He always did, as far back as Dad and I can remember.” Mentioning my father makes my heart feel heavy, but I push the feeling away. This moment is for Violet and me, introducing her to more of my world, and nothing is going to take that away, not even Dad.
“That’s honestly adorable. I love that nickname.” Violet walks around the whole perimeter of the boat, her hand tracing the railing as she goes. There’s not too much room, so when she reaches me where I still stand beside the half-door, her hand glides over my chest, making goosebumps rise on my skin.
Gods, I love the feel of her hands on my body. I love when she absently touches me. She treats me as if I’m someone she wants to be around, as if I’m noteworthy to her, and I can’t get enough of it. Which makes me feel pathetic. I know it shouldn’t matter how she looks at me, how she touches me, how my name sounds in her mouth, but damn. It does. I shouldn't need that kind of expression of her feelings. But I do. She's never made me feel ashamed of it in the few short months we've known one another, since we started seeing each other. It's another emotion I push away to deal with a different day.
It takes me a few moments to notice that Violet is bending over the railing, her finger now running over the golden letters that spell out the boat’s name: The Honeybelle. The gold glitters against the forest green of the hull, the green my grandfather insisted matched my grandmother’s eyes. This boat—and the cabin he owned as his getaway in Sailor’s Reach—were his prized possessions. Both of which he left to me. Both of which have become my prized possessions.
Violet straightens up again, tipping her face toward the sky. The sun is mostly hidden behind a cloud, but there’s enough light that she closes her eyes to keep the rays away. There’s a contented smile on her face that makes me grin, too. I cross my arms across my chest, feeling the stretchy fabric of my blue-striped polo shirt move against my skin. The hems of my gray shorts brush my knees as I lean back against the railing.
“Is there a space below deck?” Violet asks, looking across at me. Her eyes are dancing in that way that says she’s feeling joyous, living on a cloud. This is as much her element as mine.
“Yeah. Not much to see down there. Just a bed, mostly. Not a ton of space.” I gesture toward the hatch just in front of the mast. “There’s the door.”
Without another word, Violet walks over and lifts it, going down the short staircase until she can see the pale green carpet and the bed bolted into the wall, nothing but a limp pillow and a simple gray blanket on it.
“There’s no life down there,” she declares as she comes back up. “We’re going to fix that.”
“We’re?”
“You and me.” She climbs back up a few steps until her head pokes out of the hatch. “We’ll get you some things to make that room look more like you.”
“Why?”
“Because if we’re going sailing, I’m going to need something better than barren green carpet and a grey blanket. I need something with life that says this boat belongs to you, to my Xaden.”
I swallow, not sure how to answer that. Violet is planning for the future. And not just any future. Our future. A future where the two of us are together, where we’re doing things like going sailing together. Like spending the time to decorate the below-decks room of a boat. Of my boat. I don’t know how I’d never considered us planning for the future, but once it hits me, I can’t ignore it.
Before coming to Sailor's Reach, everything in my life had revolved around planning for the future. My father's future. On this tiny island, though, life spins around the day-to-day, around the moment. Planning exists; how to weather the storms that arise, how to keep food coming in on supply boats, how to explore opportunities that are readily available to others not surrounded by water. But so much of it is routine and built in that it hardly feels like planning. But now my beloved Violet is planning a future with me. I've never felt more seen.
I stare at Violet, torn between wanting to thank her for seeing me and wanting to fall into her arms, to press my lips to hers, to feel her body against mine and know that we belong together, that I have something better than I’ve ever had before. She's opening up new worlds to me.
But Violet saves me by going for the picnic basket that she set down beside the boat’s door when she came aboard. “Want to eat?” she asks. She doesn’t wait for me to answer, just lays out the blanket on the largest open area of the deck and sits down, patting the spot beside her. “Sit with me. Please.”
I nod, coming over silently and settling beside her as she pulls out the bowls of fruit and the baggies of cheese and crackers we’d prepared this morning. “You can say it,” she says after a few beats of silence. “I’m not afraid of it.”
“What?” I ask, not understanding.
“Just tell me what you’re thinking, Xaden. Please.”
I scrub a hand over my face, letting out a sigh that sounds too heavy for how I actually feel. “You’re planning for a future for us.”
She spares me a momentary glance. “Is that not what you want?”
“It is! It is. It’s just…I haven’t ever…done that…with someone.”
“Would you rather do it with someone else?”
I grab her hand, stopping her from popping open the lid of the container of grapes. “Violet, you know there’s no one else for me but you.”
“Then don’t be so afraid,” she says softly. “Enjoy it. Plan with me. If this is something we both want, we should both be all the way in.”
“I want to take you sailing,” I say. And it’s true. I didn’t know it before then, before she’d suggested it, but the idea is incredibly appealing.
She grins at that, popping a grape into my mouth before saying, “Good. Because I really want to go. I’ve never been too far from shore; I’ve always been too busy with the store, and when I was a child, Dad was out on the fishing boats day in and day out. There was no reason for our family to go sailing.” She eats a grape herself before reaching into the basket for the paper plates we packed. “Where’s the first place we should go?”
I shrug. “I don’t know much about what’s around here. But another island, maybe, if I had to take a guess. Somewhere peaceful. Quiet.”
“Perfect. I’ll pack a book.”
That makes me chuckle, and I reach over to cup her cheek, pressing a chaste kiss to her lips. “Do you ever go anywhere without a book?”
She shakes her head. “No. And no one should if you ask me.”
I grin and accept the plate from her, filling it with food. I take a few contemplative bites before I decide to lay my heart bare. It’s still a new concept. We’ve barely begun to date, but I already know I don’t want to keep anything from this woman. “I love a lot of things about you,” I say, feeling my cheeks flush as I realize how dangerously close that was to telling Violet that I love her. We’re not ready for that yet. At least, I don't think we are…
“Oh, really?” She grins, one eyebrow raised, and I chuckle.
“Yes, but the thing I love most today is that you’re not afraid. Not of my feelings or of trying new things. You’re not afraid of adventure or the future. You’re just…open about it. You’re honest. And you make me want to be more like that.”
“You are like that,” she counters between her bites of cheese. “You’ve just had a lot of things in your way until now.” She holds a hand up to the sky and sweeps it outward as if to gesture to everything. “This part of the world has a way of opening people up to the possibilities when they get out of their own way.”
“I think it’s you.”
She smiles. “Maybe. You’re sweet for saying that.”
“I like you, Violet.” I try to ignore how juvenile I think that sounds and press on, one more thing on my mind that I want her to hear. “I know we haven’t known each other long, but I think you make me a better person. And I—Well, thank you.”
“You’re already an amazing person,” she says. “It’s just taking you a little time to learn that. But, Xaden?”
“Hmmm?”
“I like you, too.”
We spend a moment staring at each other, memorizing each other’s faces, smiles nudging up our cheeks.
“Now, eat your lunch. I don’t want anything we’ve brought out here to go to waste. And besides, I’ve been hearing your stomach growl for the last hour. You’re clearly starving.”
That makes me laugh again, and I take a big bite of my food, chewing and swallowing before I say, “Aye, aye, Captain.”
Violet’s laughter is the most beautiful music I’ve ever heard.