Captain

by Lauren Rowe

  At Kat’s words, tears prick my eyes. I want to believe in fate, too. I want to become a devoted wife.

  “Josh?” the officiant prompts.

  Josh takes a deep breath and cups Kat’s gorgeous face in his palms, making every woman in the audience, including me, swoon. “My beloved Kat. Good God, you’re evil.”

  Kat chuckles and everyone in the audience joins her.

  “And not just evil,” Josh says. “Stubborn as hell, too. But you’re also hilarious. Compassionate. Honest. Passionate. Baby, you’re hell on wheels. And, most of all, you’re loving and kind and beautiful. And I love it all—every single thing about you.”

  Okay, that’s too much: I can’t control myself anymore. A sob lurches from my throat and I cover my mouth to muffle it. I want a man who loves me, for exactly who I am! I don’t want a fuck buddy! I don’t want a fling! Why on earth did I think screwing Ryan all week long with no commitment or feelings involved was a good idea?

  Josh continues his vows: “And, most of all, my beloved Kat,” he says, “I vow to you, right here and now, in front of God and all the people we love, which includes Keane, by the way, just to be clear—”

  Laughter erupts from the Morgan area of the audience, and I steal a quick glance over there to find Ryan throwing his head back, laughing with Keane and Colby.

  And that’s it: the final straw. I’m suddenly feeling so utterly heartbroken, I can barely stop myself from running out of the ceremony to the bathroom to sob in private. I didn’t expect Ryan to fall in love with me this week—and I certainly knew he’d been seeing and screwing other women before he got here, but now it’s clear Ryan’s pattern of veering sharply from one woman to the next isn’t a phase or a circumstance or a one-time thing—it’s simply who he is.

  The sun is setting behind Josh and Kat, rendering the sky a tapestry of oranges, purples, and yellows over a sparkling ocean. This moment is sheer perfection in every way. So why the hell is it making me feel so sad?

  “YOLO, Kat,” Josh says to Kat, his tone playful—and Kat smiles broadly in response. “Damn, I’m a lucky bastard that I get to live my one and only life with you.” He touches Kat’s chin. “I. Will. Always. Love. You. I promise to make every day of our life together better than any fantasy, baby. Forever.”

  They kiss and the officiant pronounces them husband and wife—and, suddenly, amid all the clapping and cheering around me, I’m bone-certain about something: I’m not a weeklong-no-strings-fling-in-paradise-with-a-manwhore type of girl. I thought I’d be able to play fuck buddy and come out unscathed, but I was fooling myself. I want something real. I want what Josh and Kat have and I’m not going to settle for anything less. I don’t care how good the sex might be with Ryan—or if I never find sex that good again with another man; great sex simply isn’t enough for me to disrespect myself and disregard my core values. I want someone to make love to me (even if he happens to be fucking and spanking me on any given occasion). I want a man to love me, all of me, for better or worse, ’til death do us part, no matter how crazy and uptight and over-thinking and guarded I might sometimes be. And, by God, I’m not gonna settle for anything less.

  Chapter 61

  Tessa

  “When Josh asked me to be his best man,” Jonas says, holding a microphone in one hand and a flute of champagne in the other, “the first thing I thought was, ‘Oh, shit.’”

  Everyone seated at tables in the reception room laughs.

  “Because I immediately realized I’d have to give this fucking speech—excuse my language—and anyone who knows me will tell you I absolutely hate giving speeches, almost as much as I hate hip-hop and One Direction and talking about my fucking feelings—excuse my language again.”

  Oh my God, I’m dying. So far, I’ve managed to avoid Ryan throughout the entire wedding reception, but I feel like the jig is gonna be up soon and he’s gonna force me to talk to him. And when he does, I still don’t know what the hell I want to say to him—or if I’ll be able to stomach whatever lies he tries to tell me in reply.

  Jonas raises his glass. “To Josh and Kat. Hear, hear.”

  “Hear, hear,” everyone says, including me.

  I take a long sip of champagne and flag a roaming waiter for another flute.

  “Kitty Kat,” Sarah begins her speech, smiling. “My best friend and now my sister—oh, I just gave myself goose bumps saying that.” She giggles and everyone joins her.

  I feel like I’m gonna explode. All throughout dinner, I could feel Ryan looking at me, willing me to look at him, but I didn’t do it. Actually, I was supposed to sit with Ryan at his table tonight, along with Keane, Zander, Colby, Dax, Fish, and Colin—a table I would have given my left boob to sit at yesterday; but the minute I left Josh’s bungalow this morning, I headed straight to the wedding planner and immediately requested she re-assign me to Uncle William’s stodgy table.

  But, obviously, I can’t avoid Ryan forever, especially now that dinner is finished and toasts are underway and dancing is about to begin.

  Sarah raises her glass. “To Josh and Kat. May you always inspire everyone around you to scan for emergency exits and fire extinguishers. Hear, hear.”

  “Hear, hear,” everyone in the room says, raising their glasses.

  Josh kisses Sarah’s cheek and takes the microphone from her.

  “Thank you, Sarah,” he says. “Thank you, Jonas. We love you guys so much. We Faradays are pretty effing cool, I gotta say. I want to thank you all for joining us, not just for today’s celebration, but for this whole past week in paradise. I know you all have busy lives so we thank you for taking so much time to celebrate and party with us this whole week. It’s been incredible, hasn’t it?”

  Everyone claps and cheers.

  Josh proceeds to make a long speech (which he’s been known to do a time or two) and I can’t resist covertly peeking over at Ryan’s table, ever so briefly, just to see if... Crap. Ryan’s looking right at me.

  I look away, my cheeks hot.

  Shit. The minute this speech is over, he’s gonna corner me—I can feel it. I’d better get myself ready. When we talk, I just have to be calm and clear. I’ll tell him I don’t want to continue this—that it’s been fun and I’m grateful for the time we’ve spent together, but I have no interest in moving forward because, frankly, I just don’t feel like I can fully trust him. And I’ll just leave it at that. Why say more than that? If I tell him my suspicions, he’ll just deny any wrongdoing again, the same way he always does, and I’m likely to believe his bullshit again. Oh, God, I’m such an idiot.

  “I’d like to say a special thanks to my great friend Reed for that incredible surprise earlier,” Josh continues. “Wasn’t that amazing?”

  Everyone claps and cheers wildly, including me.

  “Amazing” is the right word for Reed’s surprise, I gotta say. Thanks to Reed’s connections, Josh and Kat danced their first dance to their favorite song, performed live by the original artist himself—James Bay—after he surprised and thrilled everyone by gliding into the reception with an acoustic guitar strapped to his chest.

  Josh raises his champagne flute to Reed. “Thank you, bro. We’ll never forget that moment as long as we live.”

  Josh pulls Kat out of her chair and slides his arm around her. “And one last thing,” he says into the microphone. “With my beautiful wife by my side, I wanna say a few words of thanks to my new family, the Morgans. There’s been a lot of talk about Kat becoming a Faraday today, but, trust me, I got the better end of the bargain. You know that expression ‘The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree’? Well, that’s especially true when it comes to Kat.” He raises his glass to Kat’s family at their various tables in the large room, and they all return the gesture—and, just for a second, my heart physically pangs with unfathomable envy and yearning. I want to be part of the Morgan family, like Josh.

  “To Tom Tom Club, Momma Lou, Cheese, Captain, Peen, and Baby Brother,” Josh continues, his champagne flute in th
e air. “And to all the Morgans I’ve met this past week, too—” He raises his glass to the various pockets of Morgans seated around the large room. “Thank you for your part in making Kat the incredible woman she is today and for letting me be part of your hilarious and fucking awesome family. Hear, hear.”

  “Hear, hear,” everyone in the room says in unison.

  My eyes are filling with tears. I quickly wipe them and down my champagne.

  Josh whispers something to Kat and she shakes her head.

  “So, okay,” Josh says into his microphone. “Mrs. Faraday says enough talking about our fucking feelings—it’s time to dance.”

  Chapter 62

  Ryan

  As Josh gives his toast to the rapt audience, I look longingly at Tessa across the reception room, the same way I’ve done countless times tonight, but, still, she won’t look at me.

  Clearly, she’s been avoiding me today and I can’t figure out why. I mean, okay, I fully understood when she said she needed to help the wedding planner with a bunch of pre-wedding preparations today (and therefore couldn’t hang out at the beach with my family and me). Cool. No problem. And, during the ceremony, when she didn’t sit next to me, but instead sat on the other end of the seating at the end of a row, I figured she wanted to be able to pop up, just in case the wedding planner unexpectedly needed her. And when she steadfastly stared at Josh and Kat during the entire ceremony without even a cursory glance in my direction, I told myself I was being paranoid.

  But then came the reception and I couldn’t explain away her aloofness anymore. I mean, seriously, why didn’t she sit at my table for dinner? For fuck’s sake, she’s been sitting with me and my family at dinners all week long—and, now, at the biggest dinner of all, she’s suddenly gotta sit with William Faraday and a bunch of Josh’s boring work friends? Yeah, I know that’s what the official seating chart said (what the fuck?), but surely Tessa of all people could have defied the seating chart and sat with me and my brothers at our table? Or, fuck it, she’s The Mighty T-Rod! The Woman Behind the Curtain! Couldn’t she have gotten herself assigned to any table of her choosing in the first place? I just don’t get it.

  I stare at her across the room for a long beat, and to my surprise, she looks over at me, meets my eyes... and instantly looks away.

  Fuck!

  So, I’m not imagining it. The look on her face just now told me everything I need to know: she can’t even stand to look at me.

  What the fuck is going on? This entire night feels like a train coming off the tracks and I can’t understand why. When I imagined tonight, I pictured us having a blast together, celebrating and laughing and dancing the night away, and then, finally, when Tessa and I were high on life and champagne and dying to maul each other, I planned to lead her to the moonlit beach, take her into my arms, and finally bare my soul to her, without holding back. But how the fuck can I do any of that now, when she’s been giving me the cold shoulder all day?

  “So, okay,” Josh says into the microphone. “Mrs. Faraday says enough talking about our fucking feelings—it’s time to dance.”

  Josh cues the band and off they go, loudly kicking off their first song of the night (a dance-remix-cover of Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You”), and, immediately, almost everyone in the room beelines to the dance floor.

  I get up from my table, my heart pounding and my mouth dry, and stride around the edge of the bustling dance floor toward her. I don’t know what the fuck’s going on in her head—or if I truly want to find out—but there’s no turning back now.

  Right before I reach her table, Tessa rises from her seat, wipes her eyes, and turns on her heel like she’s planning to get the hell out of Dodge and never come back, so I pick up my pace and, thankfully, reach her before she’s gotten too far. In a flash, I’ve got her elbow firmly in my grasp and her trembling body pressed into my side.

  “We need to talk,” I say, gripping her fiercely. “Let’s take a walk.”

  Chapter 63

  Ryan

  Tessa’s body language is tight and closed off as I pull her past the dancing bodies on the dance floor, out the front doors of the reception hall, and straight into the warm, starry night, and then, on a sudden impulse, wordlessly continue walking with her toward the private beach about a hundred yards away.

  When we reach the entrance to the beach, Tessa kicks off her heels and marches onto the sand without looking back. “I don’t know why you led me all the way out here,” she mutters. “We don’t need to take a moonlit walk on the beach to say, ‘Thanks for the memories.’”

  I take two loping strides to catch up to her, grab her by her arm, and force her to stop marching away from me. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” I bellow, panic welling up inside me. “‘Thanks for the memories’? Is that what you think is on the tip of my tongue tonight? Tessa, I’m not your prick of an ex-boyfriend, okay? I’m not him. This has been the best week of my life and all I want is to keep going when we get back home.”

  “Keep going? What would be the point when all you’re gonna do is telepathically break up with me the minute some other woman makes your dick hard?”

  “Jesus, I thought we were past this. I told you I’d broken up with Olivia by the time I met you and that—”

  “This isn’t about Psycho Barbie,” she grits out. “And this isn’t about my stupid ex-boyfriend, either. This is about you and the woman you’ve been dating for the past few months—the woman you’ve been ‘obsessed with’ right up until you arrived in Maui.”

  The starry night buckles and warps around me. Shit.

  “Tessa, I don’t know who you’ve been talking to, but they gave you some wrong information. There’s no other woman but you and there hasn’t been since the moment I laid eyes on you. I haven’t even touched another woman since I met you that night at The Pine Box.”

  She looks at me like I’m scum. “Stop with the bullshit, Ryan. I talked to Josh and Jonas. They told me everything.”

  “What did they tell you? Whatever it was, they’ve got it completely wrong. Tessa, the woman I’ve been ‘obsessed with’ for months is you.”

  “Yeah, everyone’s always got it ‘completely wrong’ when it comes to you, huh? You’ve always got a nifty explanation.”

  I grab her shoulders, practically hyperventilating with panic. “What did Josh and Jonas say to you? Tell me.”

  “Let go of me,” she commands.

  I release my grasp.

  Her eyes are wild. “Josh and Jonas saw sparks between us. They have no idea we’ve gotten together, but they felt the need to warn me that, if I’m possibly gonna start something with you, I should be careful because, although they generally think you’re the greatest guy ever and they love and respect you, when it comes to women, you seem to hop from one to the next at breakneck speed. Case in point, they told me you’d been obsessed with some woman for months prior to coming here, right up to the very day you arrived at the resort, and that, in fact, the afternoon you arrived—the same day we fucked for the first time—you were still totally into this other woman, which they knew for a fact because at the opening night party you were talking about how you’d desperately tried calling her that afternoon.” She crosses her arms over her chest. “So I have a question, Ryan: did you break up with this woman before you fucked me, or did you just do it telepathically, like you always do when you’re ready to move on to your next conquest?”

  “Oh my fuck.” I sigh. “Sweetheart, Josh and Jonas meant well, but they were completely clueless. Baby, look at me. When they told you about that other woman, they were talking about ‘Samantha.’ That’s who I’ve been obsessed with for three months. Samantha.”

  She looks utterly flabbergasted.

  I take her hands in mine and, thankfully, she doesn’t resist my grasp. “Baby, after everything went to shit at The Pine Box that night, I went straight to Josh and Kat’s house and we hung out with Jonas and Sarah, and I told all of them about this amazing woman I�
��d met that night—Samantha the Flight Attendant. I told them we’d had a soul connection—that I couldn’t stand the thought of never seeing her again, that I couldn’t stand the thought of her being out there in the world, thinking I was a lying, cheating scumbag. And that’s when the Faraday brothers hooked me up with Henn to help me track Samantha down.”

  Tessa puts her palm to her forehead. “Oh, Jesus.”

  “Baby, Henn hacked into the employee databases of nine fucking airlines to find Samantha for me. Of course, Henn ultimately came up empty, despite his best efforts, but it wasn’t for lack of trying.”

  “Oh, shit. Oh my God. No.”

  I squeeze her hands. “Do you know how long it takes a world-class hacker to hack the databases of nine airlines to find a twenty-seven-year-old, Virgo flight attendant named Samantha? Well, I do: it takes him approximately three months.”

  Tessa puts her palms on her cheeks. “This is insane.”

  “Baby, I’ve loved you from the minute I laid eyes on you.” I swallow hard. “You’re my fate. My destiny. And I knew it the minute I saw you.” A lump rises in my throat. “Tessa, my love for you is involuntary. You’re my ‘kick’ when the doctor bangs on my knee with a hammer. I’ve got no choice but to love you.”

  She furrows her brow and drops my hands. “But Josh and Jonas said you’d called this other woman the day you arrived here. If that woman was me, then... Who did you call?”

  Oh my God. No. I feel sick. I promised Charlotte I wouldn’t say her name. I swore. But, fuck my life, if I don’t tell Tessa about my calls to Charlotte, I’m toast.

  Tessa’s entire body visibly tenses. “Who’d you call, Ryan?”

  My mind is reeling. I can’t string coherent thoughts together. Shit. It seems like the best plan is for me to call Charlotte and get her permission to tell Tessa about our conversations. Otherwise, I’m simply gonna trade one problem for another here. It’s not that big a deal, right? I’ll call Charlotte tonight, get her permission, and head straight to Tessa’s room to tell her everything.