Total pages in book: 135
Estimated words: 128211 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 641(@200wpm)___ 513(@250wpm)___ 427(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 128211 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 641(@200wpm)___ 513(@250wpm)___ 427(@300wpm)
It was too much to hold at once, and I wondered if Captain Gary could see the teetering tower of fragile dishes I was struggling to balance as he waved us into the bridge.
“Have a seat,” he said, gesturing to the bench along the back of the bridge. A beautiful Mediterranean day sprawled out behind him, the water shockingly blue and little white puffs of clouds floating in the sky. It was such a contrast to the storm wrecking me inside.
Captain leaned a hip against the helm, folding his arms and staring at the floor for a moment before he lifted his gaze to meet mine and then Finn’s.
There was no warmth in his eyes.
Captain Gary had always been firm, but fair. Blunt, but with a side of humor. But this… this wasn’t the man who gave nicknames or winked when we nailed service. This wasn’t the man who cheered on a cheeky dance during crew night out or tossed out jokes mid-docking to cut the tension.
This was the captain of a fifty-five-meter vessel.
And he looked ready to sink us both.
“I’m not gonna waste time sugarcoating it,” he started, his voice low and clipped. “What happened this morning was a disaster. You know that. The crew knows that. The cameras sure as hell know that.”
He paused, letting the weight of those words hang in the air, and I swore I could hear my heartbeat echoing inside the silence that followed. Said cameras were aimed right at us, capturing our lashing for everyone to see.
I didn’t have the ability to be embarrassed anymore, not after this morning. I’d already sealed my fate with the viewing public. Now, all I could think about was my career and how the hell I could save it.
Okay, so that wasn’t entirely true.
I was thinking of my career, yes, but I was also thinking of Finn, of the words we whispered to one another in the dark last night, the promises made, the confessions kissed against skin.
I chanced a glance at him, and though he didn’t reach out for my hand or meet my stare, his hand twitched in his lap — a subtle sign that he was still with me.
But could we be together?
My heart crashed into my stomach at the thought that we couldn’t, that there was no way for us to weather this without splitting. The right thing would be for us to stay apart, to do our jobs — if we even still had them anymore — and try to earn back the trust of the people we hurt.
But I couldn’t stand the thought of losing him again after knowing what it felt like to have him back.
Could we possibly have both?
My gut churned like a stormy sea, those thoughts warring inside my head as I tried to focus on Captain Gary.
“I brought you two on as department heads,” he said. “Leaders. People the rest of the crew could look to for guidance, for professionalism. And what I got this morning…” He shook his head. “Was a complete breakdown in trust.”
My lungs burned, but I couldn’t seem to pull a full breath in. Finn was still beside me, his forearms resting on his knees now, fingers interlaced so tight his knuckles had gone white.
Captain’s voice hardened. “The moment you lost the respect of this crew, you lost the ability to lead them. And without leadership? Everything falls apart. Service. Deck. Galley. Interior. Doesn’t matter how good the food is or how well the table’s set if everyone’s too busy watching the damn fallout to do their jobs.”
I swallowed hard, vision stinging.
He was right.
This wasn’t the type of job where coworkers could hate each other and still somehow make the final product shine. We had to be a united team or the guests would notice. Service would suffer — and so would our tip. It could get even worse than that. It could be so bad that the guests demanded their money back altogether — and this wasn’t just a fifty-dollar dinner tab. This was a six-figure refund no one wanted to make.
Memories of the morning shocked me in rhythmic flashes of light, and I wondered how the hell we would work together seamlessly again after all that went down.
“I don’t care what your reasons were. I don’t care if it was love or lust or a bloody lapse in judgment. This—” Captain pointed toward the door like he could still see the explosion we’d left in our wake “—is drama. And I don’t want it interfering with these last two charters. We’ve got guests flying in from halfway across the world, paying astronomical amounts for the experience of a lifetime. They didn’t sign up for a soap opera.”
He pushed off the helm then, standing tall.
“I’m not firing you. Yet.”
My heart thudded with hope I didn’t dare name.