Full Steam Ahead (Sea Swept #1) (16 page)

As water drips down my bathing suit, I follow Yasmin to the steps of the Sunshine Pool, and we wade in. The water is cool, but refreshingly so, and when it’s deep enough I dive under to get my head wet. We’ve got most of the pool to ourselves.
 

“This is so great,” I say brightly, looking up. “Swimming under the stars.”

Yasmin doesn’t follow my gaze. She sidles up to me and pitches her voice low. “What are you doing, G?”
 

“What do you mean?” My heart stops. Jace and I were too obvious, and she’s going to yell at me for fooling around with him in a public hot tub. I cringe.
 

“You spent the whole day hiking around with Jace. You don’t have to sit next to him all night too.”

Thank God she didn’t realize what was going on under the water. “Sorry, did you want me to sit between you and Austin?” I ask, but Yasmin only shoots me a pointed look. “Maybe I wanted to sit next to him,” I mumble.

She shakes her head. “See, I knew it.”

“Knew what?”

“He’s getting to you. Jace is a player, remember? Totally not worth your time.”

I glance over to the hot tub, but I can only see the back of Jace’s head, along with his muscled shoulders. “I think I might’ve misjudged him before.”

“That’s just him working his game on you. Don’t fall for it.”

But maybe I do want to fall for it. Not fall for Jace’s game, because we haven’t been playing games, but
him
. Yas doesn’t see the side he’s shown me—his surprising eye for art and how he overcame his unhappy past to emerge stronger. Maybe I’m already falling for him.
 

I shouldn’t do that, not when my life is in such shambles at home, but instead of panic, the idea causes a strange, bright calm in my chest. This trip is my oasis, my calm in the eye of the storm, and no matter what waits for me afterward, I’m going to live it fully.

My thoughts must be written on my face, because Yasmin gets a worried look in her eye.
 

“Look, I wasn’t going to say anything, because I thought he never had a chance with you and I wanted you to be able to kick back after all the stress you’ve been under—“

“All the stress?” I interrupt in surprise. Has Yasmin actually seen through my facade too?
 

“From finals and the breakup. That’s why you’ve been so wound up lately, right?” Out of habit I nod, and she goes on. ”I wanted you to relax and have a little bit of fun instead of being on your guard all the time, but …”
 

The look on her face says I won’t like this.

“What?”
 

“Apparently, some of the Alpha guys bet Jace that he could get you into bed by the end of the cruise. I overheard Andy talking about it.”

Just like that, my night flips over. Cold douses the warmth I had been feeling all day, drenches me to my toes, and the bright calm goes dark.
 

“Seriously?” I say, more of a whimper than a question. Yasmin wouldn’t lie about something like this. She’s saving me from being humiliated in the morning.

She nods grimly. “I didn’t give it much thought until I saw him working his man-slut charm on you.”

“Don’t call him a man-slut,” I say automatically. My knee-jerk defense of Jace makes Yasmin sigh, as if she realizes how much I’d started to care for him.

“Oh, Georgia.”

I look away. “It’s … not a nice word, and he doesn’t deserve it.” At least, I hadn’t thought he did.

“With
his
reputation? I think he does.”

“His reputation isn’t the truth,” I say.

Yasmin puts a slim hand on my shoulder, a spot of warmth in my sea of cold. “You’re not falling for him, are you?”

“No, of course not. We just had a good talk on the hike today.” I’d thought we were on the verge of something wonderful. How could the Jace who listened to my family drama earlier make me into a stupid bet? The stars above us seem to dim as I realize that my oasis has dried up, was just a mirage anyway. “Thanks for telling me.”
 

“Of course. I don’t want you to get hurt.” Yasmin’s fingers tighten on my shoulder. “You deserve the world, G, not some guy just trying to get laid.”
 

She hugs me tight, and I’m grateful all over again that I have Yas to watch my back for me. When we return to the hot tub, I sit next to her. Jace tries to catch my gaze with a sexy smile that stirs something deep in my belly despite how angry I am, but I ignore him. Instead I sympathize with Chloe as she tells us how she lost her favorite wrap skirt on the beach today.
 

Eventually we grab daiquiris and move onto the lounge chairs under the stars. I can feel Jace’s presence as he climbs out of the hot tub and walks around the deck, but I forbid myself from even throwing a dirty look at him. The thought of what I let him do to me earlier … and I was so close to sleeping with him, too. Out of the corner of my eye, I notice Jace glancing in my direction, first confused, then annoyed.
 

Good.
 

Most of the Alpha guys and Kappa girls move inside to find the club again and dance the rest of the evening away. Yas heads to the piano bar to find Austin, leaving me alone to stretch out across my lounge chair by the pool and stare up at the dark sky. I won’t let myself think about Jace. I won’t.

I fish my sunglasses from my bag, and even though it’s dark out I slip them on so that no one can see my expression. I lean back on the lounger. Now that I have time to fume by myself, I get more and more angry about the bet.

As if my thoughts have summoned him, Jace drops down onto the lounger next to me. His hands are on his knees, and he gives me an unreadable look.

“Are you avoiding me?” he says, getting right to the point.
 

Part of me wants to keep the peace and say no, of course not, but after all of our honesty earlier today I find that I can’t.
 

“Yep,” I say, and slurp the last of my daiquiri through the straw.

Jace studies me for a moment. I feel next to naked lying here, even though I put on my cover-up dress a while ago.
 

“I guess I shouldn’t have said all of that stuff about my family earlier. It was a lot,” he says.

I shrug, not sure where he’s going with this.

“And I’m guessing by your sudden cold shoulder,” he continues, “that Yasmin reminded you how wrong a guy like me is for a girl like you.”

His gaze is hard, but I meet it defiantly.

“Yeah. Basically.” How could I have started falling for a guy who’d make a bet about bedding his roommate? I wonder how much he wagered. And now he’s playing the part of the wounded puppy, as if all of this is my fault. He’s a great actor, I’ll give him that.
 

“Right,” Jace mutters. He eyes me a moment more as if about to say something else, then gives a little shake of his head and strides off to the remaining group of our friends who’ve stayed on deck to play poker. A couple girls in particular are more than happy to see him join in, and I huff out a hurt breath. Damn him, for making me confide in him, then turning out to be a jackass after all. But I only have myself to blame for opening myself up to him.
 

I gather my things, planning to stop by the piano bar to ask Yasmin if I can crash with her tonight. But right as I reach the door to the ship I run into Elise, the blonde staffer girl who saved me from Hunter and Kelsey last night.
 

“Oh, hey!” Elise says. She’s wearing a V-neck t-shirt with black shorts, so I assume she’s off duty for the night. “How did your shore excursion go today?”
 

She’s smiling so brightly that I force myself to put on my cheeriest voice. “It was great. And thank you—Jace said that you got us a discount on it.”

“No problem. I get yelled at if the excursions aren’t filled to capacity anyway. I hope it was okay that I told Jace where you were on New Year’s Eve—he seemed super worried about you.”
 

“Yeah,” I say softly. I wonder how much of his attention over the last couple days was because of the bet.

“Are you guys a couple?” Elise asks, then pauses. “Sorry, I’m prying too much, aren’t I?”
 

“It’s fine. And, um, no. Jace and I aren’t together.”
 

“Really? He seemed into you.”

“I think he treats a lot of girls that way,” I say, trying not to sound too hurt.
 

Surprise lights Elise’s vivid blue eyes. “I don’t know. I mean, I’ve only talked to him a couple times but I’ve seen the way he looks at you. You can’t fake that kind of look.” She tosses her blond hair and shrugs. “Anyway, I better get going. I’m meeting a friend.”
 

She says goodnight and slips down the hallway, but I stand there for a moment, thinking. I don’t know what to believe. Maybe Elise is right. Yasmin would never lie to me, but some instinct tells me that I might be seeing things wrong with Jace. I step back outside into the sparkling pool lights again, my gaze finding Jace in the crowd with disconcerting ease, as if a part of me never stopped noticing where he was all night.

He’s leaning on the railing across the deck, chatting up two girls. At first glance, it looks like he’s flirting happily, but when I look closer … He’s hiding it well, but the line of his shoulders is tense, and his fingers hold his Corona a little too tightly. It dawns on me that he almost looks … hurt.
 

Did
I
hurt him? How?

I start thinking about all the things Jace told me today, about his parents, about his sister; and rationality creeps in. With his smile and natural charm, he doesn’t need a sob story to get a girl in bed. He didn’t have to tell me all that, but he did. He confided in me.

My throat tightens as I realize that whatever Yasmin heard can’t be the truth. I know in my bones that Jace wasn’t faking it with me earlier today. And by doubting him, I might have wrecked things with him before they even started.
 

Then again, part of me thinks, maybe that’s a good thing. What’s going to happen with Jace and me after this trip? I might not even return to Baxter for spring semester. In the quiet spaces I had today, I realized I might have to drop out of school after all. It’s so close to graduation that even the idea hurts, but I just won’t have the money, not once I make this latest payment. It isn’t a pleasant decision, but at least I finally feel like I can handle it. Thanks in large part to Jace.
 

My life is going to suck once I get back to New Orleans, but I’ll survive somehow. I’ll move home, take a second job, and keep making payments until … Until when? My stomach lurches, because I’m not naïve enough to think that
he
will ever stop blackmailing me. But at some point the statute of limitations will kick in, and I can finish school and get my life back on track.
 

Thinking about it makes me nauseous, but I focus on picturing
Jack in the Pulpit Abstraction No. 5
in my head until my stomach settles. I should probably let things drop with Jace but … I can’t. I don’t want to. I’ve finally felt alive again these past few days, and it’s largely because of him. So until I step off this boat for good, I decide, I’m not going to waste another moment. I’m going to live for right now.
 

I make my way across the deck and tap Jace on the shoulder. “Can I talk to you?”

He barely spares me a glance. “Kind of busy.”

Okay, I deserve that. “Please?”

Jace stands there stiffly a moment more, then shrugs. Ignoring the invisible daggers the other girls shoot my way, I lead him around the pool so we can talk by ourselves.

“What is it, Georgia?” he says curtly.
 

I think I already know the answer, but I take a deep breath and ask anyway. “Did you make a bet with your friends that you’d get me to sleep with you?”

His mouth parts. And there it is, the honest surprise that I had expected. “What?” He shakes his head. “No. I didn’t. Why?”

“There’s a rumor that you did. Yasmin told me.”

He absorbs my words before he casts his gaze over the circle of his fraternity brothers playing poker. “If there is a bet, which there very well might be, because some of the guys bet on everything … I’m not a part of it. That much, I swear.”
 

I can’t help but smile. “I’m sorry I didn’t ask you about it sooner. I was just thrown. I didn’t want to think that you could do that.”

“I thought you’d realized you didn’t want to hang out with trailer trash.”

I’m a little startled by such a mean self-characterization, but then I see the rueful tilt to his lips. Suddenly I realize that that’s why he all but raced out of our room when we got back from the ruin trip—because he was afraid of what I thought about his past. I realize that Jace is just as reluctant to share his life—his private, real life—with anyone as I am. It must have been a really big deal for him to confide in me today.

The idea that I can hurt him as much as he could hurt me scares me, but I straighten my shoulders. If he needs to know how I feel about all the stuff he told me, then I’ll tell him.
 

“I think you’re really strong for going through what you did,” I start out. “I think your family is … wounded, sure, but brave. Really brave. Your mom and sister sound close, and you sound like you love them both. That’s really nice, you know?” God, ‘nice’ is such a lame word to use. I duck my head. “Anyway, I don’t think less of you, or them, because of where you started. And I’m sorry I doubted you. Sometimes I’m kind of an idiot.”
 

Aware that I’ve started to babble, I cut myself off and hold my breath, waiting for a response. After a moment of silence, I dare a glance up. Jace is studying me quietly, and I can’t read his expression. Maybe he won’t forgive me. Maybe he’ll say it’s best if we stayed friends, that he can’t be with someone who turns on him at the first sign of trouble.

Waiting gets more agonizing with every second, and I struggle to hold back tears.
 

“Jace, say something,” I whisper.

After another moment, Jace finally leans towards me. Heat from his body radiates off of him as he bends his head to brush his lips over my ear.