Page 1 of Caribbean Crush

Chapter One

CASEY

I squeeze my eyes shut as I white-knuckle the metal railing with both hands. Oh dear god. I’ve really done it now. I’ve flown too close to the sun. It serves me right for being such a liar, liar, pants on fire.

I feel a slight rocking underfoot that shouldn’t be there. It’s in direct contrast to everything I read online.

It’s just like being on land!

You won’t notice a thing!

These new ships are practically floating cities!

The sway is so gentle I could almost miss it, but not now, not with my eyes closed and my other senses dulled. It’s a perpetual reminder of where I’ve found myself: adrift.

My erratic heart is going crazy in my chest. My knees bend as I grip tighter to the rail.

I never thought I’d be standing on the balcony of a suite on board a luxury cruise liner about to set sail around the Caribbean.

I can’t force my eyes to peel open. The sun bears down on me, adding fire to the stifling moist heat. How do people live like this? Fort Lauderdale might as well be the devil’s butt crack for how sweltering it is down here. The seagulls caw overhead. The briny sea breeze whirls and lifts my hair so it dances around my shoulders. The boat’s horn rumbles a low, long blare—a triumphant send-off that has me nearly doubling over.

Is it too late to jump and swim ashore? Surely, I could make it. I’m not that far up.

I peek my eyes open to check, and the heady height almost makes me lose my breakfast. I am that far up.

It’s going to be okay. Don’t panic. Ignore the impending doom creeping in from all sides. The impostor syndrome chirping in the back of your mind isn’t real. You belong here!

And I do.

I do belong here. I’m an intrepid reporter. A legitimate journalist with a press badge and real credentials. I didn’t steal any of it! A sprightly blonde attendant willingly handed me a press packet when she showed me to my suite an hour ago. It had my name on it and everything. Printed in black and white.

I, Casey Hughes, have a job to do.

I work at Bon Voyage, a travel magazine that boasts more than five million readers and another few million online subscribers. I’ve worked there for six years, ever since I graduated from college with a degree in journalism. I have a very fancy, very chichi title. Here it is. Gird your loins. I’m a ... drum roll ... fact-checker. I know what you’re thinking—That can’t possibly be a real job. Well, it is. On my email signature, it reads, Casey Hughes, fact-checker.

But that’s not my end goal.

This isn’t the career I’ve always longed for. I didn’t stand up at my kindergarten graduation—after the boy who picked astronaut and the girl who couldn’t choose between veterinarian and Barbie—and tell the crowd that I longed to be a glorified grunt worker.

I’ve always wanted to work in travel journalism. My initial longing to see far-off places stems not from inspiring college lectures but from TV shows like The Price Is Right and Wheel of Fortune. In the afternoons, after school, my grandmother and I would sit on the couch together, watching Bob Barker and Pat Sajak woo contestants and audiences alike with the promise of luxurious vacation prizes. Jamaica, South Africa, England—it didn’t matter.

“Oh, Italy!” my grandmother would exclaim. “I’ve always wanted to go there!” Then she’d turn to me with an imploring look in her eyes. “Promise me, when you’re older, you’ll go off somewhere exotic and tell me all about it! I want to know everything.”

And I would nod and agree and promise to do just that. Her desire to see the world became my desire.

Unfortunately, I haven’t quite worked out how to make that happen yet. I have no money to travel, and I haven’t worked my way up to my dream job yet. As a fact-checker, I get tasked with lowly assignments a monkey could do and get paid shit all to do it. My paycheck can be counted in pennies.

Now what is a fact-checker doing aboard a luxurious cruise ship?

Oh, simple.

I’ve committed a crime, and it’s only a matter of time before I’m found out.

It’s why I’m panicking. Why I’m squeezing my eyes shut again as I try those slow, drawn-out breathing exercises pregnant women do while trying to endure a painful contraction in the delivery room. Heee heee hoooo.

My crime is mild, though the person (er ... man) involved likely won’t see it that way.

Well ... maybe he will. It’s hard to know—

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