Page 93 of Falling Overboard

I didn’t trust myself to put my hand on his chest to stop him, so instead I took a step back. “Are you drunk?”

He looked confused, like he didn’t understand why I would ask that. “Not even a little. Why?”

“Because I want to make sure that you’re sober enough to understand how mad I am at you.”

“Mad? Why would you be mad at me?”

Did he really not know? Although to be fair, now there was more than one reason to be upset.

I backed up against the bunks to put some space between us. It didn’t help much because this room was too small. I needed distance because my body and lips were making a very convincing argument as to why I should ignore everything that had happened before and take Georgia’s advice and just kiss him.

Maybe there wouldn’t be a spark there and then we could just be friends. It might help me to get over this crush I had on him and move on.

But I needed him to explain first.

“What’s this I hear about you and me dating?”

Chapter Thirty-One

Lucky

“Georgia?” he asked, and I nodded to confirm his suspicion that she had been the one to tell me.

I expected him to deny it. To say that I must have misunderstood or that Georgia had.

“I’m sorry. I did say we were together.” He looked sheepish, rubbing the back of his neck.

“Why would you do that?”

“To get Georgia and Emilie to leave me alone. Unlike some people, I know when I’m being flirted with.”

Who was he talking about? Me? Implying that I didn’t know when I was being flirted with? That was not the point right now. “Look, I understand how they are but—”

“You’re not the only one who needs to follow the rules,” he interrupted me. “I’ve spent too much time not doing that. I need to be a better man. And I knew you wouldn’t make a move on me.”

That throbbing humiliation returned. “So I’m safe. You don’t have to worry about me.”

Poor pathetic little Lucky. Of course I wouldn’t be bold enough to go after what I wanted. Like I wasn’t even tempting enough for him to consider me a problem, like he did the other girls.

Then he took that pain away with what he said next. “No, you’re the one I have to worry about the most.”

I heard my own blood rushing in my ears. Before I could ask him to clarify, he went on, “After I saw that list they made, I doubled down on the lie. And it’s a harmless lie, isn’t it? It doesn’t hurt anyone.”

I told white lies all the time. In this industry it was a requirement. I might as well have told the guests, “Yes, there’s nothing I love more than cleaning your stinky toilet immediately after you’ve used it! I live to serve!” I wouldn’t be a good stewardess if I were a hundred percent honest with our guests. We had to tell them what they wanted to hear.

But this wasn’t a tiny white lie. This was a shimmering, multicolored disco ball of lies.

All those times when I had thought he might be flirting with me, had actually fooled myself into thinking he might be interested in me, they were all meaningless. This was why he had done it. He’d had to keep up the facade, the pretense that he and I were together.

It was why I had thought he wanted to kiss me. He’d never actually wanted it. It had all been in service of his lie.

That broke my heart a little. “It’s not harmless. What if word gets back to Captain Carl? We’ll both be fired.”

“We’re not actually dating.” He said the words slowly, like I didn’t already know that.

“If he believes we are and the crew verifies the lie you told them, we could be in trouble.”

“It seems to me like the crew constantly breaks most of the captain’s rules and so they have a vested interest in keeping quiet. Mutually assured destruction.”

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