The boarding ramp swayed beneath my feet.
Just slightly. Just enough.
I stopped walking and pressed my hand flat against the metal railing. Cold. Solid. I told myself it was solid. Beneath me, through the gaps in the grating, I could see the harbor water—dark green and moving, always moving—and my stomach dropped straight through the floor of the world.
Breathe in for four. Hold for four. Out for four.
Dr. Hale's voice in my head, patient as always. I had practiced this in her office a hundred times, sitting in a beige chair with a glass of water on the table between us, nowhere near the ocean. It felt different now. Everything felt different when the water was real.
A porter behind me cleared his throat politely.
I made myself take the next step. Then the next. My knuckles were white on the railing and I did not let myself look down again. I kept my eyes on the ship—the Celestia, enormous and gleaming and lit up gold against the late afternoon sky—and I thought about Deacon's face when he saw me. That was the only thing I let myself think about. His face. The way his whole expression would open up, surprised and then warm, the way it used to when we were first together and I still felt like someone who could surprise him.
Three years of marriage. Our anniversary. And I had gotten myself onto a cruise ship.
I thought he would understand what that meant, even if I never explained it. I thought the fact of me being there would say everything.
I made it onto the deck. I exhaled.
The Celestia was the kind of ship that made you feel small in a way that was supposed to feel luxurious. Marble floors. Flower arrangements the size of small trees. Staff in white uniforms who moved like they'd been choreographed. I had the cabin number from his assistant—Deacon had booked this trip for a business retreat, a long weekend, and I had spent two weeks planning the surprise, buying the champagne he liked, rehearsing what I would say.
I found the suite. I knocked. No answer.
I tried the handle. It was unlocked.
I set the champagne on the table inside and stood there for a moment in the quiet of his room—his jacket folded over the chair, his watch on the nightstand—and I felt something warm move through my chest. He was here. I had done it. I had gotten on the water for him, and he was here, and in a few minutes I would see his face.
I went to find him.
The upper deck at sunset was all amber light and salt air. I came up the stairs still holding the small card I had written—nothing long, just his name and a few words I'd been carrying around in my chest for weeks—and I saw them before they saw me.
Deacon. And a woman I recognized from the social pages, from galas, from the particular way certain people talk about other people when they want you to know they find them dangerous. Antonella Perry. Dark hair. A white dress. Her hands in his hair and his arms around her and the two of them completely, entirely absorbed in each other.
The card fell out of my hand.
I don't know how long I stood there. Long enough for the light to feel wrong. Long enough for the sound of the water below to get very loud.
Then Antonella opened her eyes.
She saw me over his shoulder. And something shifted in her face—fast, precise, like a calculation completing—and then she screamed.
She threw herself backward. One clean, fluid motion, like a dancer who had rehearsed the fall. Down the stairs. The sound of it was terrible.
Deacon spun around. His face was—I don't have a word for it. Shock, and then something that hardened into fury so fast I barely saw the transition.
"She pushed me." Antonella's voice floated up from the bottom of the stairs, broken and breathless. "She pushed me—the baby—"
"Deacon." My voice came out wrong. Too quiet. "I didn't touch her. I just got here, I just came up the stairs—"
"Don't." He was already moving past me, already going down to her, already kneeling beside her with his hand on her face like she was something precious and breakable. He didn't look at me when he spoke. "Don't say another word."
"I came to surprise you. It was our anniversary, I got on the ship for you, I'm afraid of the water and I got on the ship—"
"Get her out of here," he said to someone behind me. A crew member. Not to me. About me. "Put her in a separate cabin."
I stood on the deck of the ship I had boarded for him, with the harbor water moving somewhere below, and I watched him cradle another woman's head in his hands.
He never once looked up.
