Page 133 of Love Overboard
Because in his arms, I wasn’t the chief stew. I wasn’t the failure. I wasn’t the drama.
I was just me.
And even if it was just for a stolen moment, I felt safe.
He shifted just enough to lean his cheek against my temple, his voice barely a whisper against my skin.
“I know you need a moment,” he said. “I’ll give you that. But please, Firefly…” He pulled back just enough to see my face, his hand sliding up to tuck my hair behind my ear, fingers brushing tenderly along my jaw. “Don’t push me away on this. Not now.”
My eyes fluttered shut, breath shaking, but he kept going.
“I’m not sorry. I don’t regret it. I don’t regret us.” His thumb swiped beneath my eye, catching a tear before it could fall. “It’s just a show. It’s cameras and chaos and carefully edited moments. But what’s between us?” His voice dropped, low and sure. “That’s real.”
I pushed against his chest — reflexively, defensively. The words came out of me before I could stop them, raw and sharp. “We can’t, Finn. This can’t work.” I shook my head even as moretears pooled in my eyes. “They’ll keep coming for us. The crew. The producers. The guests—”
Finn didn’t let me finish.
His arms stayed around me, grounding me, and his words cut through the spiral with a steady conviction.
“I don’t fecking care, Em, and I’ll be right here with you until you don’t care either. Maybe we didn’t find the right way back to each other,” he said. “But we found a way. That’s got to mean something. Hell, maybe it’s the universe yelling at us this time instead of whispering the way it did two years ago.”
I blinked up at him, lip trembling.
“We wasted so much time,” he croaked, his voice heavy with regret. “Christ, I hate meself for that. We can’t go back in time and change it, but for some reason, whether it was easy or not, we got our second chance. Don’t let them tear us apart again. Not when we just found our way back. Not when it finally feels like we’re home again.”
My breath caught, chest still tight, but something shifted in it — like the panic didn’t own me anymore. It was like when the downpour turns to a drizzle and then to a drip, like when the sun makes a rainbow before breaking up the clouds altogether
Finn was making space for something softer to grow in its place.
He touched my hair gently, threading his fingers through the strands. “They’ve already made up their minds about us, Firefly. Let ’em. Let them call us the villains. Let them talk. But we know the truth.”
His eyes searched mine, burning with something that made my knees weak all over again. I clung to him instinctively — my lifeline, my home.
“We don’t have to play into their narrative. We don’t have to fight back or prove anything. We just keep our heads down, do our jobs, and be together. Quietly. Steadily. All in.”
He kissed my forehead, soft and reverent.
“Don’t you want that?” he whispered. “Because I swear to God, Em… it’s all I want.Youare all I want.”
And somehow, that wrecked me more than the lecture had.
Because I wanted it, too.
I wanted it so badly the thought of not having it was enough pressure to crack a rib.
I nodded, over and over, and when Finn realized I was with him, his eyes shot open wide.
“Yeah?”
“Yes,” I whispered.
And then I kissed him.
My fingers wove into his hair, holding tight as he wrapped me up in his arms and held me to him. Our kisses were frenzied and wild — just like our love.
I didn’t know what came next.
I had no fucking idea how we would survive the next two charters, how we’d keep our teams working together when they all seemed ready to tear each other and the two of us apart. I couldn’t control what story the production crew would tell, but I had a good feeling whatever was spun wouldn’t reflect me or Finn in a good light.
