Page 130 of Love Overboard
Could we possibly have both?
My gut churned like a stormy sea, those thoughts warring inside my head as I tried to focus on Captain Gary.
“I brought you two on as department heads,” he said. “Leaders. People the rest of the crew could look to for guidance, for professionalism. And what I got this morning…” He shook his head. “Was a complete breakdown in trust.”
My lungs burned, but I couldn’t seem to pull a full breath in. Finn was still beside me, his forearms resting on his knees now, fingers interlaced so tight his knuckles had gone white.
Captain’s voice hardened. “The moment you lost the respect of this crew, you lost the ability to lead them. And without leadership? Everything falls apart. Service. Deck. Galley. Interior. Doesn’t matter how good the food is or how well the table’s set if everyone’s too busy watching the damn fallout to do their jobs.”
I swallowed hard, vision stinging.
He was right.
This wasn’t the type of job where coworkers could hate each other and still somehow make the final product shine. We had to be a united team or the guests would notice. Service would suffer — and so would our tip. It could get even worse than that. It could be so bad that the guests demanded their money back altogether — and this wasn’t just a fifty-dollar dinner tab. This was a six-figure refund no one wanted to make.
Memories of the morning shocked me in rhythmic flashes of light, and I wondered how the hell we would work together seamlessly again after all that went down.
“I don’t care what your reasons were. I don’t care if it was love or lust or a bloody lapse in judgment. This—” Captain pointed toward the door like he could still see the explosion we’d left in our wake “—is drama. And I don’t want it interfering with these last two charters. We’ve got guests flying in fromhalfway across the world, paying astronomical amounts for the experience of a lifetime. They didn’t sign up for a soap opera.”
He pushed off the helm then, standing tall.
“I’m not firing you. Yet.”
My heart thudded with hope I didn’t dare name.
“There are only two charters left, and frankly, I don’t have the time or the resources to replace you. And technically, you haven’t committed a fireable offense. But make no mistake — if things don’t change, if the tension continues, if the crew keeps turning on each other because of the two of you?”
He stepped forward, eyes sharp as broken glass.
“I won’t hesitate.”
Finn nodded beside me, stiff. I did the same, forcing my head to move even though my entire body felt frozen.
“Keep your heads down. Do your jobs. Make amends with who you can, and lead. Together.” He looked between us, that word heavy with expectation. “You don’t have to like each other, you don’t have to speak outside of what’s necessary. But I expect the interior to function like a well-oiled machine. I expect dinner service to run without a hiccup. I expect you both to act like the professionals I hired.”
The silence that followed his statement was heavy with that expectation.
“I don’t want to fire anyone,” Captain Gary said again, softer this time — but somehow even more dangerous. “But that doesn’t mean I won’t.”
We both nodded once more. My mouth was dry as sand, but I managed to croak out my biggest fear.
“What about after the season?”
His gaze snapped to mine.
I hadn’t meant for it to sound as broken as it did. But he knew what I was asking. Would this ruin me? Was I done? Captainhad taken a chance on me this season. He’d given me my shot as chief stew.
Had I ruined it?
Captain’s jaw ticced, his lips pressing into a flat, unreadable line. “We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.”
He held my gaze, and something in his eyes flickered — not kindness, exactly. Maybe pity. Maybe frustration. Maybe a mix of the two.
“You’re both damn good at what you do. But professionalism is half the battle, if not more, in this career. And I’m not sure a glowing recommendation from me can overshadow drama that makes a whole crew melt down.”
I bit the inside of my cheek hard against the emotion threatening to overtake me from that little truth bomb. I knew he was right, but I’d hoped he could somehow reassure me that it would all be fine.
I hoped, somehow, this could all be fixed with the wave of a magical Captain wand.
