I let out a small laugh. “He had opinions.”
“Yeah, well, his opinions are garbage.”
His arm locked around me again, firm, protective, as if the information had physically hurt him.
“Fat?” he repeated. “Jesus Christ.”
His chest rose as he shook his head.
“Sloane… you’re hot.”
I rolled my eyes. “Oh, please.”
“No. Seriously, if you knew all the times I looked at you and had to walk away over the years, because I got hard thinking about you.”
His voice had dropped lower.
“I thought you were hot long before any of this. I had a wife and spent way too much time thinking about what it would be like to fuck you on every surface of the aquarium and every surface of my house. I’m ashamed, honestly. I had thoughts about you long before Sadie left, and I hate that about myself.”
His hand shifted along my waist.
“You’re absolutely beautiful,” he kissed my neck.
My cheeks warmed despite myself.
“You’re terrible,” I muttered.
“I’m honest.”
The early sunlight spread soft and gold across the water.
For a moment, we just lay there.
“You deserve better than someone who makes you invisible.”
I didn’t answer right away.
That word—invisible—lodged deep in my chest and stayed there, because that’s exactly what it had been. Every time, every relationship. I’d been present in someone’s life without ever being seen in it.
And here, on a boat in the middle of the ocean, wrapped in a blanket with a man I’d spent years convinced hated me—
I realized he’d seen me the whole time, not the version I performed, the version that smiled and said everything’s fine and let people take what they wanted without asking for anything back.
Me.
The difficult one, the stubborn one, the one who fought him at every turn and never once made it easy.
He’d seen all of it.
I leaned back against him. His warmth was solid and steady.
“Maybe,” I said, and my voice came out thinner than I wanted.
His fingers traced gently along my arm.
“Definitely.”
I turned my head enough to glance back at him.