The deck's teak was still warm underfoot, humid salt air clinging to my skin as the engine's low thrum vibrated through the soles of my bare feet. A half-empty glass of white wine sweated on the rail, its cold condensation dripping onto polished wood while the water slapped dark and slick against the hull.

I stared at my phone. The screen had gone dark again—Bella's name still hovering in the recent calls, the red "Missed" stamped beneath it like a brand. I'd called her four times. Four times it had rung through to voicemail, her voice bright and warm on the recording, saying she'd get back to me soon. She hadn't.

"Anything?" Christian's voice came from the padded bench behind me, low and flat.

"No." I turned, the phone still clutched in my hand. "She's not picking up."

Christian swirled his scotch, the ice clinking against the crystal, his jaw tight beneath the salt-and-pepper beard. He'd been nursing the same glass for an hour, and the amber liquid had barely moved. "Sofia's turned her phone off entirely. I've left three messages. The last one I don't even remember recording."

"What did you say?"

"Something pathetic." He took a long swallow, grimacing like the whiskey was medicine. "That I'd wait. That I'd do anything. That I was sorry." A pause. "I don't know which one made me sound most like a dog begging at a table."

I laughed—a short, hollow sound that the water swallowed. "Welcome to the club."

The yacht rocked gently, a slow roll that had been soothing an hour ago and now just felt like the world refusing to stay still. I'd brought us out here to get away from the city, from the penthouse with its memories and the rain that wouldn't quit. The sky had cleared by late afternoon, leaving a bruised purple smear across the horizon where the sun had gone down, and the Miami skyline glittered in the distance like a promise we couldn't collect on.

"She said she needs to think," Christian said, staring at the skyline. "That's what she told me before she walked off into the rain. 'I need to think.'" He set the glass down on the armrest, hard enough that the ice jumped. "What does that even mean? You either trust someone, or you don't."

"It means she's not ready to walk away." I moved to the rail, leaning my forearms on the warm wood. The wine glass sat there, sweating, and I picked it up, took a sip. It had gone slightly warm. Everything on this boat had gone slightly warm. "But she's not ready to forgive you either. You're in limbo."

"I hate limbo."

"Yeah." I stared at the dark water. "Me too."

Bella's face kept surfacing—the way she'd looked at the door, eyes wet but fierce, her hand still on the handle while the night air spilled in around her. She hadn't said yes. She hadn't said no. She'd just stood there, caught between the rain and me, and I'd watched her decide something I couldn't read.

Then she'd left. Not slammed the door, not run—just walked out into the wet dark, and I'd stood on the landing watching her go, the knot in my chest pulling so tight I thought something might tear.

"I told her I wanted to be different," I said, not looking at Christian. "I meant it. And she still walked out."

"Because you've said it before."

I turned. His eyes were the color of cold tea, watchful, unsparing. He'd always been able to cut through my bullshit, and right now I didn't have the energy to dodge.

"What do you want me to say?" I asked. "That I deserve it? That I fucked it up and she's right to freeze me out?"

"I want you to say something true." He picked up his scotch again, swirled it. "For once."

"I'm forty-one years old." The words came out flatter than I meant them to. "I've got more money than I can spend, a dick that's never had trouble finding a warm hole, and I'm standing on a boat in the middle of the ocean calling a woman who won't pick up because I can't stop wrecking the one good thing that's ever happened to me." I took a breath. "That's true."

Christian was quiet for a long moment. The waves slapped against the hull, the engine hummed, and somewhere out on the water a gull cried—lost, maybe, or just lonely.

"I'm forty," he said finally. "I've got a woman who gave me her virginity, who looked at me like I was the only man in the world, and I threw it away because I couldn't say no to a dancer with a beautiful mouth." He set the glass down. "I wrote her a poem. Did I tell you that?"

"You mentioned it."

"It was the only honest thing I've given her, and I buried it under a mountain of lies." He shook his head slowly. "She said she needs to think. I don't think she's coming back."

"You don't know that."

"I know what I'd do, in her place." He looked at me, and for a second the mask slipped—the sardonic Brit, the calm predator—and I saw the man underneath, tired and scared and out of moves. "I'd run."

The silence stretched between us, thick as the humidity. I finished the wine, set the glass down, and watched a fishing boat crawl across the dark water a mile off, its running lights blinking red and green.

"We should call them again," I said, reaching for my phone.

"It won't work."

"You don't know that."

"Jeff." He said my name like a door closing. "I know."

I called anyway. Bella's phone rang once, twice, three times, and on the fourth ring it clicked to voicemail, her voice bright and warm and utterly indifferent to the fact that I was standing on a boat in the dark, holding my breath.

"Hey, it's Bella. Leave a message and I'll get back to you."

Beep.

"Bella." I paused. What was there to say that I hadn't already said? "I'm on the boat. Christian's here. We're—" I stopped, swallowed. "I just want to know you're okay. Call me when you can. Please."

I hung up and threw the phone onto the bench seat. It bounced once, screen lighting up with the notification, then went dark.

Christian didn't say anything. He didn't need to.

I paced. The deck was warm under my bare feet, the heat of the day still stored in the teak, and the engine's vibration ran up through my calves, through my spine, like the boat was a living thing breathing under me. I'd bought this yacht three years ago, right after the divorce, and I'd christened it "The Rebound." Stupid name. Stupid boat. Stupid me.

"We can't just sit here," I said, turning at the rail. "We can't just—wait."

"What else is there?"

"We could go to them."

"Sofia doesn't want to see me. Bella doesn't want to see you. We'd be showing up like desperate men, and desperate is the worst thing a man can be."

"So what, we just give up?"

Christian picked up his scotch, took a slow sip, and set it down. "I didn't say that. I said we can't force it. They need to come to us."

"And if they don't?"

He didn't answer. The silence was answer enough.

I leaned against the rail, staring at the skyline. All those lights. All those windows. Somewhere in one of them, Bella was probably lying in bed, staring at her ceiling, thinking about me and hating that she was thinking about me. Or maybe she wasn't thinking about me at all. Maybe she'd already decided, already moved on, and I was just the ghost of a bad decision she was trying to shake.

The thought made my stomach turn.

"I've been thinking," I said slowly.

"Dangerous."

"Shut up and listen." I turned to face him. "We've been doing this wrong. All of it. We keep chasing women who leave, and we keep getting burned, and we keep doing the same thing over and over because it's what we know."

"That's not a plan. That's a eulogy."

"I'm getting there." I took a breath. "We need to remind ourselves what we're fighting for. Not them—us. What we want. Why we want it." I gestured at the water, the skyline, the whole glittering city. "We've got everything a man could want, and we're miserable because we don't have the one thing money can't buy."

"Love." He said it like the word tasted strange in his mouth.

"Yeah. Love. Or whatever the hell it is when a woman looks at you, and you feel like you might actually deserve to be looked at." I shook my head. "I've been chasing it for twenty years, Christian. Twenty years of girls who want my money, my dick, my name. And the one woman who looked at me like I was just a man—just Jeff—I let her walk out the door."

He was quiet, watching me with those cold-tea eyes.

"So what do we do?" he asked.

I didn't have an answer. I had a feeling, a knot in my chest, a hunger that had nothing to do with food and everything to do with the space Bella had left when she walked out that door.

"We remind ourselves," I said. "We remind ourselves what we're fighting for."

"How?"

I looked at him. The idea surfaced slowly, like something rising from deep water, and I didn't know if it was brilliant or pathetic or just the kind of thing two desperate men tell themselves to feel alive.

"The girls from the show," I said. "The ones who've been eye-fucking me for months. The ones I've never touched."

Christian's eyebrows rose. "You want to—"

"No. Yes. Not like that." I ran a hand through my hair. "I want to remember what it felt like. To be wanted. To have a woman look at me like I'm the only man in the room. Not because of the money, not because of the dick—because of me."

"You think a show girl is going to look at you like that?"

"I think she might." I held his gaze. "And I think you need it too."

He was quiet for a long moment, his jaw working beneath the beard. Then he picked up his scotch and drained it.

"This is a terrible idea," he said.

"Probably."

"The worst idea you've ever had."

"Maybe."

He set the glass down, and something shifted in his face—the predator's stillness, the watchful calm. "But I'm listening."

I reached for my phone, screen still dark, Bella's name still hovering in my recent calls. I thumbed through my contacts, past the names I'd collected like trophies, past the girls who'd called me daddy and meant it, past the ones who'd left messages I'd never returned.

And then I found it. A name I hadn't called in months. A girl who'd smiled at me from the runway, who'd lingered after every show, who'd made it clear she was available and I'd never taken her up on it.

Maya.

I lifted the phone, thumb hovering over the contact.

"Trust me," I said, looking at Christian. "I know exactly who to call."

He didn't answer. The silence was the only answer I needed.

The engine hummed. The waves slapped against the hull. And somewhere in the dark water between us and the city, the night was still full of everything we hadn't said.