Chapter 4: The Maren

Three nights later Alana broke her own first rule.

She did not decide to.

She lay awake in the guest room at one in the morning, listening for the floorboard, and the floorboard never creaked.

His bedroom door stayed shut.

For three nights he had kept every word she asked of him.

He had not touched her in the kitchen, or on the stairs, or at the table with the lights on.

He had looked at her across a plate of crab, and she had felt that look on her skin for hours.

She got up and put on his old flannel shirt from the hook by the door.

It was the only thing she had put on.

His room was empty, with the bed made.

Through the hall window she saw one light burning at the end of the pier, yellow and small, on the Maren.

She went down the boathouse stair in bare feet.

The dock boards were wet and cold under her soles.

Every window on Sigrid's side of the street was dark.

She told herself she was only checking on him.

The cabin door of the Maren stood half open, and warm light spilled out onto the deck.

She stepped over the rail and knocked on the frame.

"I know you're there," Henrik said from inside. "I heard you on the stair."

She went in.

He was sitting on the edge of the berth in jeans and no shirt, with a wrench in one hand and a bilge pump in pieces at his feet.

He looked up, and his eyes went over her once, from the bare legs to the flannel hanging off her shoulder.

"That's my shirt."

"It was on a hook."

"You said never outside."

"I know what I said."

He put the wrench down very slowly.

"Go back up to the house, Alana."

"No."

"I mean it. You made a rule, and I kept it. You can walk back up that dock and we can both pretend you got lost."

"That's the second time you've offered me the door."

"It's the second time you haven't taken it." His voice was low and rough. "Think about why."

She stood there with her heart going hard and made herself say it.

"I want to be here."

"Where?"

"With you. On this boat. Where nobody can see us from the house."

"Then come here."

She crossed the cabin and stood in front of him.

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