I Signed Away Eight Million to Leave Him novel · Chapter 23 of 24

Chapter 23: The Sloop

I went out the porch door and down the lawn in my green silk dress.

The grass was wet. I took my shoes off and carried them.

At the edge of the cliff, the old wooden stairs went down to the hotel's dock, a hundred and twelve steps. I'd counted them in May.

Halfway down I saw the light.

A lantern, swinging gently, on the water.

His sloop was tied up at the end of the dock.

I'd seen it a dozen times on its mooring in front of his house, small and old, with a long varnished hull and a mast that leaned back.

It had never been here before.

I went down the rest of the stairs faster than I should have.

The dock boards were warm under my bare feet.

Corbin was kneeling on the stern of the boat with his back to me, in his white shirt and suit trousers, barefoot, with a paintbrush in his hand.

He was painting something on the back of the hull. By lantern light.

"You left," I said.

He jumped so hard he nearly went in the water.

"Jesus. Neve."

"You left in the middle of my speech."

"At the end." He stood up fast, putting himself between me and whatever he'd been painting. "I heard every word. You thanked the ice."

"Ivy cut the ice."

"I heard the ice in your voice."

I laughed, and then I didn't, because he looked terrible. Pale. Sweating. His hands were shaking.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong."

"Corbin."

"I had a plan," he said. "It was a very good plan. It involved the boat being ready before you finished, and a bottle of champagne, and some lanterns, and me not looking like this."

"What are you painting?"

"Nothing."

I stepped from the dock onto the boat. It rocked under me. He grabbed my elbow.

I leaned around him.

On the stern, where the boat's name had been, there was fresh white paint. And new letters, black, still wet.

GORMAN.

I looked at it for a long time.

"I was going to tell you it was her new name," he said. "And then ask you if you'd consider having mine. On paper. Only on paper, the rest of you can keep yours."

He reached into his pocket.

His hand was shaking so hard he couldn't get it out.

Corbin Fitzroy, who never raised his voice, who took a punch on a porch without blinking. Shaking.

I put my hand over his, on his pocket, and stopped him.

"No," I said.

His face went white.

"No, not like that," I said quickly. "I mean, not you. Me."

"What?"

I pulled the pencil out of my hair knot. My hair fell down around my shoulders.

I didn't have a ring. I had a pencil.

I held it out to him.

"Seven years I waited for a man to decide about me," I said. "I'm not waiting anymore. Corbin, will you marry me?"

He stared at the pencil.

Then at me.

Then he started to laugh. Really laugh, with his head back, so loud a gull took off from the dock post.

"Is that a yes?" I said. "Because you're making it hard to tell."

"Yes." He took the pencil, and his other hand finally came out of his pocket with a small box in it. "Yes. Obviously. You beat me by about four minutes."

He opened the box.

It was a plain gold band with one small green stone, the color of the ballroom walls.

"Verdigris," he said. "I had a jeweler match the paint. It took eleven tries."

I put my hand over my mouth.

I didn't cry in front of people. But there weren't any people. There was just him.

So I cried, a little, and he put the ring on my finger with shaking hands, and I put the pencil behind his ear.

Then he kissed me on the deck of his boat with the wet paint behind us.

The lantern swung. The water slapped the hull.

Up on the cliff the band was playing, and four hundred people were dancing in my ballroom.

I didn't want to be anywhere but here.

"Is there a bed on this boat?" I said against his mouth.

"There's a berth."

"Is that a bed?"

"It's a very small bed."

"Show me."

"Show me."

He kissed me again instead, one hand cupping my face, the other at the small of my back.

The pencil behind his ear dug into my temple and we both laughed into the kiss.

"Ow," I said.

"You gave it to me."

"I'm already rethinking."

He laughed, low and warm, and then I pulled him down the companionway before he could say anything else.

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