The bathrooms are on the bottom deck, toward the stern. I wait outside for what feels like an hour, standing at the rail and looking out at the water, my mind racing.

I’ve always figured Beck was off-limits. That’s been the basis of our relationship, for literally two decades. Maybe I’ve been ridiculous to cling to it, but it’s been part of the rock-solid foundation of my life.

But now there’s a crack in that foundation. We cracked it, together, that night at the Monroe, and that crack has been getting bigger and bigger. We can’t go on this way. One way or another—whether we patch that crack or blast it wide open—we have to settle this.

I don’t know if that crack can be patched. And even if it can … I’m not sure I want to.

Do I want things to go back to how they were before? Or could there be something different, something better?

Behind me, the bathroom door opens, and Beck sighs. “Garrett, what are you doing here?”

“I came down to talk to you.” I turn to look at her. She’s got her arms wrapped around herself, and I can see that the breeze off the water is giving her goosebumps. “Did you bring a sweater?”

She scowls. “Stop it.”

I’m genuinely confused. “Stop what?”

“Stop fucking babysitting me—” she begins, then her eyes widen as she looks over my shoulder.

I turn back to the water as she slowly moves to stand at the rail beside me, close enough that I can smell her perfume.

The moonlight is just bright enough to pick out the tiny waves our boat is creating as they lap against the south side of Fort Gorges. The water and the sky are both deep blue, except for a thin, red-orange band right at the horizon where the sun disappeared an hour or so ago. Two swans are swimming in the shadow of the fort, just gliding along slowly in the dim moonlight.

I know they’re white—swans are white. But in the dusk, and the shadow, they look blue.

The fucking blue swans. I stare at them, disbelieving. I know full well this is ridiculous, that some stupid old urban legend has nothing to do with me and Beck and what we’re going through right now. They’re a ridiculous story, and until this very moment I didn’t actually believe they existed. But there they are. It’s like they’re mocking me. Like they were sent here, right now, to tell me I don’t know half of what I think I do. Maybe less.

It doesn’t escape me that I’m seeing them now, when I’m in the process of fucking up the only relationship I’ve ever truly believed would last forever.

Neither of us says or does anything for at least a full minute, then I turn to look at Beck. She still has one arm wrapped around herself, but the other hand is covering her mouth like she can’t even believe what she’s seeing. She shifts her eyes over to me. There are tears in them.

“I need to talk to you,” I tell her, trying to think where to begin, what even to say. Turns out I’m really terrible at this.

She shakes her head. “Whatever it is will need to wait. I need to get back up before Brady wonders where I am.”

“I can’t stand the thought of you with him,” I blurt out. I don’t mean to start there—it just comes out that way—but it’s the absolute truth, and maybe she needs to know it. Maybe she needs to understand that the thought of her with anyone else is killing me, slowly but surely. That’s as good a place as any to start, I guess.

The horn sounds, and the boat starts to swing around in preparation for docking.

“What?” She shoves me, both hands dead center on my chest. “What?”

Okay, apparently that was not a good place to start.

“Are you out of your mind?” The fury is practically sparking off her like electricity. “Don’t you stand there and try to act like you get to decide who I can be with.”

She’s so beautiful, even when she’s angry. She smells so good. I know—and the knowing is killing me—that she tastes like heaven. I think about those three steps I took across the space between us, that night in her room at the Monroe—three steps that have changed everything.

I thought that those steps—and everything that came after—were a mistake. But now? I think I was wrong.

I feel all these things without quite knowing how to put them into words. There don’t actually seem to be words that can quite describe how I feel about Beck, that could capture what I’m feeling right now.

So I step across the space between us, and I kiss her again.

She sinks into the kiss, for just a moment, and it feels so right. It feels like what should be.

Then she pulls her mouth away from mine and pushes me away from her, stepping back and putting that space between us again.

“Fuck you,” she says. “You don’t get to do this. You don’t get to play with me.”

“I’m not—”

“Seriously, what the hell is wrong with you? I’m here with someone else—your idea, by the way—and now you want to do … whatever it is you’re even trying to do here? What do you want from me?”

What the hell am I doing here? “I’m trying to—”

The boat lurches as it bumps the dock, and Beck stumbles a little, throwing an arm out for balance. I reach out to steady her, but she pushes me away, hard.

“I don’t need you to catch me.”

“Beck—”

“I don’t need you for anything.” She glares at me as the horn sounds again. “You know what, Garrett? I’m done. We’re done.”

“What does that mean? You’re my best—”

“Not anymore. We’re done.” Tears glitter in her eyes again, but they don’t fall. “This friendship? It’s over.”

I feel like someone just punched me directly in the heart. All the breath goes out of me and I can’t seem to pull any air back in. “Beck, don’t say that.”

“I just did,” she says. “I don’t want to see you again. I mean it.”

“Can’t we just—”

“No.” Her voice is cold; the single syllable hangs in the air like a black cloud. “Don’t call me. Don’t text me.”

She turns and starts to walk away, and it hits me like a bolt of lightning. If she keeps walking, I’m going to die a very lonely and unhappy man, because … because there’s no one else for me.

Oh my God, I think. Oh, shit.

Beck’s right; I’m an asshole. A stupid, oblivious asshole. It took her walking away to make me understand there’s no one else for me.

There’s only Beck. Only her.

She’s the reason no one else has ever worked, because I’m completely, utterly, stupidly in love with her.

I open my mouth to call her back, but she disappears around the bow, and she’s gone.