“It’s fine.”
“It is anything but fine. Missing even an hour of work will put us on the radar. We must maintain our roles, or this whole mission is at risk.”
On a scale of one to ten, how much does Aran regret agreeing to take me with him?
I consider that for a few moments as a big yawn forces its way out of me and interrupts the evil giggle I was in the middle of trying to push down.
A hundred probably.
The shaking returns, this time with greater urgency. “Ugh. Let me sleep! What’s the rush?”
He mumbles something about empty promises and having to take care of my lying ass after listening to ten alarms this morning.
Frowning, I emerge from under my fluffy fortress and jab a finger at his chest. “I forgot to tell you that I woke up during the night and changed the roster because I couldn’t fall back asleep and got bored, didn’t I?”
His jaw goes tense and his expression clouds in confusion.
I poke my tongue out and wink at him. “Sorry, I could’ve texted you or left a note, I guess. Oops?”
Shaking his head, he steps back and glares at me. Just when I think he’ll scold me this time for real, he exhales dramatically and runs a hand through his dark hair. Knowing him, he must’ve been up for a while already, but if he hasn’t dressed yet, it means that we weren’t actually running late.
“Good thinking. Meeting up with your friend while on the clock would’ve been strange.”
I’m surprised at his reaction. I was steeling my nerves for an argument, but he took it well even if I messed up communicating the change of plans. “You are not mad?”
The left corner of his mouth twitches, as if he was about to smile but didn’t let it happen. He reaches for my head and rakes his lean fingers through my messy bed hair. “I’ve let worse slide.”
My eyes flutter closed and my body relaxes. God, I love when he plays with my hair like this. Maybe it’s the gentleness with which he does it, or maybe it’s the fact that he’s touching me of his own accord, but it’s just so nice.
A yawn I can’t stifle brings an end to the idyllic moment. He retracts his hand a little abruptly, as if he just now realized what he was doing, and an air of awkwardness settles between us. I’m really bad with that kind of thing, especially when I’m half-asleep, so I slip back under the blanket.
“With that out of the way, let me sleep a bit more. Okay, thanks.”
A heartbeat later, I’m no longer a human burrito as the blanket is dragged off me. “Even if we aren’t working today, you are still getting up, Tien,” he states, drawing out my name in such a way it makes him sound like the evil guy in a movie. But it’s also sexy. “We’ll go through your plan and exactly what it entails. And you are making me that coffee you promised.”
I gawk at him, wrinkling my nose. Is he serious? I was joking about making him coffee. I’m the worst when it comes to anything food or drinks related, and it should be illegal to let me anywhere near a kitchen. Surely, he knows that.
Or does he have a death wish?
By the time we head to the pool, I’m buzzing with the need to do something. We spent the entire morning strategizing and accounting for every scenario and every little thing that can go wrong, so by the end of it I was practically dying of boredom.
I get it—Aran likes to be prepared for every outcome. It’s in his blood. But he shot down most of my ideas by deeming them insane and didn’t let me play that mobile gacha game I’ve recently gotten into. Contrary to what he said, it doesn’t distract me one bit because of the awesome auto-battle feature. If it wasn’t for it, I probably wouldn’t even play it. Like seriously, who has time to grind for hours every day?
When we arrive at the top deck where the open pool is, it’s brimming with people in swimsuits and masks. It’s a little weird, considering how much flesh is on display, but since this isn’t the super secret part of the ship that I was taken to last night, it’s the new normal.
Aran and I went through what I remembered of the people I saw as he drank his coffee with a frown. He suspects that the Lynxes are a billionaire couple who own an oil empire and who moved to Thailand from Russia. I can’t really weigh in on that, but their rounder eye shape and the lighter tone of their skin did make me wonder which part of the world they originally come from.
Then I forgot about asking them, because I had to thwart Mrs. Lynx’s attempts to get me drunk on expensive wine.
I sneakily glance at my companion as we look for vacant sun-tanning chairs to put our towels. His eyebrows are slanted down and his lips are pressed in a hard line, which makes him look way too annoyed for a person who’s got a day off.
“Hey. Smile a bit, will you? We are going to the pool, not a funeral.” I nudge him with my elbow and slide my sunglasses down the bridge of my nose so I can meet his impending scowl head on.
He doesn’t disappoint, but to his credit, once he’s let me know exactly how he feels about what I just said, he tones down the murderous glare a notch. I take the opportunity as his eyes scope the busy deck to enjoy the lovely job that I did of picking his clothes for today.
The only reason he let me be in charge is because you can’t exactly mess up pool attire. A pair of swim shorts and a shirt is all you need. Plus, we didn’t exactly bring a lot of stuff with us, so the options were kind of limited between three shirts and four pairs of shorts each that go well together, no matter the combination. Really, there was little chance I could go wrong here.
The red-white Hawaiian and the black shorts I chose for him mirror my black shirt and red-white bottoms. It’s cute that we match, and it makes us look like a couple who coordinated their outfits. I love every second of it. He’s not wearing his sunglasses, but they are on display, hanging from his shirt’s front pocket. They are the same type that Leo loves to wear, big and round and badass.
