Baran walked down the stairs unhurried, her gaze moving past Trinity to the toys out along the platform. “I’d like to go out on the water. Before we go into port tomorrow. Maybe the paddle board?”

Trinity nodded grateful for the task. Get one of her distractions off the boat for a little bit at least. “Whitaker, go get a paddle,” she said and he stood, leaving the knots on the ground. She just rolled her eyes before going to grab the board and put it in the water for Baran. “Have you been before?” she asked, even though she knew it was a stupid question.

“I have,” Baran said, but she made no move towards getting on the board. Whitaker came to stand next to her with the paddle in his hand. “I was hoping that you could take me out.”

“You mean… follow you?” Trinity wished she could be smarter around these women. As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she could hear how dumb they sounded.

Baran’s smile just curved further up in amusement. “No, I’d like to lay down and for you to do the paddling.” she glanced between Trinity and Whitaker.

“Have you been drinking?” She asked with a bit of confusion. Usually guests like to take themselves, but she supposed she maybe shouldn’t (highly debatable, it was a paddleboard not a jetski, she thought) if she had drunk upstairs.

“No,” Baran replied, shaking her head before she used Trinity’s still outstretched hand for balance as she stepped off the deck and onto the paddle board.

“Okay?”

Baran tilted her head with that smile that was starting to drive Trinity crazy. “Is that a problem?”

Trinity’s mind blanked.

“I mean, or, are you saying you prefer my wife to me?”

“What? No–” Trinity watched as Baran’s smile widened a fraction, delighted at having caught the exact reaction she had been fishing for. “That’s not–I didn’t mean–”

“Santos will take you,” Whitaker said, giving Trinity a little shove to the side.

“Good,” Baran said with the same smile before settling down on the board, sitting before stretching her legs out in front of her and laying on her back. Trinity’s mouth went dry at the sight. “Yola got a jet ski ride yesterday. It’s only fair.”

Only fair. Like this was a matter of even distribution and Trinity hadn’t spent the last nearly 24 hours trying to avoid them all together.

Trinity would be having a discussion with Whitaker about loyalty at the next crew meal. He grinned and made himself scarce up the stairs before she could say anything to him. “Do you want a life jacket?”

“I can swim,” Baran didn’t open her eyes. She’d tipped her face up towards the sun, one arm folded behind her head. “And I have you, best diver on board, isn’t that right?”

“That’s not–” she stopped before she could continue to embarrass herself.

“I’ll try very hard not to fall in,” Baran said with one eye cracked open and fixed on her. “C’mon Santos.”

The way that she said her name, the way they both said her name correctly, like it mattered to them to pronounce it correctly, even if they continued to hear the other crew mispronounce it. It wasn’t like it particularly mattered if people pronounced it correctly to her most of the time. She really didn’t care. But when Baran said it like it mattered…

Trinity shuffled on the board, having to have her knees between Baran’s ankles as she pushed off from the platform. Trinity used the paddle to push them away from the board a little distance before she stood. Goosebumps covered her skin as she accidentally touched Baran’s ankle as she stood up.

The sunlight caught on the ring on Baran’s neck and the reflection would hit Trinity’s face ever so often and she forced herself to keep watching the horizon instead of glancing down each time.

“You do this for all your guests?” Baran asked eventually.

“No,” Trinity shook her head. Sometimes she’d take them on the jet ski. The paddleboard was a first for her. “This is a first.”

“Good,” a small, private smile touched Baran’s face and Trinity burned from the inside out. “I’d hate to think I wasn’t special.”

For a while, they just drifted. Trinity would only paddle when necessary, but instead she just stood and tried to keep balance as Baran sunbathed beneath her.

“You mentioned your brothers this morning,” Baran’s voice almost startled Trinity.

“I did,” she said, putting the paddle back into the water to move them forward. “You have a good memory.”

“I remember important things,” she said before pushing her sunglasses on top of her head. “Are you close with them?”

“They’re the reason I go home,” it came out before Trinity could stop it. Way too honest. “They’re good kids. Theo is fourteen and Luca is twelve. They’re both football obsessed right now. I get about forty messages a day, mostly of them arguing who is better.”

Trinity felt Baran’s eyes on her and suddenly felt embarrassed. She shouldn’t be sharing this much with a guest.

“Do you have any siblings?” Trinity asked, trying to redirect the conversation off of her, even knowing from her stint last night on Wikipedia that Baran doesn’t.

“No, I think my parents had enough with me,” Baran said with a smile.

Yeah and I had enough with a mother to raise. Trinity swallowed around the thought.

“Yolanda has brothers and sisters. Sometimes I do wish that I had something like that. Can you tell me a little about them?”

She really shouldn’t be telling this to a guest. Her private life had no business impacting Baran’s vacation and yet Baran had just put her sunglasses back onto the top of her head and was leaning up on her elbows on the paddleboard, staring up at Trinity like she mattered. And Trinity found that she wanted that attention on her.

So she started talking.

She told Baran about how she was 8 when Theo was born and she hated him. She told her how by the time Luca had come, she had basically dedicated herself to the two of them. She told Baran about how the two of them would make a sign for each time that Trinity came home from the airport, whether it was when she’d go visit her dad in CA or come back from Croatia. They got more elaborate each year, but the spelling had improved. She told her about staying in Ohio for undergrad because she needed to be around for when things fell apart. She didn’t say that, but she did say that she stayed around for “family stuff” and let Baran fill in the gaps around it.

Baran just listened to her. She didn’t interrupt or try to offer her any advice the way that other guests had whenever they heard any bit of her life story. She just listened, propped up on her elbows in the sun, her dark eyes steady on Trinity’s face.

“They’re lucky to have you,” Baran said once Trinity had finally run out of words and her face had gone hot with embarrassment at how many had slipped past her lips.

“They’re teenagers. They’d tell you I’m the worst.”

Baran shook her head, “I don’t think so. It sounds like they love you very much.”

“They love the money I spend,” Trinity said before she could stop herself and immediately wished she could keep her mouth shut. “I mean–they’re kids. They’d love anyone who bought them crap.”

Baran just looked at Trinity for a long minute with those dark eyes steady on her.

“It’s fine. Somebody’s got to make sure they have what they need,” Trinity said, focusing on the water instead of the woman in front of her.

“And that someone is you.”

Trinity burned. “I’m the oldest.”

“You’re twenty-two,” Baran observed and Trinity was thankful there was no pity in her voice. “You’ve been taking care of them all since you were a child.” Her gaze is going back and forth across Trinity’s face. Trinity wanted to know what she saw when she looked at her. “But who takes care of you?”

Nobody.

That was the answer and they both knew it. Trinity felt like Baran could see it clear across her face, the flicker of a girl who had always been the one to take care of others and never had someone offer to do that for her. God, it was sad and she definitely didn’t need Baran knowing that.

“I take care of myself,” Trinity deflected, her hands gripping the paddle tight enough that her knuckles started turning white. “I don’t need anyone to.”