She realized a few minutes later that he wanted her to say something. But all Hannah could do was sit there, her fingers interlaced together, thinking hard about what he meant by that one word.

You. What the hell did he mean by that?

When speaking that one word, Lance had the look in his eyes like at any minute he was going to pounce on her. Not that she would have minded, but there was a baby sleeping peacefully just a few feet from them.

And with all the woman he could be with, he certainly wouldn’t be offering himself to her. She was just a poor young girl who he felt sorry for at first, then they became friends. Hannah hadn’t even expected her to like him. She didn’t want to like him.

She didn’t want to love him, either, but her heart hadn’t given her much choice on that one.

“What about me?” Hannah asked weakly.

They could never do anything beyond friendship, she reasoned. In less than a week the ship would dock in New York, and they would never see each other again. There was no use in starting a relationship beyond friendship now.

There shouldn’t have been a relationship in the first place.

She was just supposed to come on this ship so she could start a brand new life in New York. She certainly hadn’t expected to make friends, like she had with Lance and Lisa.

This just wasn’t fair.

And if that wasn’t enough, her life had to be threatened by Lance’s ex. After being told by Janine that if she so much as touched Lance, she would be dead, Hannah managed to convince herself that no matter how she felt, she wouldn’t do anything that would make Janine do what she said she would do if Hannah broke their agreement.

“Keep your distance from him,” Janine had said. “He’s mine and he’s always going to be.”

“He’s not anybody’s property,” Hannah had replied.

“If you so much as touch him once,” Janine went on, ignoring Hannah’s comment, “I’ll make you pay. You got it? I’ll even throw you overboard if that’s what it takes to keep you away from Lance.”

As much as she wanted to set Janine straight, she couldn’t. Janine was a lot bigger than she was, and she had more money. Hannah was sure Janine could find a way to get rid of her if she was that determined. And she certainly looked like she was.

Hannah had nodded and agreed to all the terms.

Right now, she was ignoring the terms. But it wasn’t her fault, Hannah thought. Lance was the one that approached her. And was it her fault that she couldn’t resist?

Nothing about this situation was easy. No matter how hard she tried, Hannah just couldn’t stay away from him. It didn’t matter about the consequences. Deep down, Hannah knew Janine couldn’t carry out any of her threats. Lance would stop her before she could even touch Hannah.

“Are you okay?” Lance asked for the fifth time.

Hannah was staring off into space, every so often getting these strange expressions on her face. It was like she was having a conversation with herself. No words were coming out of her mouth, but he could see her lips moving. He wanted to laugh, but his concentration was on her mouth. He couldn’t look at anything else.

She heard his voice, but she couldn’t make out what he had said to her. She didn’t want him to think she wasn’t paying attention, but she didn’t want to give a stupid answer if what she said had nothing to do with what he said. Deciding that saying something would probably ruin the moment, she just smiled.

He tore his gaze away from her mouth, reminding himself he had no right to be doing that in the first place. “You looked spaced out,” he said.

“Sorry,” Hannah apologized. “Just thinking.”

“About what?”

“Can I ask you a question?” she asked instead. She needed to know. This would help her decide what to do about Janine.

“What?”

“It’s about Janine.” When Lance just stuck his hands in his jacket pocket and looked the other direction, Hannah thought that maybe this was a bad idea. “Is she the violent type?” she asked anyway. She just had to know.

If Lance told her that no, that Janine wasn’t violent, then she wouldn’t feel so frightened of someone that had put several threats on her life.

“Violent?” Lance looked back at Hannah. “Are you kidding?” Then he started laughing, and couldn’t stop. “The day Janine turns violent is the day that pigs fly.”

Maybe she wasn’t in as much danger as she had first thought. But there were other points to consider.

“Is she the jealous type?”

He didn’t even have to think on that one. He answered right away. “Yes.” He wanted to know why she was asking all these questions about Janine. All he wanted to do was concentrate on him and Hannah, but Hannah looked determined to get her questions answered.

“We don’t have to talk about this, if it bothers you,” she said.

“It doesn’t really bother me,” he said. “I was just hoping to be talking about something other than my ex-girlfriend, that’s all.”

“She must have hurt you really badly,” she murmured. “You’ve put up this wall that keeps other people from being able to get close to you.”

“Something like that.”

Hannah looked at the floor, finding the carpet’s color suddenly interesting. “My father cheated on my mother when I was little,” she said quietly. She didn’t look up. “My mother never told me about it. I found out for myself one night when my father came into the house with this woman. At first I thought it was my mother, but I looked at the woman’s hair. It was dark brown, not blonde like my mother’s. They were holding hands and my father was saying things into her ear. I was only five at the time and didn’t really understand what was going on.”

That couldn’t have been easy, Lance thought. Especially at five years old. “What did you do?” he asked.

Hannah shrugged. “I managed to forget about it for the next few years. But one night I heard my parents arguing about something one night. They thought I was asleep. I pressed my ear to the kitchen door and I heard what they were saying.”

“And then you knew?”

She nodded. “My father was mad at my mother because she was seeing another man, someone she worked with. My mother was talking quietly, trying to keep her voice down. She said she just couldn’t get past what my father had done to her. His infidelity had torn her apart. She had turned to someone else, someone that had been through the same thing recently.”

That explained why Hannah held just a sheltered life. She had never had a family unit, two parents that loved each other. It was sad. It was unfair. It also explained why Hannah never let anyone get too close to her.

“Did your parents get a divorce, or did they manage to work things out?” he asked.

“They were together until the day they died,” she said. “As far as I know.”

“As far as you know?”

“I never saw much of my parents,” Hannah explained. “They didn’t want me anymore. They took me to an orphanage the day after their fight in the kitchen. They told me they loved me, but they had problems to work out, and having me around would just complicate things.”

The hurt in her eyes were evident. Little by little, Lance was able to understand her more. Understand why she was the way she was. She was so afraid that if she loved someone again, they would toss her away just like her parents had.

“I’m so sorry,” he murmured. “That must have been really rough.”

“I dealt with it.” Hannah shrugged, but the tears in her eyes told him that she hadn’t talked about this in a very long time.

He had never seen her cry before. It was a definite step in their relationship, but more of a step of Hannah letting him in. It was almost like…she trusted him.

“They came and visited me every so often,” she said. “I remained at the orphanage till I was eleven. Then one day on their visiting day, my father told me that they were bringing me home. That now we were going to be a real family.”

“So they worked everything out?”

“Maybe they forgave each other for what they had done to their marriage. I spent three years with them before they died. For a while, I saw a spark of love between them. But towards the end, before the accident, I started to see that they didn’t love each other.”

He just listened. She was finally opening up to him, something he could tell she’d never done with anyone. Her heart was locked and she had the key. Maybe, just maybe, she would give him the key one day.

“The day of the accident,” she said, “they had a huge fight. They yelled and screamed at each other until they both just went their separate ways, unable to say anything more. The three of us got on our yacht and set sail. But the winds was bad. My dad I guess forgot to check to see what the weather would be like.”

“You were on the boat?”

“Yeah,” she answered quietly, grabbing the locket around her neck that held a picture of her parents inside. She glanced up at him but she was smiling. “My dad tried to save her life when she went overboard. For the first time, I could see that my father genuinely loved my mother. But it was my mother who didn’t want to live. She didn’t want to live anymore as long as my father was alive.”

“So your father loved your mother, but your mother didn’t even care about your father?”

Hannah shook her head. “Apparently, my mother was pushed into a marriage with my father after a one-night stand, that produced me.”

“I don’t know how you dealt with all this at such a young age,” Lance said. “Even now, if I knew that my parents didn’t love each other, I don’t know what I’d do. I guess I’ve been luckier than I thought.”

“You’re lucky you were brought up in a loving home,” she said. “You’re lucky you never had to be separated from your family.”

Lance choked back a response. He couldn’t speak. He finally understood what all those people had been trying to tell him.

He had been such a selfish bastard. And it only took coming on this ship and meeting this amazing woman to set him straight.

“My father jumped in after her,” she said, tears rolling down her face. He handed her a tissue and she wiped her eyes. “He told me to stay there. He jumped in, and then I never saw either of them again.”

“What happened to you? Did someone find you?” he asked, grabbing a tissue and wiping away the tears in his eyes. This, Lance had to say, had turned into a very revealing conversation. They were both learning things about each other that they never knew before. 

No woman but his own mother had ever seen him cry.

“I stayed in the boat until finally someone found me.” Hannah smiled, not because of the memory, because it was a pretty horrible one. She was smiling because Lance was showing some type of emotion. It was amazing. “A boat was going past and saw me, huddled into a little ball. I was yelling out. I don’t even remember what I was saying, but I remember waking up and knowing my parents were dead.”

“Oh God. That must have been so hard for you.”

“I’ve been on my own ever since,” she said, ending the story. There, now he knew her whole life story. She now had the unfair advantage. She knew nothing about his past, except for those few things that she knew like his relationship with Janine, and his friendship with JC, Joey, Chris, and Justin.

“You’re amazing, you know that?” He cupped her chin in one hand and looked into her eyes.

She was still crying and so was he. That was fine. The moment they’d just shared together was bonding. He felt so close to her, like their souls were touching.

God, he was never going to be the same again.

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