“We’re in this together, but I’m not sure I can trust you,” he confessed under his breath.

“It’s not like you have much of a choice, Damian,” I shot back, crossing my arms in front of my chest. His comments didn’t even sting anymore. I’d realized long ago he had no heart. He was simply a world-class douche.

“Not many other people would be willing to go on this…” I paused, looking around the deck of the ship. A couple was locked in a hot make-out session near the pool, but nobody else was around. Made sense, seeing it was the dead of night.

“This…?” Damian asked, raising his eyebrows and giving me his signature, insufferable smirk.

“This excursion with you,” I said, dropping my voice slightly, even though I highly doubted the couple could hear us. They seemed to be preoccupied with their own worlds.

“I don’t know,” Damian protested, following my gaze to the man and woman, the former which had pinned the latter beneath him to a pool chair. “A lot of people can’t resist my charm.”

“A lot of people hate you,” I argued, heat rising to my face as I hurried to look away. Instead, I looked at the dark waves as they churned beneath the hull of the cruise ship. The sky above gave almost no light. It wasn’t a very visible night, for a blanket of clouds obscured the stars and the moon. Even so, it was a much better view than before.

“I hate a lot of people,” Damian corrected, “There’s a difference.”

I couldn’t argue with him. Damian had a charismatic personality when he wanted something. Once he was done and had gotten what he wanted from you, he tossed you aside like you were a useless piece of garbage. I was quite aware that was going to happen to me, once we had found what he needed. Or rather, what we needed. He hadn’t been very clear on the subject of what exactly we were searching for. I knew it was something to prove his innocence.

The only thing I knew was that he was being convicted of murder. Convicted of murdering my best friend, no less.

Back to the point, I knew Damian was using me. But I couldn’t stay away. There was something about him that attracted everybody. I just wished somebody else had been blessed with such a thing. Damian drew people in, then broke their hearts and snapped their trust without any remorse.

“Look, Damian,” I said, turning to him. His blue-green eyes were piercing, as if they could see right into my soul and beyond. The severity of such a stare was so powerful that I forgot what I was going to say. I blinked a few times before I was able to reassemble all my thoughts into words.

“You can’t trust me, and I sure as hell can’t trust you,” I continued, clearing my throat, “But like you said, we’re in this together. As much as it hurts me to say it, we’re a team. Temporarily. Just until we find enough evidence or whatever to clear your name.”

“Exactly,” Damian agreed, but I was given the impression that my words had gone through one of his ears and out the other. Or maybe he did hear me and chose to ignore me. He tended to do that a lot since he was under the impression he was superior to the rest of the human race.

“Clear?” I asked, simply because I hated being ignored.

“Crystal,” he replied, smirking again, before adding, “Just one question.”

“Then it couldn't have been very crystal,” I grumbled to myself with a roll of my eyes. Still, I stood and listened because Damian wasn't usually one to ask questions.

“Why are you here, helping me?” he asked, leaning against the railing, “Why are you even doing this?”

With those two seemingly simple questions, our conversation suddenly became a lot deeper. The air between us got thick and tense. For, he had broken the barrier of bickering and bantering into a topic that was much harder to navigate.

Because those two questions required an answer, and if I were to answer true, we would have found ourselves to have plunged into the principle of feelings. The only feelings we had ever even skimmed the idea of were hate and trust. We had been pretty clear on the matter of both of them. Our relationship held too much of the first and not enough of the second.

“I'm here to prove you didn't kill my best friend,” I finally said, feeling his icy gaze on me. For some reason, I couldn't even look at him anymore. “So that we—er, I—can catch the guy who actually did it.”

“Really?” Damian asked, his voice skeptical, “Are you sure there are no other reasons?”

I realized, with a twist of my stomach, that Damian desired to talk about emotions and feelings. That's where he was trying to get the conversation to go. His eyes sparkled with a genuine curiosity I’d never seen before.

“Isn’t justice reasonable enough?” I replied curtly, taking in a deep breath. My stomach hurt, but not from being out on the sea. No, it was a good kind of hurt. One that was caused by too much anticipation.

“It is,” Damian assured me. He didn't lift his gaze from me and I kept my eyes somewhere to the side of his head. It was easier that way, not having to read the emotions his face held. “But I have this strange feeling you’re not usually in this much support of the law,” he added.

“You’re making me sound like a criminal,” I scolded, crossing my arms over my chest. I realized he was doing the same thing, so I dropped my hands back to my side, blushing. “All I'm trying to do is find my friend’s murderer.”

“Now that is reasonable,” Damian relented, “But I still have this odd sense that…”

I glared at him, turning out to stare at the ocean again. Maybe if I looked away long enough, I could forget he was there. But it was hard to ignore his presence, especially when he was right beside me. I tried to distract myself by gripping the metal rail. I could so easily jump over it and plunge into the ocean below.

“Kayla,” he prompted, his voice turning impatient. That alone was quite curious, as he always acted like he had all the time in the world. But he had also called me by my name—my first name, no less.

“And I guess I thought it’d be nice for me to, y’know…” I began to say, shrugging my shoulders as my eyes sidled away from the ocean and back to Damian.

“For you to what?” he asked, eyebrows raised again. His face held such an arrogant expression, but I couldn’t help admiring his sharp jawline and light pink lips.

“Clear an innocent man's name.”

Obviously, this wasn't the answer he wanted, because he sighed and flicked his tongue over his lips. I leaned against the railing, breathing in the salty air. It was humid like we were standing in the middle of a jungle, and I had the feeling a storm was coming on.

“Just a random, innocent man?” Damian asked, “Out of the goodness of your heart?”

“Exactly,” I said, trying to keep my voice nonchalant. It was harder said than done, with the way he was looking at me. Not to mention the way he looked himself, outlined by the deep purple lights lining the deck.

“I don’t believe you,” Damian said, tilting his head to study me from a different angle. I had the strange feeling he was trying to read my mind, to figure out what I was thinking.

“If you’re trying to get me to say something, just ask,” I snapped, tired of his loose language. It was making me think things, letting my brain believe and create fantasies I knew would never come true.

“Fine,” he said, the corner of his mouth twitching. “Do you find me attractive, Evans?”

I was too busy sulking in the fact we were back to a last-name basis, that I almost missed what he said. When his question sunk in, I blinked at him and struggled to find words.

Was he attractive? Most definitely. There was no denying it, he had been blessed with good genetics everywhere from his nose to his eyes to his jaw to his…

I stopped myself from thinking any further because believing somebody is attractive is one thing. When you begin to go deeper than that, it gets a little tricky.

“I—well I guess, yeah,” I finally admitted. There was no shame in saying that, especially if I didn't have any real feelings for him. And I didn't. I most definitely did not.

“Do you find me attractive?” I found myself asking. I didn't even know what I was saying until then words were out of my mouth.

“I’d go as far as to say you’re one of the hottest girls I've ever laid eyes on,” he said confidently. I was surprised by his words and struggled to maintain a calm face. Pretty would've been a better way to say it, but any compliment from Damian made the tops of my cheeks turn pink.

I didn't know what to say, so I looked around the boat, carefully avoiding glancing at the couple near the pool. Thunder rumbled above, and a few light raindrops began to fall from the clouds.

“Do you know what they say?” Damian asked, blinking through the mist.

“Hmm?” I hummed. I didn't trust my mouth anymore. If I opened my lips to speak, who knows what I would say?

“When two hot people are in a room together, they can't stay off each other,” he said.

“Oh,” I said, my eyebrows shooting to the top of my head. “I think we’re doing a pretty great job, then.”

“If you could see the things in my head,” Damian said, stepping closer, “You'd think differently.”

My eyes widened even more as his finger traced the skin of my cheek. His touch was warm, a stark contrast to the cool breeze on the boat. The wind picked up, throwing a piece of hair in my face.

“You keep saying these things…” I began to say. It was hard to form a complete sentence when he was looking at me like that. Something about his usually lifeless blue eyes seemed vulnerable.

“But only a few moments ago, you were talking about how you couldn't trust me,” I finished.

“I don't trust anybody,” Damian reminded me, tucking the rogue piece of hair behind my ear. “But that doesn't stop me from doing what I want.”

Suddenly, his hand was sliding across my neck, knitting into my damp, tangled brown hair and pulling my face closer to his. He pressed his lips against mine, only being gentle for a moment.

My eyes fluttered closed and I melted into him as he kissed me harder. Even while I did so, a lingering thought existed in the back of my head.

Damian was most definitely playing me, just like he played all the girls before. Once we cleared his name, he would be done with me.

Yet I couldn't help but savor the moment. When I knew we should be planning our next move, I found myself distracted by Damiam again. The feeling of his lips against mine, then against my neck, then against my collarbone. His smell; a mixture of the sea salt in the air and the cologne he wore. Even the ozone of the oncoming storm.

We definitely didn't trust each other. With Damian, it would be foolish to ever believe that could happen. But we craved each other. What was the difference between trust and lust, anyway?