Leo raked a hand through his hair. “Yeah. Well, at some point, I was on a ship called Checkmate. There was this older woman chartering the boat one week—pretty, thirties, the wife of some gazillionaire. Her husband was negotiating deals on a satellite phone at the most ridiculous hours, and she kept trying to lure me into her stateroom. It’s not that I wasn’t attracted to her, but I wasn’t about to go there, you know? I was so one-minded on making it then, on getting to wear the captain’s hat one day. The problem was I was still in such a dark place. Anyway, one day the charter guest tried to kiss me, and I guess I kissed her back a little. I don’t know…the moment ran away with me. And then the cook—this girl named Tess—happened to see us from the galley. It looked bad, Jones. It was bad.

“Tess and I had had this little thing, and it didn’t end well. Anyway, yachting is an incestuous industry by its nature, and Tess ran to the captain. When the captain came down to see what was going on, the woman who’d been pursuing me denied she’d started it, and I just…”

“You snapped,” Joey said quietly.

“I snapped. I totally snapped. This job was the only thing I had in the world, and now my integrity was being threatened.” Leo nibbled so slowly on a Cinnamon Toast Crunch square he was like some Top Chef judge teasing out its subtle notes. “I’m still so ashamed about what happened. I was in such a frenzy, and I shouted at the woman, You’re the one who wanted me!” His eyes grayed. “You know that’s not me, Jones. It’s so not me to shout at a woman, or to get into some inappropriate work romance.”

“I know.” She wanted to touch him but couldn’t bring herself to.

“I got fired. For a long time after, no one would hire me. Those were rough times, but finally I got back on my feet. I had to take a step back, do the deckhand thing again. A Russian hired me. One of the new tycoons who didn’t know the European scene. So I started over. But more than that, I finally clawed myself out of this hole I’d allowed myself to descend into. One night, I looked at myself in the mirror and said, Are you going to let what happened define you?”

“You weren’t talking about the woman on the yacht,” Joey whispered.

“No. No, I wasn’t. So I decided that no, I wasn’t going to let what happened on Corfu define me. I was going to try to stop being so angry. You know…I meditate morning and night. Almost twelve years now. Yoga too.”