by JC Harroway
‘What’s wrong?’ I hiss, looking around at a retreating Taito, concern for Remy jolting my pulse. Has Evie changed her mind? Does she plan to stand him up?
‘Nothing’s wrong.’ He looks straight ahead, mouth a flat line, jaw muscles bunched. ‘I guess I just feel how you did yesterday when you discovered my true identity.’
When he does turn to face me, there’s hurt in the down-pulling of his mouth and glittering fury in his narrowed eyes.
For long seconds I’m mute as I try to make sense of what he means while I cling to memories of the Ryan of last night, this morning aboard the Blarney. Then the fog clears.
He knows.
About my booking here, which should have been with Greg, my new husband.
Shame lashes me, sealing my breath.
‘Ryan—’
At that moment the bride arrives, wearing a simple white sundress and radiating happiness. Flowers adorn her hair, her small smile for Remy only.
My ribs pinch as flood after flood of emotions leave me speechless.
I should have spoken up yesterday. But I knew he’d freak out.
‘I wanted to tell you,’ I whisper to Ryan once Evie has passed on her way to her groom. I touch his leg, his muscles steel under my palm.
I try again. ‘I didn’t want you to think...you know, that I was looking for a substitute or something...’
‘It’s no big deal,’ he says, his eyes trained on the French couple, his emotional withdrawal as complete as if he’d risen from the chair next to mine and departed. I touch his arm, uncertain of my reception if I were to hold his hand.
He turns towards me, a fake smile on his devastating mouth. A mouth I’ve kissed and watched laugh and murmur and confide...
Then he presses his index finger to his lips. ‘Shh,’ and he turns his focus back to the ceremony.
I bite my tongue and sink into my seat. I’ve had ample opportunity to tell him how I happened to come here alone. But I didn’t. Out of shame at being the kind of woman to go so far down the wrong path?
The remainder of the beautiful, intimate wedding passes in a blur. Hot anger simmers in my blood, followed by chills as I try to figure out if I’m the one in the wrong, and why Ryan would care that I was engaged. From day one he’s been clear this is temporary. And that suited me fine. In the beginning...
I sit up straighter, shake off the feeling I’m a naughty toddler. I refuse to slip back into old, people-pleasing patterns. So I was engaged. He’ll have to get over the idea. I’ve learned how to be honest and demand what I want without apology, and he helped teach me I could voice those desires, but now I want more than he’s willing to give.
I want a future. Commitment. A lifetime.
I just can’t have those things with him.
The weight dragging me down, the confusion stealing my attention from the ceremony, the anger at Ryan blowing hot and cold all provide clarity. I bite the inside of my cheek to stave off panic. Of course I want more of Ryan. How could I not when he makes me feel alive? When, with him, I feel like myself for the first time in my adult life?
But it’s all an illusion, a mirage in the sun, the very nature of a holiday fling, the fantasy of something too good to be true. There’s no point in falling for Ryan, no matter how much I want to believe in a possible happy ever after. Because despite our closeness on the Blarney, despite sharing our pasts, until he learns to trust and risk his heart, this fleeting, hedonistic whirlwind is his limit.
When the ceremony ends with a small round of applause, I wipe the sheen of happy tears from my eyes and stand. I won’t let Greg or Ryan spoil this for me, diminish what I want from life. I don’t need a fairy-tale ending—I’m perfectly fine alone—but I want to find that one person who fires enough passion in me and vice versa that we share the same goals, the ups and the downs and a million moments in between. Committed to putting each other first. Putting us first. So desperate to start that romantic adventure together, that we’re of the same mind, there’s no putting off the commitment or prioritising work.
Ryan takes my arm. ‘We need to talk.’
I nod, my heart heavy with all I want to say. ‘Yes. We do. But right now I’m going to change for the party.’
‘Later then.’ He presses a chaste kiss to my cheek, his face behind a rigid mask. ‘I’ll see you there.’
I swallow the lump in my throat and walk away to prepare.
We’re back to strangers, but is there any point in fighting for more?
CHAPTER TWELVE
Ryan
HER VIBRANT DRESS, shades of reds and orange, mimics the flames burning me up inside. Burning for her, because discovering she was engaged, that she planned to come to my resort with her new husband, doesn’t diminish my need for her one little bit. If anything the jealousy is back, a leaping beast snarling at the fire.
She glances my way and I can almost see the flecks of amber in her eyes that, no matter how hard she smiles, still harbour a flicker of disappointment.
Of course I let her down.
I warned her to expect nothing from me but orgasms.
She turns back to the bride, gifting me a view of her bare back and shoulders. I can’t see them from this distance, but I know her skin is dotted with freckles. I even tried to count them this morning while she slept in the first rays of dawn, before I could no longer deny myself and I woke her, my mouth tracing all her sensitive places until she kissed me as if I’m the last man on earth.
Or the only man she needs.
But it’s not me she needs, or wants. Her ex-fiancé seals our fate, because she’s exactly what I guessed the first time I saw her on the beach—a woman who wants it all.
Love, marriage, for ever.
Things I’ve never craved, because relationships aren’t for me.
My fist grips my ice-cold beer bottle as that weight in my chest scrapes me raw. It doesn’t matter that she was engaged. It shouldn’t matter that she’d planned to be another man’s wife. I wasn’t jealous when she told me she’d broken someone’s heart. But I can’t get it out of my mind, can’t get her out of my mind.
When I’m with her, I want to crawl inside her head and see what she’s thinking, feel what she feels. When she’s out of sight, I want to find her, to see her smile and laugh and tease. And when she looks at me with her kind, compassionate eyes... I want to fall to my knees in worship. She seems to understand me, without me speaking a word. It’s intuitive for her, part of who she is—respectful, caring, empathetic.
I slam the beer bottle onto the bar. I’m buggered. Stuck between the razor-sharp coral reef of my self-imposed limits and the unknown fears of the deep fathomless ocean.
I catch her eye again. She’s deep in conversation, but she’s thinking about me, looking over at me, probably worried about me after my fucked-up display of jealousy and denial earlier.
After the ceremony, I spent an hour in the shower picking apart the mess in my head to come up with that conclusion. I’m jealous. Of a man I don’t know, for a situation—marriage, commitment, a lifetime—I don’t want.
But it’s her. Grace. She’s filled my head with what-ifs, not from anything she’s done or said, but because of who she is. How she makes me feel. As if, with just a fraction of her guts and determination, I could be a better man. A more whole version of myself. Worthy of belonging with a woman like Grace.
I didn’t even know there was anything missing before I met her.
But I’ve allowed myself to peer through the curtain and see a glimpse of a different life. A life I thought I’d passed up long ago. A life I rejected as bullshit. But she makes me crave. Makes me restless. Makes me want more.
It hits me then, the sting of a million grains of sand. I’m lonely.
But that’s not a good enough reason to crave a relationship.
I drag a hand down my face and
slug another swallow of beer, but there’s no shifting that concrete block in my chest.
When Grace finishes her conversation with Evie, I stand. I need to apologise for being an arsehole earlier. For spoiling her delight at the French couple’s nuptials. But before I can make my way over to her, she makes a beeline for me, her shoulders back, her chin up and her signature fearlessness glowing in her eyes.
‘You look beautiful,’ I say. It’s not a stalling tactic or a diversion—I can’t keep my eyes off the way the fiery dress hugs her body or her softly flowing hair reflects light from the lanterns. Words and crippling feelings force their way to the back of my throat, bursting to be free. I grit my teeth.
‘Thank you—can we talk?’ she says.
‘Of course.’ I indicate a free table for two near the ocean and we head there side by side, my hand aching to caress her bare back. But I’ve sacrificed that privilege with my behaviour and the shit going on in my head.
I pull out her chair and slide next to her, when I should perhaps sit opposite, remove her far from temptation. But the other side of the world wouldn’t be far enough. I’m infected, incurable. My only hope for survival to attempt to keep a lid on the craving once she leaves.
I pull in a breath. ‘Let me start by apologising for earlier—I sounded accusatory, and I had no right.’
She nods, sips her champagne, her entire demeanour relaxed when there’s a volcano grumbling inside me, a need to right the wrong, but a bigger need to take a giant leap into the unknown...
Admit feelings.
She looks out to the ocean. ‘I told you I had a long-term relationship, and I was the one to call it off. I left out the fact that happened a month before our wedding.’
I make a fist. I want to reach for her hand so bad, I have to grip the leg of the chair. Oh, how she must have agonised over that decision. I know her—she does nothing lightly. She would have analysed the fallout, taken everything, everyone, into consideration. She probably still feels guilty for letting those people down. Perhaps why she didn’t mention the fiancé and the aborted wedding.
‘You could have told me that too.’ My throat is scratchy as I swallow. ‘It doesn’t make any difference.’
‘Could I?’ Her stare pierces into my soul. She sees into my darkness; she showed me that yesterday on the Blarney when she clutched my face in her palms and shattered under me.
And she’s right. If she’d told me she was reeling from a failed engagement, I’d have fought my attraction to her, tooth and nail.
‘At first,’ she says, ‘I was a little embarrassed that I’d come here alone, to a place for couples. That I’d look pathetic and needy. I wanted you to see me as more than a woman clueless to what she wanted. But more than that, I felt guilty for abandoning a man who’d been there for me when Bryony died. For letting down my parents, who loved my ex and looked forward to grandchildren one day. They splashed out for a wedding I cancelled.’
Her voice breaks and I reach for her hand.
She shakes her head, a warning that she needs to say this. ‘And most of all, I was ashamed, because I spent a long time pretending that my ex and I wanted the same thing, when I knew we didn’t anymore.’
‘Later...once you told me your stand on relationships, I didn’t want to spook you, because we were on the same page, neither of us looking for more than sex. It seemed too...heavy a confession for my first fling.’
I nod because she’s right: a week ago I would have baulked. To hear her pinpoint my fears pierces my eardrums. ‘You didn’t want me to think you were getting any ideas after I’d spun you my casual spiel.’
Tension builds in my head. I don’t want her caution, her withdrawal. I want her passion, her honesty, her bravery.
She nods, her usually open face shrouded in restraint. ‘Right. And I didn’t think it mattered. Because we only have days, and then we’ll never see each other again.’ I hate her shrug, a sick part of me not ready to see her preparing to move on.
‘You’re right, it doesn’t matter.’
This is why I’m better off alone.
I force out the hardest words. ‘I felt jealous, so I tried to make it matter.’ I look away from her small frown, my revelation rattling the handle of that door I keep locked. But knowing that she was engaged, almost married...it forces me to take a second look at Grace. To admit things I want to be a lie. That there’s a barrier to seeing her again back in London, the growing idea I land at whenever I think about saying goodbye.
I’m the barrier. My fear of reliving that pain of losing someone I care about. A pain I lived and relived so many times as a kid, and now I face it once more, with Grandma.
She wants romance, rings and a relationship.
All the things I can’t give. Things I’ve shied away from so often, I wouldn’t know where to begin. Can I, in good faith, suggest we meet back in London, knowing how vastly our expectations differ?
My throat burns, but I force myself to ask. ‘So you were supposed to come here with your new husband?’ I can barely say the word.
‘Yes. I called it off after I lost my patient. That’s when I forced myself to be honest. To admit what I had wasn’t enough any more.’ She places her unfinished champagne flute on the table. ‘I realised that marriage had to begin with extraordinary passion. How else could it hope to last? Starting it with such low expectations as apathy, almost as if it was an inconvenience, nothing more than an official stamp on a certificate...
‘And now you’re not scared to go after that passion?’ My muscles tense, because I feel as if I could flee at any time. Flee from how she makes me feel. Flee from pitting myself against her fearless soul-searching. Flee from myself.
‘No.’
I shrink at the courage of her conviction.
‘For years I struggled with guilt over Bryony, so I put limitations on myself. But she’d want me to be happy. Alive. Not just coasting.’
She sucks in a breath, her shoulders rolling back. ‘I want to live the life she couldn’t. I want it all, for real next time, not just for convenience or out of habit or for the time already served. I want passion and adventure and fearlessness. No holding back. If that makes me selfish, so be it. We only have one shot at this life.’
‘You have balls of steel, you know that?’ Respect for her builds like pressure, threatening to split me apart.
She laughs, but quickly turns serious. ‘Not really. Bryony was the bravest person I know. She knew what she wanted—she dreamed of travel, adventure, meeting Mr Right, straight from the pages of her books—and if her body had allowed, she’d have gone out and done that. That’s my inspiration. I just wish I’d started sooner.’
I can’t speak.
Just then Remy and Evie approach. ‘We’re sorry to interrupt,’ says Evie, ‘but we just wanted to thank you for upgrading our bure, Mr Dempsey.’
‘No problem.’ I feel the heat of Grace’s scrutiny on the side of my face. ‘I hope you enjoy the rest of your time at Lailai. And congratulations again.’
They saunter hand in hand back to the dance floor as an itch of unease intensifies under my shirt collar. Do I have it wrong, the rest of the world, right? Is monogamy, lifelong commitment, love worth the risk? The pain? The potential loss?
Would I have these doubts if Grace and I never happened? If she’d come here with her husband, just another couple to scoff at?
‘Upgrade?’ Her lips twitch, as if she’s holding back a grin.
I hide behind a swig of my beer. ‘I gave them my bure—it’s the best. I gave the staff some extra work, but it turns out that nothing is too much trouble at the Lailai. They prepared the bungalow for them while we were at the wedding ceremony.’ I don’t want to talk about why, or hear her theories on how I’m a romantic at heart. ‘During the shuffle, Taito mentioned something about your original booking of the second superior honeymoon bungalow
and I probed. That’s how I discovered you were booked here for your own honeymoon.’
‘I see. I thought you didn’t believe in romance?’ She blinks in that slow, sensual, all-knowing way that has enslaved me from day one.
‘I don’t. It was a business decision.’ I try to bluff. ‘They’ll blast their social media with photos.’ I shrug. ‘Free advertising for the resort.’
The dewy look in her eyes, her small feline smile, tell me she doesn’t believe a word of it. ‘We’ve both always been honest about our wants, Ryan. That’s why I’m a little confused by you blowing hot and cold today. It seems to me you’re the one uncertain all of a sudden.’
I swallow, because I’m helpless in the face of her frankness. Helpless and reeling with confusion.
‘My wants haven’t changed,’ I say. It’s partly true, as sure as I am of myself. I refuse to make false promises I’m not sure I’ll be able to keep.
Should I end this? Here? Tonight?
‘Mine neither.’ She lifts her chin. ‘I’d like to enjoy my last few days, before I have to get back to reality.’
She’s so strong.
And addictive. We’re better than good together. Surely I can keep my shit together so we can stay on track for a couple more days...
‘I want that too.’ The roar of truth deafens me, because how could I not want her? ‘I’m sorry that I blurred the boundaries earlier with something as pointless as jealousy. I’ll do better.’
She nods, her intelligent eyes full of heat and understanding. ‘And when it’s done, no regrets.’
I’m paralysed in my seat, so deep is my longing to undo this calm, composed woman who has all but turned my life upside down. To make her as desperate and agitated as I feel. To bend under the force of the passion I know her capable of. But she’s right.
Keep it simple. Walk away. Same as always.
‘Will you come back to my new bungalow? If the clock is ticking, I want to get my fill, starting tonight by peeling you out of that stunning dress.’
She smiles her first genuine smile since the Blarney, full of arousal and mischief and promise. ‘I will, but let’s be real with each other from now on. Give me that.’