by R. R. Banks
I tossed the invitation back across the desk and went back to the projects in front of me. If I was going to go back to the island in two weeks, I was going to need to actually make sure that things were getting done at the office so it didn’t fall apart when all three of us were gone.
And pack a backpack of supplies. You never know.
The journey back to the island wasn’t nearly as long as I thought it was going to be. It’s amazing how being on the brink of death in a storm or worrying that the woman you love is going to die from a gunshot wound can stretch out a trip. The thought made me feel suddenly solemn.
Love.
It wasn’t something that I wanted to admit to myself or to anyone else. I had meant everything that I had said to Eleanor the last time I saw her. Though I regretted the fact that I had chosen that particular moment, while she was still sitting in the hospital recovering, to tell her what I thought of her dishonesty and how much she had hurt me, in that moment I couldn’t hold back. Seeing her in the starkness of reality outside of the fantasy world that we had created on the island had been too much for me. All of the adrenaline and denial that had fueled me during the long weeks of waiting draining out of me, leaving the hurt and disappointment raw within me. Part of me wished that I had handled it differently, but I didn’t know what I could have done differently.
Soon I realized that we were approaching the island and I noticed bright lights glowing from the beach. I leaned closer to the window and pushed my glasses up higher, helping me to focus better on the lights. They were in the same place where we had built the help sign, only now more had been added.
“Don’t help,” I read. “What is that supposed to mean?”
I noticed Noah and Snow exchange glances, but neither of them answered. We lowered down toward a floating helicopter pad and settled into place. When we stepped out of the helicopter, I noticed a small boat fashioned out of what looked like wooden crates. A man stood in the boat holding a large stick. He helped Snow into the boat, and Noah and I followed.
“This is interesting,” Snow said, looking down at the sides of the boat.
It’s like the raft that Eleanor used to get from the boat to the beach.
When we reached the sand, I noticed a trail outlined with lights weaving into the trees. We walked toward it and followed it into the jungle. Memories fell over me like rain as I walked through the trees, remembering each sight, sound, smell, and taste from each step when I had taken them before. We were approaching the hill that led to the waterfall and cavern when I noticed the path beneath my feet become smoother and more defined.
“Snow! Noah! Hunter!” I heard Edwin’s voice coming over the hill and soon the old man appeared in front of us. “It’s so good to see you.”
He was wearing what looked like a tux that he brought with him 40 years before when he moved onto the other island and his scattered white hairs were artfully positioned across his head. He walked toward us with his arms open and gave a round of enthusiastic hugs.
“It’s good to see you, too, Edwin,” I told him. “Where’s Sophie gotten herself to?”
“Oh, she’s at the party trying to rustle up a conga line. When I left it was just her, but I have faith in that woman.”
He turned and started back up the path.
“So, you still didn’t tell me what you’re celebrating tonight,” I said.
“I’m not celebrating anything,” Edwin said. “It’s not my party.”
“Not your party?” I asked. “Then who…”
We got to the hill and I stopped still. Ahead of me was the section of the jungle that had been destroyed by Lucille’s helicopter. Instead of tattered, broken trees and torn ground, however, a building stretched in front of me. It looked like it was built from the remnants of the trees and other materials designed to look like them, and was built into the natural shape of the land so that it seemed to be growing out of the island itself. The only exception was the large dome in the center of the roof.
“What is this?” I asked.
“Come find out,” Edwin said.
I followed him along the continuation of the path and toward the building. A curved wooden door took up the majority of the front of the building and as I approached I noticed that there were words carved into it.
“Hunter’s Retreat,” I whispered.
Music surged up from inside the building and Noah stepped up beside me.
“I think we should go inside now.”
He opened the door and I stepped into what looked like a round lobby and realized that the dome on the roof created the ceiling of this portion of the building. People mingled around the room, stopping at stands for food and drinks. I looked closer and saw that each of these stands looked familiar. They were pieces of furniture that I had hauled around to different events with my brother. I glanced up toward where the music was coming from and saw him behind the table, smiling as he watched Sophie dance past. Robin had latched onto her and now danced by me wearing something that looked distinctly like a leaf skirt over his clothes.
“Philip?” I said as I approached him.
“Hey, Hunter!” He looked around, gesturing at the elaborate setup that I knew he had had a major hand in creating. “Pretty nice digs, huh?”
“What’s going on here?”
He nodded toward something behind me and I turned around to see Eleanor standing at the door, her body draped elegantly in an outfit that looked stunningly like a real version of the clothing that she had tied together when we were stranded here.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Eleanor
My heart trembled as I looked at Hunter. All of the light and sound of the party around us disappeared and all I could focus on was him. I walked toward him, wanting to step into his arms, but he didn’t offer them.
“I heard that he was the best event rental and coordinator in the business,” I said. “I had to have him here for my opening celebration.”
“Opening celebration?” Hunter asked.
“Do you like it?” I asked, gesturing around us.
“What is this, Eleanor?”
“The night that you brought me up on the rocks to see the stars everything was so beautiful that I felt like I never wanted to leave. I wanted to be here on this island forever. To be with you forever. I found myself missing it so much that I did some research into it. I found out that it was owned by a family who had never even come to it. They had bought it up with some other land and largely forgot about it until I got in touch with them. So, I bought it from them and built this.”
“You called it Hunter’s Retreat.”
I nodded.
“When I was designing it, all I could think about were the things that you said when we were planning the shelter, both before and after the storm. I used as much as I could to create this.”
“Is there somewhere where we can talk?” he asked me.
I nodded again and gestured across the lobby toward the short hallway that led to my office. My heart lifted as we headed toward it. He wanted to talk to me alone. It was up a short set of stairs that allowed me to look out of the full wall of windows on one side at the waterfall a brief distance away. As soon as I had closed the door behind us, I started toward Hunter, wanting to close the space between us.
“What are you playing at, Eleanor?”
I fell back a step, stung by his words. I shook my head, already feeling tears starting to form in my eyes.
“What do you mean?” I asked. “I’m not…”
“You said that you didn’t want to tell me who you were when we met because you didn’t want me to know about your money and form my opinions about you.”
“That’s true.”
“Please let me finish,” he said. “You didn’t want me to make any assumptions about you as a person, but you also didn’t want to give me the opportunity to take advantage of you because of your money. You thought that if I knew that you were who you are that all I would be able to see was
dollar signs and then there would be a constant imbalance between us. But then you turn around and do this.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You can’t buy me, Eleanor. You lied to me about who you are and your money. You can’t turn around and try to use those things to make it all better.”
I felt like I couldn’t breathe. Without another word, Hunter turned around and walked out of the office. The door closed behind him and I felt my knees buckle beneath me. I sat hard in the chair behind me, drawing in ragged breaths. This resort had been all that I thought about for months. It had been in every breath, in every beat of my heart. I wanted to show Hunter that I had listened to him, that I heard what he had said. He had been so overlooked throughout his life and so few people had taken the time to appreciate him and understand how amazing he really was. I could see the ache for that validation within him, and that is what I had wanted to give him.
But he had thrown it away. He had cast it to my feet, accusing me of the very thing that I had so desperately wanted to escape. Suddenly the sadness within me started to melt away. It drained out of me gradually, leaving my body as if it was sliding first from my mind, and then from my heart, dripping from my fingertips and sinking into the floor beneath me. In its place was frustration first, and then seething anger.
****
Hunter
I wanted to leave. I wanted to get off the island and go back to my real life. This is why I didn’t want to come here, but so much worse than I could have even planned for. I had wanted to burrow myself into reality and let all of this become one of those memories that faded into such abstract thought that eventually I would question if it had really happened.
Then I saw Eleanor.
Seeing her had been a stark shock of what reality really was for me now. In that moment, I knew that there was no way I was ever going to be able to put her behind me. I was never going to be able to see her as a distant, abstract memory. She was always going to be at the front of my mind, right there with me even as I went through each day without her.
I felt gutted as I rushed down the stairs from her office and back down into the party. The revelry around me felt out of place and I wanted to get out of it as fast as I could. As I made my way across the room toward the door, however, I felt a hand grasp my arm. I turned around and saw Snow looking at me imploringly.
“Please don’t go,” she said. “I don’t know what just happened up there. I don’t know what’s happening with all this at all. But I know that it means an incredible amount to Eleanor and to Noah. If you can’t stay here for her, please stay for him.” I pulled out of her hand and started toward the door again. “And you really don’t have a way to get off the island without us.” I stopped and felt my shoulders drop. “Feels pretty familiar, huh?”
Shit.
I turned back around slowly and gave Snow a tight-lipped smile. She walked up to me and wrapped her arm around my shoulders, giving me a little squeeze.
“Thank you, Hunter,” she said in a singsong voice that almost made me not want to poke her between the eyes.
Almost.
I wriggled out of her hold and started across the room toward my brother and the well-stocked bar that was set up beside him. Before I could get to him, though, Philip stepped away from his table and disappeared through a door at the back of the room. I sighed and grabbed a drink from the bar before dropping down into a chair at one of the tables set up around the open floor in the center of the room. I looked up and saw that the domed ceiling was glass, allowing me to see the stars overhead. My heart clenched.
“I have no idea what I’m drinking.”
I brought my attention down from the glass dome and saw Edwin settle into the chair beside me. He was holding a coconut filled with pink fluid and dotted with what looked like chunks of various fruits.
“I don’t either.”
He took a sip and nodded.
“Tastes good.”
I followed his gaze onto the dancefloor and saw that Sophie had built up more of a gathering for her conga line. She glanced over at her husband and slithered the line toward the table. I laughed as she performed a conga drive-by, snatching the drink from Edwin’s hand and leaning down to press a kiss to the top of his head.
“That woman,” he said, shaking his head.
“You really love her, don’t you?” I asked.
“So much that we had to move into international waters because it just might be illegal otherwise.”
I smiled at the sentiment.
“She’s certainly unique.”
Edwin nodded.
“Potentially another reason why we had to move into international waters.”
I laughed and slid the drink I hadn’t yet sipped across the table toward him.
“Well, after forty years together, at least you know all about her past.”
“Sixty-five years and ppppffffffff.”
I jumped slightly at the sound that he made by biting his bottom lip and blowing hard through his teeth.
“What?” I asked.
“I said ‘ppppffffffff,” he repeated. “You said that I know everything about Sophie’s past and I say a big old resounding ppppffffffff on that.”
“You don’t?”
“Of course not. What’s the point in that? Do I sometimes wonder how she made the ten thousand dollars that she brought home from Vegas the summer I had the ague that let us invest in our first company? Sure, I do. But when you’ve got the ague and your wife gallivants off, but then comes back, you don’t question the money that she brings with her. Or the glitter on her ass. Or the forged birth certificate in her luggage.”
“But doesn’t it bother you that she lied to you?”
Edwin looked at me for a quiet moment and for the first time I really saw the years in his eyes.
“Son, sometimes a person lies to you because they are really lying to themselves. You have to ask yourself if what they lied about really matters. Then you have to decide which is more important, the lie or the person.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Eleanor
I was reaching for the handle on my door, ready to stalk down into that party and confront Hunter, when it flung open and he rushed in, nearly knocking me over with his body.
“I’m sorry,” he said, reaching out for me, but I stepped back away from him.
“I’m not trying to buy you,” I snapped at him. “I did something horrible. I know that. I admit that. I’ve said I’m sorry for lying to you, and I’ll say it again. I’m sorry. But that doesn’t mean that I’m trying to buy you. I thought about you and the time that we spent on this island every single day, and I kept coming back to two things. One was the peace that I found here, the happiness that I found with you. The other was how Lucille destroyed this area. When I found out that the damage was so much worse when they came and took the helicopter out, it broke my heart. I hated to think about it. I didn’t want to imagine this place forever scarred by her. It needed to be a place of beauty again. So, I created this. I took what you said, what you taught me. I took what you made me feel when we were here together and I designed a resort, a retreat where people could come and experience the tiniest taste of the pleasure that we had here. There are two suites. That’s it. Two. Guests won’t be allowed to damage the island in any way. They will come here only to enjoy it.”
“That sounds wonderful,” Hunter said.
“Apparently it’s not enough for you.”
I pushed past him and out of the office. There was a party downstairs that I was hosting, and even if the reason for the celebration was crumbling around me, I had to be there for the people who had been there for me.
I had just stepped out of the office when Hunter reached through the door and pulled me back inside. I gasped in surprise as he closed the door and pressed me back against it in one smooth movement. His eyes burned into mine for a few moments before his mouth crushed down over mine and his tongue forced its way past my lips. In tha
t instant, everything crashed around me and I lost myself in the overwhelming blend of desire and love that filled me. Our tongues tangled as I pressed into Hunter’s kiss, sweeping my arms up around his neck and using it for leverage so that I could lift my back away from the door. This allowed me to touch my body to his, bringing me close to him again and revealing to me with unquestionable power that he wanted me as much as I did him. Hunter pushed me back against the door with the pressure of his chest, flattening me so that I felt like he was enveloping me. I accepted it hungrily, welcoming his possession of me.
My mouth was swollen and hot with the power of his kiss when Hunter stepped back just enough to allow us to undress one another. Our hands clawed at each other with abandon, pulling away clothing until we both achieved the bare warmth that we sought from one another, reconnecting us to the blissful wild the island instilled in us. We moved with even greater urgency and desire than we had, but now we didn't slow down. The luxury of time, privacy, and proximity were no longer with us and now we both felt as though we were reaching toward one another through the endless days and painful, aching nights that had separated us. Hunter reached down and wrapped his hands around the backs of my thighs so that he could scoop me up. My legs embraced his hips and I rocked mine against his, seeking release from the pressure already building in my core. He turned us around and carried me toward my desk. It had been custom designed and crafted from wood and stones sourced from the island, acrylic panels displaying pieces of debris from the crash and the storm found when combing the beach before we started construction. It was one of my favorite things that I had helped create for the resort.