by Amelia Wilde
“Hell, no,” Abby says, her eyes glowing. “I want to do something fun.”
41
Kennedy
It’s dark when I wake up. There are no voices echoing up from the lower terrace.
Those are the first two things that I notice, and when they both register in my foggy brain, I sit bolt upright underneath the white canopy.
What time is it?
I fumble for my phone, which is tucked further under my pillow than I thought, and swipe at the screen to unlock it. It’s a little past ten o’clock.
I turn over onto my back, dropping the phone back on the surface of the bed, and stretch out, yawning. At least I didn’t miss the entire night. I would have been so pissed at myself for letting Abby down.
Once I’ve worked out the kinks, I take a short detour into the bathroom to brush my teeth and throw my hair into a bun, and then I pad downstairs. Where did those two go?
Gideon and Abby aren’t in the kitchen, or anywhere in the living room. In fact, it’s a kind of deadly quiet in the house. There’s nothing but the sound of the tropical breeze and the waves rolling onto the shore in a steady rhythm. My heartbeat is louder than either of them.
Maybe they’re talking quietly out on the terrace.
I head through the living room toward the big double doors that open to the poolside terrace, straining to hear any sound that might indicate where they are. My shoulders are tense and tight. Abby’s going to laugh any second now. I don’t know why the hell I’m so nervous about this. I don’t know why the hell I should have such a creeping, sick feeling in the pit of my gut, and I pause at the double doors, lean against the frame, and close my eyes.
For a long time after the accident, I had to do this every fifteen minutes—find somewhere to brace myself and close my eyes, letting my breath calm me. It got worse when Abby got out of the hospital, and worse again when my mom would leave to drive her to her physical therapy appointments. Every time they got into the car, I felt dizzy and lightheaded, unable to find my balance.
The same thing is happening now, and I have to calm down.
I’m on Necker Island with Gideon. It’s one of the most exclusive vacation spots in the entire world. He’s promised me that he has everything under control, so there’s no reason to worry.
It’s the silence that’s getting to me. That’s all.
Once I’ve steadied myself, I head out onto the terrace. All the cocktail things have been cleared away, and a couple of staff members are gathered around a table, lighting candles in the center, speaking in hushed tones. One of them, a woman, turns away to take three plates off a rolling tray near the table and reaches down, setting one in front of one of the seats. The man says something, and they go back and forth. She moves it to one of the other spaces.
I’m about to stride over to ask them for any information they might have about the sexy billionaire who’s renting out this entire island and where he might be, along with my sister, when I hear their voices.
It’s Abby’s laugh, ringing out through the night, and at first I can’t place which direction it’s coming from. Both of the people setting the table look up, and I follow their eyes toward a platform that blends artfully into the Great House. The top section is blazing with lights. Most of them are meant to look like torches, but there’s one bright floodlight. Gideon is lit up from the side like some kind of Greek god, and nearby, Abby’s dark hair pokes above one of the railings.
She laughs again, and I hurry across the terrace, finding the entrance to the platform outside its still-warm tiles. There’s a stone staircase leading up, and I take the steps two at a time.
At the top, I can’t process what I’m seeing for a few long heartbeats.
Gideon is leaning against the side of the platform, arms crossed above his chest. There are two staff members on either side of Abby, one checking the straps on the harness that she’s strapped into. The other pulls a helmet over her head, buckling it underneath her chin.
My entire chest goes tight and cold.
“What the hell is this?”
My voice is sharp and loud, and everyone turns toward me.
One of the staff members looks back down at Abby. “One last time.”
She reaches up, gamely, making eye contact with me as she grips a handle above her head with both hands, flexing her muscles. “I’ve got this.” She winks at the guy to her left. “I’ve been working out.”
“I’m sure you have.”
Nobody has answered me yet, and anger rises up alongside the fear that’s choking me.
I swallow again. Gideon’s face is frozen somewhere between confusion and surprise. “Kennedy, we were—”
“Going on the zip line!” Abby cries with a big grin on her face. “And tomorrow we’re going skydiving. Ready, boys?”
The staff members both grip handles on each side of the harness. I can’t make out the words they’re saying to one another any more—their voices merge into my panic.
“Abby, stop!” I try to shout the words, but they come out as a strangled cry.
“Not a chance, sis.” She is shouting, over her shoulder, and then the men at either side of her swing her forward. “One, two, three,” they say in tandem, and then they’ve flung her over the edge of the platform. She screams as she flies away from us, into the dark night, and I can’t tell if it’s in terror or delight.
The sound reverberates to my very core, and I’m in that car again, hearing the crunch of the rooftop against the bottom of the ditch and Abby’s high-pitched scream, cut off suddenly as the car makes impact again. My hand is tight against the buckle of the seat belt, hanging on for dear life—I got it buckled, I got it buckled, Abby, Abby, Abby—and then that darkness, that long, stifling darkness.
“Abby!” The scream rips from my throat and I’m in motion, everyone standing stock-still, staring at me.
I take the stairs two at a time and when I hit the terrace I ditch my shoes, running for the beach. Abby zooms overhead, still screaming, down the beach.
I run for her life.
42
Gideon
Kennedy’s face turns chalk-white when she sees Abby strapped into the zip line harness, and then everything happens so fast that my mind can’t keep up. When Kennedy goes tearing off the platform, her feet slamming into the stone staircase so hard the sound echoes through the darkness, I stand frozen for a long moment.
“Oh, man,” murmurs one of the staff members in a rare lack of control. I’m sure they’ve seen their share of intense situations—they happen among the wealthy as often as they do among regular people, as I learned from my friends in college—but even this reaction is beyond expectation.
I’m already in motion when the second man, Peter, speaks. “Should we not have—?”
“Probably not,” I call over my shoulder. “But you’re fine. Client request. Find something else to do.”
I can feel their eyes on me as I disappear down the staircase.
I almost trip over Kennedy’s shoes on the terrace and stumble out onto the sand on the beachfront. Where the hell did she go? What did she think she was going to do?
Then I catch a glimpse of her in the flames of one of the tiki torches lining the entire pathway of the zip line, running hard, her hair flipping behind her. It’s come undone from the bun it was gathered in, and she hasn’t bothered to fix it. Her gait is wild, unsteady, like she’s spiraling slowly out of control.
It’s not slow, I realize as I lurch into a run of my own.
The zip line isn’t long. It only takes about a minute to travel the whole distance down the beach.
“Kennedy!”
She sprints by another light, not hesitating. Did she even hear me?
I run down the beach behind her. This isn’t the packed sand of low tide, and my feet can’t get purchase on the shifting sand. It’s frustrating as hell, and I let out a low growl as I struggle to pick up the pace.
“Abby!” Kennedy screams again, the sou
nd thrown in different directions by the wind. She sounds terrified, and my heart falls to my feet. What the hell was I thinking?
I wasn’t thinking. That’s the only answer. Abby wanted to know what there was to do on the island.
“What do you mean by fun?” I’d said, giving her a curious look.
“Something more exciting than drinking cocktails.” She’d held both hands in the air. “Not that the cocktails weren’t delicious. But unlike my sister, I like a little more…adrenaline in my life.”
My expression must have given me away.
“What?” Abby laughed. “You think that because I’m in a wheelchair I can’t enjoy a good old-fashioned rush? No. Kennedy’s the one who doesn’t like that kind of thing anymore. So don’t hold back on me, Gideon Hawke. What does this island have to offer?”
“I’m not sure we should—”
Abby scoffed at my glance toward the upper terrace. “She’s napping. This could all be over by the time she wakes up, if you don’t hold out on me.”
I’d given her a long look, and she hadn’t flinched. Her brown eyes were determined, serious, and she’d screwed her mouth up into a hard line.
“The sun is going to be setting soon.”
Abby snapped her fingers. “So let’s hurry it up.”
I opened my mouth to make one final argument involving Kennedy—we should wait, we should ask her what she thinks, we should—but the look on Abby’s face told me she was sick of the bullshit, sick of being coddled, sick of the constant worry. I’d made the mistake I’d been trying to avoid making, which was assuming she was somehow fragile because she can’t walk.
“There’s a zip line.”
Her eyes lit up.
“I think it might need some adjustments, but if we move quickly, you could take a trip down the beach before Kennedy wakes up.”
My gut had turned over at the thought of hiding this from her, but I shoved it down deep and called to consult with some of the staff members. If she was going to be angry with us, it’d happen even if I woke her up—because Abby wasn’t going to back down. I could tell from the set of her shoulders.
It took a while for them to adjust the harness for Abby, and that involved calling in one of the lead managers for the island, but they all determined, in the end, that it was perfectly safe. Another team was in place at the bottom before she was even strapped in.
But Kennedy doesn’t know that.
She’s somehow putting more distance between us, and my abs burn as I pick up speed. There’s a circle of light that we’re both heading for—the circle that Abby’s going to end up in, is probably already in—and Kennedy skids to a halt inside of it. I catch up to her a few long heartbeats later and catch her by the elbow.
Kennedy whirls toward me, her face a mask of anger. “Don’t you touch me,” she hisses.
“Leave him alone.” Abby cuts in from where two team members are unstrapping her and a third is positioning her wheelchair so she’ll have an easy transfer. “It was my idea.”
“I don’t know what the hell you were thinking, doing that,” Kennedy shouts, her voice shaking. “You could have been seriously injured, Abby. I can’t even—” Kennedy’s voice cuts off in a gasp.
“I wasn’t going to be injured. The whole thing was planned out and completely safe—”
“How do you know?” The words are raw and ragged. “It’s dark out. You’ve never been on a zip line—”
“I’ve been on plenty of zip lines, Kennedy. You wouldn’t know because you’re too busy calling to check in and never visiting. Which is fine.” Abby’s voice rises along with Kennedy’s, sounding remarkably similar. “It’s fine. You’re busy. You have a career. But I have a life, too, and it doesn’t revolve around making sure you’re all right.” Her last three words drip with sarcasm. “Every single day of our lives since that accident has been all about your worries and your fears, and making sure you’re feeling fine with everything that goes on, and I’ve had enough. I thought—”
“Stop it, Abby. Don’t say another word.”
“I’ll say whatever I please. Get it through your head, Kennedy.” The staff members are focused completely on transferring Abby to the wheelchair, and her hands go down to grip the wheels, the muscles on her arms standing out. “I’m a grown woman. I can ride a zip line if I want to. And you’re not ever going to be able to stop me.” Abby turns toward the staff people. “You guys brought a vehicle out here, didn’t you? These wheels won’t work very well on the sand.”
One of them nods, stretching his arm toward a Jeep parked nearby, and two of them step forward, lifting the chair and Abby in their heavily muscled arms.
Kennedy watches them go, fists balled up at her side. She is silent until the Jeep pulls away, and then she rounds on me.
“You—” Her jaw works, teeth gritted together. “You set me up.”
“I really didn’t, Kennedy. It was—”
“Don’t say anything else to me. Don’t say anything else, ever. We’re done, Gideon. We’re over. Don’t touch me. Don’t talk to me. Don’t follow me. Take a different way back to the house. In the morning, I’ll be gone.”
43
Kennedy
I am sick. I am full of rage. I don’t know what the hell else I am, only that all of me is in a kind of turmoil I don’t even think the ocean could match in the middle of a hurricane.
There’s a tiny part of me that hopes Gideon comes after me, puts his body between the Great House and me, and tells me that I can’t walk away like this. There’s a tiny part of me that wants to turn around and run back to him, to slap his face for this stupid decision, to have it out with him right now.
But most of me is consumed by white-hot anger. My hands are balled into fists that I can’t release and there’s a thick line of pain forming across my shoulders.
I have to get out of here.
I can’t think clearly on this island—not anymore. I want to get far, far away from here—and from him—and collect myself.
Abby’s words ring in my ears. How dare she be pissed at me? After all the years I’ve spent trying to protect her? To make up for what I did? She has no idea, clearly, how horrendous it is to live with this kind of guilt.
It surges through me again, rising in my throat like bile, and I stop, doubled over, waiting to empty my stomach onto the sand.
It doesn’t happen.
My gut clenches, but dry heaves are all that I get. No relief. No release.
Gideon still isn’t coming after me. There are no footsteps in the sand, no sound of his breath. I’m glad. I’m glad he’s listening to me, unlike my sister, who is only thinking of herself.
I straighten up, clutching fistfuls of my hair and throwing my head back for one wrenching instant before I realize I must look like a fool. I don’t need to look any more foolish tonight.
I must have looked insane to those staff members. I must have looked insane to Gideon.
Heat rushes to my face, and I put my hands over my eyes, my hair falling forward over my shoulders. I’m mortified, and there’s no way I’m going to get over it until I get somewhere quiet, somewhere…safer than this. Gideon’s voice melds in with Abby’s shouts, and I can’t make sense of anything they said anymore, anything I did.
And I don’t even have a hair tie to fix the mess of my hair.
I stomp toward the house, and it looms up in front of me, some lights glowing from the windows. I hesitate at the doors, feeling eyes on me, but it’s only one of the staff members, moving back toward the kitchen. I don’t normally see them, but Gideon is right—someone is always on call.
Good. I can use their help.
I go upstairs, my heart in my throat. What if Gideon ran back and is somehow here before me, waiting in the room to finish what I started out there on the beach?
No. What I ended.
But the master bedroom is silent, empty.
I find my purse on top of the low dresser and look around, my hands searching for
something to grab, to shove into a backpack. I should be packing, but there’s nothing to pack—Gideon had clothes gathered separately for this trip, and almost nothing in the room is mine.
I settle for my phone charger and phone, shoving them into my purse. I grab a toothbrush from the bathroom and find a miniature tube of toothpaste in one of the drawers. My brush, my chapstick. I have a small e-reader in my purse. That’s about all I brought. Gideon brought the rest.
My throat tightens at the thought of all those beautiful clothes hanging up in the wardrobe and folded neatly into drawers. It’s not that I’ll miss the clothes, though I will—every piece is comfortable and well-made, sexy without being too over-the-top. It’s all exactly my style. It’s that Gideon chose them for me, and this is how it ended.
He shouldn’t have lied to me. He shouldn’t have agreed to do something like that with Abby without telling me first. I didn’t even know there was a zip line.
The devil’s advocate in the back of my mind pipes up. She can do whatever she pleases. She’s as much of a woman as you are.
I can’t even entertain that thought right now. Not now, when I’m still riding high on the adrenaline of anger, when I still have enough momentum to do something for myself, even if it’s the wrong thing.
Think.
I hitch the purse over my shoulder and take only a few other items of clothing from the wardrobe. A set of clean panties and a bra. A plain tank top. A pair of yoga pants and a matching hoodie.
When I get to where I’m going, I’ll send them back to Gideon. I wore a similar outfit on the plane, leaving the rest of my things at my apartment, so there’s not much else I can do—and I can’t get all the way back to New York City wearing a pair of expensive cut-off shorts and a bikini top.
Downstairs I find the staff member who is on call and ask him to take me to one of the other houses. At some point, Gideon mentioned that there are smaller private houses all over the island. And since he’s reserved the entire thing, there shouldn’t be anybody there.