by Amelia Wilde
The man nods his head decisively. “The Love Temple is prepared for guests.”
It sends another bolt of pain through my heart. “Perfect.”
The Love Temple lives up to its name, and I swallow a painful lump in my throat when I’m dropped off at its doors and go into the silent room. Another bed rests under a white canopy, a cruel reflection of the bed Gideon and I shared in the master bedroom.
I don’t want to touch it. I don’t want to lie down on it. I don’t want to catch myself appreciating the infinity pool outside, lit up for my arrival.
But I’m exhausted, and I feel like the world’s biggest idiot.
I can’t keep the tears in anymore.
The sobs rush out of me in a flood of choked, humiliating noises. It’s not long before my knees start to buckle under the weight of the sadness that’s settling in, heavy on my shoulders, heavy on my chest, and I stretch out on the bed, letting the tears continue to flow.
At some point, I fall asleep in spite of myself.
When I wake up, startled, gasping in a breath, the light outside is gray and misty, the sun not yet risen.
There’s only one thing to do now.
44
Gideon
I want to chase her more than I’ve ever wanted to do anything.
The Gideon Hawke that came to the club with Adam and took a bet to convince a gorgeous woman to dance might have done that, too. That version of me was not one for planning, unless it had to do with another overseas venture.
But I can’t throw myself into recklessness now. It would be a terrible mistake, on par with letting Abby take a trip on the zip line without at least waking Kennedy up from her rest and telling her it was happening. I can’t afford to make any more mistakes.
No. I’m done being afforded mistakes.
The blow comes halfway to the Great House. Kennedy is long since gone by the time I start walking.
A staff member came out to find me still standing there, hands at my sides, staring in the direction of the house.
“Did you need a ride back, sir?” He’d said, his eyes wide in the light of the torches. I had them set up in case Abby was serious about going through with the zip line.
“No,” I’d snapped at him, then regretted acting like an asshole. This guy had nothing to do with my decisions.
Or Kennedy’s.
On the way back to the Great House, I swing wildly between realities. She’ll be over it soon enough, half of me thinks. She’ll be ready to come back to you, and make up, and the two of you can spend an entire day and night—and entire week if that’s what it takes—exploring every inch of each other, finding your way back to peace and passion.
The rest of me knows that all the evidence points to this being an impossibility. I saw Kennedy’s face in the torchlight. I’ve never heard her sound so definitive about anything. Her decision might have been hasty, but it was final.
At the Great House, there’s nobody there. The door to Abby’s room is closed, no light coming from underneath it, and the same goes for the other two guest rooms where her team is staying. Upstairs, there’s no sign of Kennedy—and I mean none. Her purse is gone, her phone is gone, and even her toothbrush is missing from its holder.
I’m halfway back to the staircase before I stop myself. I force myself to breathe.
She couldn’t have gone far.
It sounds like something you’d say about a child who wandered out into the night, but it’s true in this case—we’re on an island. There are no ferries running from here to Virgin Tortola, through where commercial flights connect. As far as I know, nobody on the island would take her there in the dark unless it was a dire emergency, and a break-up doesn’t count as one of those.
A break-up.
Is that what happened to us?
The part of me that wants to protect myself from this kind of heartache denies it. It’s not like we said out loud that we were a couple.
But I know that exchanging “I love you’s” took us beyond that.
I don’t know which is worse—Andrea’s cold, calculated dismissal, or Kennedy’s fury.
The canopied bed in the master bedroom seems huge and lonely, and I lay there restlessly, my mind battling between the two images.
Without a doubt, Kennedy’s anger is worse. Andrea was nothing. I would never have done anything this elaborate for Andrea. It’s not an argument I would ever make out loud—look at how much more I did for you—and I let out a bitter laugh at the thought. No. I never felt this way about Andrea, but I sure did about Kennedy.
I do about Kennedy.
All night, I toss and turn on the covers of the bed. At least once an hour I think I hear her soft footsteps on the staircase and shove myself to an upright position, only to realize I was dreaming.
It’s torture.
But I cling to the idea that once the sun is up and the skies are blue above Necker Island, another perfect day, then Kennedy will come back, and we can work out whatever it is that’s reared up between us so powerfully that she didn’t want me to touch her.
I fall asleep sometime around dawn, when the sky is getting light and I can’t force my eyelids to stay open another moment, waiting for her.
Birdsong wakes me up a couple of hours later, sun streaming in through the windows. A laugh echoes up from the lower terrace, and my heart leaps—Kennedy!
I want to rush downstairs and kiss her, tell her that we can get over this, there’s no need to feel this way—neither of us—but I look like a rumpled mess and that’s not the face I want to present to her this morning. I want her to know that the sight of watching her back disappearing into the dark destroyed me. But I don’t want her to think I’m the kind of man who can’t handle a challenge, either. So I race into the shower, lathering shampoo and soap and letting the water run over my body until I look like a version of my regular self.
But Kennedy isn’t on the lower terrace.
I walk in at a smooth, controlled pace, wearing clean shorts and a green t-shirt, only to find Abby and her team sitting around one table, but there is no sign of Kennedy.
My heart plummets into the ground.
“Morning, Gideon,” Abby calls. There are little bags under her eyes, like she didn’t sleep well, either, but her gaze keeps flicking back behind me toward the house.
“Is Kennedy up?” I move casually toward the table where breakfast is set out and pick up a plate. None of the food looks appetizing today, but what the hell else is there to do while I wait for her to come back?
Abby wrinkles her forehead. “I thought she was with you.”
My stomach turns over. “No. She was pretty pissed at me last night. She didn’t want me to walk back to the house with her, and when I got back here, she was gone.”
“To where? This is an island, right?” Abby’s laugh is nervous.
“She slept in the Love Temple last night, sir,” pipes up a man who’s talking softly to one of the other staff members. It looks to me like they’re about to change shifts.
Relief floods my veins. “Thank you…”
“Rick,” he finishes for me.
“Rick.” I set the plate down on the table.
It takes me no time to fling myself into one of the island’s vehicles and tear down the path to the Love Temple, my chest aching with the bitter irony. Kennedy spent last night alone in the Love Temple. Come on. I don’t know if she chose to do it on purpose, or that’s what she got stuck with—somehow—but either way, it’s not what I would have chosen. Not by a long shot.
But when I get there, there’s a woman in the island’s signature white polo uniform, changing over the sheets.
“Where is she?” I bark, my voice no longer under my control.
“Miss Carlisle?” She looks up at me, her brown eyes worried. “She took a ferry off the island early this morning, sir. She’s gone.”
45
Kennedy
“Absolutely, Mrs. Gregory. I can have those flights changed wit
hin the hour.”
“I need to know immediately, Kennedy. If I’m not on the six-thirty out of LaGuardia instead of the eight-thirty, there will be repercussions.”
I stare at the center of my desk to keep from rolling my eyes. Mrs. Gregory’s repercussions involve being in Aspen two hours later than she’d originally planned, and it’s not like her spoiled son was going to be able to ski all day after a flight at six-thirty in the evening.
“I understand. I’ll have that new confirmation to you shortly.”
She hangs up the phone.
The day is crawling by, but everything seems to be moving faster than I can process it. The gnawing emptiness in the center of my chest sucks everything else through its lens, making everything seem colorless and dull, but almost excruciatingly difficult at the same time.
I try not to think of him.
It’s been a week.
My phone rings again when I’m halfway through changing Mrs. Gregory’s reservations.
“Kennedy Carlisle.” My voice is bright and chipper, but with every call that comes in, the weight on my shoulders grows heavier. I want to get back to my apartment so I can sleep. I’ve been sleeping all night, every night, from six o’clock until six the next morning. I’m like an overgrown toddler, but the sleep eases the pain. If I’m not awake, I can’t feel it.
I can’t get myself out of this funk.
“Kennedy!” Mr. Wixom’s voice booms across the line, and I can’t stop myself from flinching. Luckily there’s nobody outside my office door or poking their head in to see me recoiling from a phone call. I’m an executive travel coordinator, for God’s sake. I don’t get to have that kind of weakness. Not anymore. Not when this job is all that I have left, aside from my crappy apartment, a small book collection, and two days’ worth of groceries. “I need some last minute arrangements. I have the urge. I have the urge to get out of the city.”
“I’m so glad to hear from you, Mr. Wixom. Where were you thinking of traveling?”
“It might not be quite as last minute as you’re thinking. I have an island in mind.”
“Tell me about it!” The lies are the easiest part. Over the phone, I don’t have to arrange my face into something resembling happiness when I talk to my clients. As soon as Wixom tells me where he wants to go, I can put a package together for him and then let him slide into the back of my mind, where he hardly takes up any real estate at all.
“That island of Richard Branson’s. I want to take my wife there for our anniversary in two months. I’ve heard the place is tough to reserve.”
At first, the gears of my mind work too slowly to keep up with him. When they catch up, clicking into place, I wish they hadn’t.
I speak past an aching tightness in my throat. “Necker Island?’
“That’s the one.”
It takes me a heartbeat too long to force out the next words. “Your wife is a lucky woman, Mr. Wixom. Did you have any specifics in mind other than the month of November?”
“Oh, not really.” He laughs jovially. “I’m assuming you can work your magic and get us a weekend in one of those beach houses. My portfolio might make it there eventually, but I can’t get that Great House yet. Have you been there, Kennedy? From the pictures I’ve seen, it’s better than all the other Virgin Islands.” I brace myself against the edge of my desk, crumpling forward, my knuckles white around the handset of the phone. But Mr. Wixom saves me from having to lie by barreling onward. “Oh, of course you haven’t been there.” He chuckles. “But I’m sure you’ve seen the pictures, too.”
“It’s absolutely lovely.” There’s no sign in my voice that I’m drowning in heartache. “Let me look into availability, and I’ll call you back this afternoon.”
He’s still rambling on when I break office protocol and hang up on him, hoping the click is soft enough not to be noticeable.
I escaped from Necker Island by hiring a private ferry from Tortola. I was off the island by the time the sun rose and using every one of my travel coordinator skills to get myself on the first flight back to New York.
Five minutes into the flight—commercial and crowded with tourists, the man next to me smelling like a bar—I knew I had made a mistake.
I spent the rest of the time in the air convincing myself that I hadn’t, and when my feet hit the tiles at LaGuardia, I had a shaky grasp on a plausible story: I was doing the right thing.
I’m doing the right thing. I tell it to myself one more time and straighten up in my seat.
The phone on my desk rings. One deep breath, and I answer.
“Kennedy Carlisle.”
“How long are you going to be mad at me?”
The sound of Abby’s voice cuts straight through to my heart, and it’s a long moment before I can answer her. “Abby, I’m at work.”
“I know you’re at work. I know you’re at work because you skipped out on a tropical vacation over a tiff with your boyfriend, and it was stupid as hell.”
“I don’t want to talk about this.”
“Too bad.” Abby’s voice is trembling with emotion—anger? Sadness? I can’t tell which. “What are you trying to prove, Kennedy?”
My hands clench into fists. “I’m not trying to prove anything. I’m trying to live my life where people aren’t reckless and stupid.”
“It wasn’t reckless. It was a zip line. And you’ve done far more reckless things than me.”
That’s it. She’s thrown down the gauntlet for the first time since the accident, and it shakes me to my core, my chest going tight and hot.
“I can’t believe—” I can barely draw in a breath, and my voice comes out as a strained squeak. “I’m sorry, Abby. You know I regret that decision every day of my life.”
I can hear her breathing over the phone, and as pissed as I am, as hurt as I am, as crushed as I am, every one of them is a tiny relief. “That’s not—that’s not what I meant, Kennedy. What’s done is done, and I got into that car, too. I could have made a different choice.”
I gasp, clapping my hand over my mouth. I can’t force any words out, so Abby does.
“I only meant that you took a risk on Gideon, and it made you happy. I saw your face when we were on that island. You haven’t been that relaxed and free for years.”
Silent tears stream down my face.
“I made it out the other side, Kennedy. I like doing things that are this side of dangerous, but I’d never do anything that I thought would injure or kill me. I want you to find that balance, too. I want you to let go of that accident. I have.”
I want to say that the accident will never let go of her, but something inside me is breaking down, dissolving.
“I told him I was done with him, Abby.” I’m choking on the words, trying frantically to wipe the tears away before Marina or anyone else walks in. “I left him on the beach. There’s no way he wants anything to do with me.”
There’s a silence, the space of a few heartbeats. “I wouldn’t be too sure about that.”
46
Gideon
She doesn’t text, and she doesn’t call, and there’s nothing to do but leave Necker Island before the sun sets.
Abby sits by the pool in her wheelchair, a wide hat protecting her skin from the sun, until I come up behind her.
“We’re leaving, aren’t we?” Her voice is soft, tinged with regret.
“We need to get off the island before dark if we’re going to leave today.” Inside the Great House, the staff is packing everything up, putting Kennedy’s clothes in separate suitcases. Most of them will be returned, if I can bear to let them go, but I’m not going to decide that right now.
Abby breathes in deeply and looks out over the pool, tiny waves lapping at the sides. “I’m ready when you are.”
We don’t have much to say to each other, so an awkward silence reigns over the helicopter flight. Her eyes go wide when she sees the interior of my private jet. My heart aches in my chest at the sight of her face. It’s so like Kenned
y’s, but different enough that every glance I take at her is another reminder that Kennedy is gone, and I might never see her again.
In New York, Abby’s team takes her off the plane, and I go to see her into the car. I’m not sure what the hell the appropriate thing is to do in this situation, but I shove my hands in my pockets and wait as she transfers over. She pauses, arranging her bag on her lap, and then looks up at me. “Are you going to go after her?”
Her words fall like a pebble into a lake, rippling out.
“I don’t know.”
I spend the first three days back in the city wondering if she’s going to call. I pick up my phone and bring up her name on my contacts list a hundred times, but I can’t bring myself to press down, to connect. 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.
It’s stupid, and I know it, but with every hour that goes by, the ache in my chest is replaced with a stinging bitterness.
This is what I get for taking a woman so seriously. This is what I get for molding my life around her instead of around myself. It never ends well, and I shouldn’t have hoped for it to be different with Kennedy. Never mind the way she moved against me. Never mind the way her eyes burned into mine in the club, in the sun on Virgin Gorda, in the moonlight at the Great House. Never mind how it felt to be buried inside her, a perfect fit, like discovering water in the desert.
We’re done, Gideon. It’s over.
On Thursday afternoon, I delete her from my contacts.
On Friday, I go back into the office. Dahlia is waiting to greet me, her eyebrows raised. “How was it?”
“There’s nothing about that trip I want to discuss.” Her smile drops off her face. I move past her into my office.
Dahlia hovers near the door for a minute. “There are some new reports that—”