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And for a moment, alone in her cabin again, she could only stare off at nothing in particular, try to catch her breath, and try her best not to read anything into... anything.

She’d made that mistake before.

And thinking about that night in the desert—and Dominic Carter—was sobering. Like another cold shower. She fought to keep those images out of her head, but they lived in her. The fear and the adrenaline. The grief, the determination, the will to live no matter what. They were all still a part of her.

Just like he is, she thought, as she made her way down to the beach.

And she welcomed the opportunity to stopthinkingso freaking much for a brutal hour.

After the workout, when she decided to go on a run in aheavy weighted vest, because that sounded like the kind of awful she needed after glutting herself on Jonas all night long, Jonas went with her.

He didn’t seem to care that everybody watched him do it.

Bethan fought her feelings about that for almost the whole of her run down to the far end of the beach and back. Then she remembered the last time the two of them had been on this beach together. The evil sandbags and the fact that he’d come out here against his will because he’d wanted to avoid whatever Isaac’s mediation might look like.

She stopped running and looked at him, panting, a sudden dark suspicion taking her over. “Is all of this because you don’t want mediation?”

Jonas gazed back at her, implacable and unreadable as ever. “No.”

“Because the last time we were out here, that was what you were worried about. And now... all this.”

And ordinarily, she would have wanted the earth to open her up and swallow her whole, because her voice cracked on the last two words. But today she didn’t seem to care about that as much as she should have.

Jonas’s jaw tensed. “Mediation was one of the things I was thinking about when I volunteered to be your wedding date. But I haven’t thought about it since.”

A knot throbbed to life beneath her ribs. “Everybody knows this story, Jonas. Dumb girl lets some guy get one over on her to save himself. Loses everything in the process while he’s fine. Is that what’s happening?”

That muscle in his lean jaw pulsed. “No.”

“Because I can’t help noticing that for someone who was deeply concerned with making sure no one knew what had happened between us only days ago, you sure didn’t mind letting everybody see you come out on this run with me. What do you think they’re going to think? Or is that what you want?”

“Who do you think I am?” he asked her, that dark gaze of his an indictment.

But she refused to let that get to her, no matter how it made her heart pound.

“How would I know?” she asked, forcing herself to stay quiet. Calm. Focused. When what she wanted to do was scream. “You could be anyone. Isn’t that your job?”

“As often as it’s your job.”

“Don’t think it hasn’t occurred to me that you play a role here the same way you do everywhere else, Jonas. Maybe your biggest role of all.”

She didn’t realize that she was holding her breath until he slid his hand over the nape of her neck again. And she nearly gasped.

That impossibly dark gaze moved over her face, and she should have jerked away. She should have tried to hide. She should have donesomethingto keep him from seeing too much... but she didn’t.

He saw everything. She let him. “You let me into your cabin. You feel vulnerable.”

“Or played,” she countered. “One of the two.”

“And if I played you, you can lean into the anger here. I get it.”

She thought he did, and that was... worse and better at the same time.

“You’re right,” Jonas said after a moment. “I play all kinds of roles wherever I go. But not with you, Bethan. Never with you.”

And he didn’t kiss her. He only gazed down at her, his mouth an unsmiling line and his gaze so intense she felt as if it were carving out her insides as she stood there.

He didn’t kiss her, but the weight of his hand on her neck felt like some kind of brand, or maybe that was his gaze, and everything inside her seemed to pull too tight even as it broke apart.