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I nod, my heart thrumming. “I remember. Noah told me.”
“I couldn’t call you,” he said. “Because my phone was broken.”
“After you jumped into the bay to save my shoe,” I say.
We look at each other, and I see that moment reflected in his eyes. I wonder if he sees it in mine. I was at the gazebo, surrounded by twinkling white lights. I had just seen Caden fawned over by a group of influencers. I’d decided to let him go. To accept we would never be more than friends.
Then he came up behind me and scared the crap out of me. I dropped my shoe into the bay.
That was the first time we kissed.
My eyes flit to his mouth. The memory is so potent, like that kiss was yesterday.
“After I saved your shoe,” Caden echoes quietly.
I glance up and he’s curved toward me. His eyes are an endless, churning blue-gray. The slant of his nose casts a shadow across one cheek. The planes of his face seem to soften. His lips are slightly parted, and I hear his breath catch.
My phone buzzes in my pocket.
I turn away, startled, and pick up my own drink, chugging down root beer so fast I almost choke. I don’t want to look at who texted me. I stare at my toes, covered in a fine dusting of sand.
When I chance a look back at him, Caden’s expression is neutral again.
“Do you have to get that?” he asks.
I shake my head. I don’t want him to stop talking.
He gazes out at the waves. “My family was breaking apart,” Caden says. “Dad didn’t know how to handle it. I didn’t either. I was…numb. The next morning, Dad called me into his study. My family saw you with me, of course, when Noah drove us to the house. So Dad knew. He forbade me from seeing you ever again.”
Now it’s my breath that catches. “What?”
I can’t imagine Russell Everton knowing my name, much less forbidding his son to see me.
Caden winces and looks down at the sand. “He said if I kept seeing you, I would put you in danger. He said I would destroy you.”
I feel dizzy. “But…but why?”
“Because he destroyed Mom,” Caden explains. “He was certain her death was caused by one of his business enemies. Someone out to get to him by killing her. He said this was what being an Everton was. And if I brought you into the family, I would put your life at risk. But what he really meant was that he would never let me date who I wanted. It was all a pretext—he was going to control every aspect of my life, from who I married, to when, probably even to how many kids I could have. You didn’t fit with his plan.”
It’s so hard to comprehend what he’s saying. I had no idea. I’m not even sure my guesses were in the same ballpark. “Why didn’t you tell me this?”
Caden shakes his head. “I couldn’t stay in Magnolia Bay and not be with you.”
“But you didn’t even give me a say!” I cry. “You didn’t even try. You just left.”
“Because Dad held all the strings!” Caden shouts, startling me. “I was a puppet, Isla—I was his to control. He didn’t care if I was putting you in danger. He just didn’t want the heir to Everton Estate to be dating some townie.” He sneers at the word. “He wanted everything to get back to normal as quickly as possible. For the good of the brand. He didn’t care that Daisy couldn’t stop crying or that Von was broken or that Al was powering through a bottle of whiskey or that Finn was completely silent. He needed appearances to be kept up. He cared about the business over his own family, his own children. I saw how little I really meant to him. I saw that I would never have a life that was mine if I stayed.”
Anger flames in my chest. I don’t even know who I’m angry at—Russell for putting these crazy restrictions on his son, or Caden for not simply talking to me about them like an adult.
“This changes everything. But not us. This doesn’t change us.” I throw his words back in his face, the words he said to me that morning after we got to Everton. After they took Marion’s body away. Caden flinches. He remembers too.
“You lied to me,” I say. “You lied when you could have told me the truth. I’m not mad that you left. I’m not mad that you couldn’t be with me, or you couldn’t stay in the place that held so many memories of your mom. I even understood the silence at first! I was there, remember? I saw your family shatter too. But we…” Traitor tears fill my eyes and I scrub them away. “We werefriends, Caden! I thought you respected me. I thought you would have some day, at some point, sent a text or an email or a smoke signal or a freaking carrier pigeon orsomethingto let me know: Isla, there is no us anymore. But you vanished! I didn’t even know if you were okay. If something had happened to you.” There’s a lump in my throat so big it hurts. I never thought I’d get to say this to him. “Do you know how much you hurt me? Do you know how broken I was after you left? And it felt like you didn’t care.”
The pain in his eyes is a bleak, jagged thing. “I’m so sorry, Isla. I never wanted to—I had to get out. I didn’t know what else to do. I thought…” He squeezes his eyes shut. “I stupidly thought that a clean break would be a good thing. I thought you would move on just fine without me. I didn’t think you would hurt as badly as I did. Every single day since I’ve been gone, I’ve thought of you. You’ve never left my mind, not for a moment. But I was a coward. I was too scared to face you.”
When he looks at me again, his expression is pleading. “If I hadn’t left, Dad would have tied me up so tight, I’d never know who I was. I wouldn’t be able to be with you anyway. But I should have talked to you. I shouldn’t have just disappeared. I see that now—god, I see it so brutally clearly.”
“But you didn’t talk to me,” I say. “You made your choice. And I’ve made mine.”