Page 159 of Beach Reads and Deadly Deeds

I ran over to him. “Are you okay? Oh God, I thought you were dead.”

He coughed, shook his head. “I made it. You did too.” He pulled me close and hugged me tight as we sat in the sand. “Mia.”

I hugged him back, my eyes burning with tears.

“Where is he?” Jason asked.

“His leg is broken,” I said. I had all the pieces of the puzzle now, but was I putting them together wrong?

Tristan dragged himself over to us. “Ethan, I’m sorry. You have to understand.”

“I don’t,” Jason—Ethan—said. “I don’t understand how you could kill anyone and think you’d done it for me. Did you kill Gino?”

“He stole from us. He took fifty thousand dollars from our accounts!”

“You mean he stole from me,” Ethan said, his voice low and angry.

“This is my resort, my resort!” Tristan cried. “I built it. Every room has my loving touch. Every meal I personally approve. This is my baby, and he stole from me! Then he said he knew I’d killed Diana and expected me to pay him!” Tristan was laughing and crying at the same time. “It’ll be fine, I promise. Gino proved that Georgie killed Diana, and then Georgie killed Gino, and it’s fine. It’s what happened. Everybody knows that’s what happened.”

“No, Tristan, that isn’t what happened,” Ethan said. “You killed them both.”

He pulled me close. I was... I don’t know what I was.

“Mia, I’m sorry.”

“No. No.” I shook my head. I didn’t want to cry. Not here, not in front of this man I didn’t even know.

I pulled away, tried to get up, my legs rubbery.

“Mia, please listen,” Ethan said.

I found my strength and started walking down the beach. There was a trail here. I’d seen it on the map. And I could gothe long way back to the Sky Bar. I didn’t care how long it took. I didn’t want to be anywhere near Jason.

Ethan. Ethan Valentine.

Jason had lied to me.

Ethanhad lied to me. I hit my head with my palm, trying to bang sense into me that Jason didn’t exist, that ultra-rich Ethan Valentine had just... just what? Toyed with me? Laughed behind my back? Knowing who he was and what he did and what he had, and I was... just me.

Even when he’d had the opportunity to tell me the truth, that whole night on the boat when we were alone, or the next night when we made love until we ran out of condoms, he’dliedto me.

“Mia, please stop. Listen.”

I stopped walking, turned around, and he almost ran into me. “What,Ethan?”

“I’m sorry,” he said simply. He didn’t try to justify what he’d done. He didn’t try to explain... because there was no explanation.

He was a fraud. Jason Mallory didn’t exist.

I shook my head. “I can’t. Not now. Not ever.”

“I have no excuse. Other than my Uncle Luis, Tristan is the only person who knows who I really am. I didn’t want anyone to know. I’ve been in limbo for the last three years.”

I racked my brain for hints of the truth that I should have caught. Some cryptic comments from Luis, maybe, but he was an old man. How Tristan seemed to defer to Jason on the boat when they came to rescue us, rather than the other way around. Jason’s assurance that I could use Ethan Valentine’s secure internet if I wanted to stay for a few extra days.

I felt so foolish. I’d bought into a fantasy, hook, line, sinker.

I thought I had fallen in love. But you can’t love a fictional character; they couldn’t keep you warm in the middle of the night.