Page 61 of Beach Reads and Deadly Deeds

I didn’t want to, but I did, because I needed to see where I was going.

I was halfway across the lake. Suddenly, the weight of the line changed, and I bounced up so quickly that one of my hands

slipped. I thought, This is it. I’m going to fall and die, splat on the water.

But I held on and was reaching the shore quickly. What had Brie told me when she explained zip-lining?

The line dipped down until I was almost touching the water. I could see the shore. It was only a hundred feet away and getting

close fast.

“You just have to remember to disengage the harness and let go between twenty and fifty feet from shore.”

I had no harness, so I just let go.

I splashed into the water and went down. The lake was deep, even here fifty feet from the beach, and I fought to come back

to the surface. Breaking through, I gasped for air. I was alive.

Jason. He’d fallen farther back than I had.

I swam to the shore, my arms and hands aching from the zip line. But I made it and collapsed onto the shore.

I heard moaning behind me.

“Jason?” I called out.

I half crawled until I could push myself to standing. It wasn’t Jason. It was Tristan. His leg was at an odd angle.

“My leg. It’s broken,” he said.

“Good,” I said. “I swear, if you killed Jason, I will make sure you get the death penalty, you bastard!”

I turned and looked out at the lake, searching for signs of life. The setting sun reflected off the cliffs, but the lake looked

dark. I didn’t see him. I feared he really was dead.

Tristan was sobbing. “I did it for you, Ethan! She knew who you were. That’s why she came to me. She knew you were Ethan Valentine,

and she would have spread it far and wide. It would have hurt you, destroyed what we built here on St. Claire! I did it for

you!”

I couldn’t have heard that right.

Tristan was delirious.

Then I remembered his words before he ran. He had been looking at Jason when he said, “I did it for you, Ethan.”

Finally, Jason emerged from the water, staggered up the shore, and collapsed.

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 go the 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.

Ethan had 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’d lied to 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.

Maybe because I couldn’t speak, Ethan kept talking.

“When Parker Briggs took my idea and all my documentation, I said fuck it. That arena of cutthroat business is draining. I needed to get away. I bought the island and expected to tune out for a few months, figure out what to do. But then I found I could run Valentine Enterprises from here. I had good people to take over the day-to-day operations. I made decisions and reviewed projects and went to board meetings via Zoom, but I almost never had to show myself. When I had to, I made the connection poor and put on fake glasses just in case someone recognized me. I’ve changed—LASIK surgery.

I started working out and built up muscle, grew out my hair, got tan. ”

“Everyone knows Clark Kent is Superman,” I said. “Glasses are hardly a disguise.”

“People see what they want to see,” he said. “No one pays attention to bartenders, wait staff, housekeepers. So I asked Tristan

to give me a job as Jason Mallory. I needed the time to just... I don’t know, figure myself out. I got to help make St.

Claire thrive, and people didn’t know who I was. It was... heaven. For the first time in my life, I was truly free.”

I’d only seen one old college picture of Ethan Valentine. I didn’t see him in Jason. He had changed over a decade.

“Nothing’s changed,” I said. “Except a few dozen people now know who you are.”

“I don’t care about that. I don’t care about them. I care about you . Don’t walk away.”

“What did you think would happen, Ethan .” His real name still felt foreign on my tongue. “That I’d come visit every year, we’d have great sex, then I’d go away and

you could continue this farce?”

“No. I was hoping you’d stay for a few extra days, work from my house, and then I’d tell you.”

“Oh, now you’re saying you always planned to tell me?” I shook my head. The tears were there, burning, but I didn’t let them

fall. “I don’t believe you.”

“It’s the truth,” he said quietly.

“You lied to me. We talked, we made love. I thought—no. The time to tell me was before I fell for you. I can’t trust you.”

“I don’t have any more secrets. Ask me anything, anything at all—I’ll tell you.”

“How am I supposed to know if what you tell me is the truth when you’re so good at lying?”

I ached. I was humiliated. Mostly? I was so damn sad.

I’d fallen for him, hard.

I’d fallen for a lie.

“Let me make it up to you,” he whispered. “Please, Mia.”

“You can’t,” I said. And walked away to find the beach, to find my way back. Somehow.

This time, he didn’t follow.