Page 12 of Fire Island (Fire Island #2)

Eleven

EVIE

I mpossible is trying to act normal, platonic, around Cal.

Pretending nothing lies between him and me.

Being back here is the worst kind of torture.

Where every memory we made together clashes with the chaos and fear of the last two weeks with Timothy.

And I am glad to be near Cal but not in his space right now.

Because if I’m honest, I don’t think I could be closer without falling apart.

The little shack is fine. It’s enough. It’s also void of the horrible memories made in the house. I need a little distance from it. I know I want to get back eventually. For Cal and me to go back to what we had before I left. Before the accident. Before the abduction.

That’s a lot of befores we have to work through.

And I’m grateful to have the time to do it. Less is more. And the shack is absolutely less. So it’s my job to bring the more. More writing, since it helps me process and recover. More time to think over recent events and what I want moving forward. Iris has set me up well, like she did last time.

Where would I be without her?

Em did a great job of the cleanup. Who knows what he found when he came out after he rescued me from the water. I didn’t exactly take stock on the way out that day. The day before Timothy and his buddy hightailed it and left me for dead in the ocean.

They got away.

An unfinished story.

A loose end . . .

The police didn’t think I have cause to think they would return.

Not after being reported present in this area.

The officer they sent to the hospital was pretty thorough.

I’m guessing he knows what he’s doing. Still, the unease in the back of my mind will most likely never leave.

The tiny thought that one day they’ll come back to finish what they started.

After all, six years of effort is a lot to abandon.

“Hello?” The door opens on his heavy knock.

I’m sitting at the small table. My laptop is open, but my attention has drifted out the window. I glance to the door. Cal stands with a bowl in his hands.

“Oh, hi. Come in.” I stand and run a hand over my shorts before tucking a stray strand of hair behind my ear.

He steps inside. “Thought you might like to help me harvest some vegetables and whatever else is still good over there. Hopefully most of it survived.”

I realize now the large bowl is, in fact, empty. A smile fights for control of my face. Hope blooms like the hordes of plants I know he has stuffed away in the greenhouse. “Sure.”

Happiness lights up his blue eyes, and he fumbles the door before walking outside.

We wander over the grassy span toward the greenhouse. The door is closed. He opens it, sliding it on its long tracks, and the humid heat spills out instantly. The scent of growing, thriving plants comes with it. I breathe it in. It may as well be Cal I’m inhaling.

Inside this long, oversized structure is months and years of work.

His love and care. Toil and trial and error have all accumulated to produce this.

I wander the aisles until I come to my tomato garden.

I smile as I find my plants healthy and loaded with shiny red fruit. “Hello, babies, Mama’s missed you.”

“You always talk to your food?” Cal says with a chuckle.

Shit .

I hope he didn’t pick up on that. Dammit, I have to be more careful. Iris told me repeatedly he must remember the last three years on his own. I want him to recover, well and fully. And I will do whatever that takes. Even if it’s breaking my own damn heart every day he thinks we’re strangers.

“Not usually. These ones are just so pretty, and they smell so great,” I say too quickly.

A crooked smile wobbles as he says, “Sure thing, Eve.”

Eve .

Not Evie.

No mo nighean this time around.

“Put some in the bowl, hey. We can make a salad to go with the chicken Em brought.” He handles a plump red tomato, and my mind is stuck on the loop of his mouth stuffed with one, juice running down that square jaw of his, soaking into his short beard. My heart squeezes in my chest.

Holding my composure, I pick a few of the best ones and add them to the bowl in his waiting hands.

He wanders to another bed, and I hang back, watching as he trawls the aisles, stopping every now and then to add another find to the bowl.

The overwhelming intensity of missing him, even though he’s right there, hits me.

“Excuse me,” I utter and flee the greenhouse.

I stalk across the grass to the shack. When I’m safe inside, I drop onto the bunk and force each breath in and out of my lungs. The thought that I may never recover what I’ve lost when it comes to this man burns, and I rub a hand over my breastbone.

Needing something else to focus on, I move to the table and open my laptop.

I scan the outline of my romance novel. The one I’ve waited years to write.

Now what was once a grand plan seems like something unrealistic and too hard.

I don’t want to write it. I’m not in a place to sit and write happily ever afters.

Instead, I tap out notes on a story I know well. One full of grumpy sunshine, forced proximity, an age gap that makes the tension flare from the page, where the hero falls first. One with chemistry, drama and a love to die for. One I hope gets its own happily ever after.

I pray it does, because I don’t know how to exist without it.

I tap out a working title:

The Story of Callum & Evie ~ Mo Ghràdh

A delicious aroma drifts through the window of the shack. My stomach grumbles. I should go to the house. I should stop procrastinating. I create stories for a living—I can pretend to be something else to this man for an hour. Surely.

I push through the door and pad toward the house, and the gravel crunches under my shoes.

The cool night breeze plays with my hair around my shoulders.

I’ll have to ask if it’s okay to shower upstairs, because I may be okay with the bunk and the minimalist way of life, but no running water or hot shower is where I draw the proverbial line.

Sorry, Iris.

I reach the door and it opens.

“Oh, so—I was?—”

Cal ducks out with a foil-covered plate. I’m guessing it’s for me.

So, I’m not eating in the house?

“Ah... Did you want to eat here or there?” he says, eyes darting from the shack to me.

He’s adorable when he’s flustered. A far cry from the grump I endured when I first came to Fire Island.

“Where do you want me to be?” I ask, truly wanting to know.

“You can eat with me, if you like?”

My smile widens. “I would like that.”

He nods and returns through the door.

Inside, the living room is lit up with the lamp and the kitchen light. The table is set. For two.

Like he’d been waiting and decided to come find me.

My stomach is a cluster of butterflies. My heart skips a beat. “Oh, you were waiting?”

“Not too long. Sit. Eat before it gets cold.”

I sit at the table, and he hands me the plate before moving to the kitchen. He stands by the sink, washing up.

“You ate already?” I ask.

He turns back. “Yep.”

Okay, great. I uncover the plate. A chicken pasta dish with my tomatoes sits on the plate. So similar to the last meal we had here together. Like somehow, subconsciously, this man knows every small part of us, every moment we shared is still in there somewhere. And...

I have no idea how to unlock the prison it is held in. No way to pry open the steel bars on the trap his mind has erected around the memories housing everything Evie and Cal. The last nine months.

No idea how to give him back the three years he lost.

I eat as much as I can as he works in the kitchen with his back to me.

Having eaten almost all of it, I set the cutlery down and rise, taking my plate to the sink.

I scrape the remnants of the meal into the bucket by the sink he uses for compost and slide the plate, knife, and fork into the soapy water as he cleans a glass.

My hand brushes his, and the plate falls from my fingers.

He stills. His hand closes around mine, lifting it to the running water automatically. Just like the times I burned myself trying to cook.

I stare at him, praying just one memory gets through.

When he drops my hand and shakes his head, I know nothing made it through.

Blue eyes find me. “Sorry, I?—”

“Callum, it’s okay.”

He turns to look at me. His face is a tangle of pain and confusion. “No, I?—”

“Really, it’s fine. It’s . . .”

He pulls away, and his composure changes instantly, his jaw setting as his face hardens to stone. “Turn the lights out when you leave.”

Just like that, Grumpy McCreary is back.

I huff a small laugh as he ascends the stairs. He disappears, and I can’t help the hysterics that have me doubling over. Tears leak out of my eyes with every new bout of laughter. This version of Cal I love.

Oh god, and I do.

If I had my way, I would walk up those damn stairs and wrecking-ball my way into that head of his. Take back what we were and drag him kicking and screaming—most likely growling—with me.

I finish the washing up, tidy a little, and turn out the lights before I leave.

Just like McGrump asked me to. I smile as I pull the door to the house shut behind me.

The moon is up and huge in all her glory tonight, and I take my time wandering home, diverting out onto the grassy spans between the lighthouse and the forest.

I haul in long, deep, calming breaths. They stretch my lungs like happiness.

I tilt my face to the beaming queen overhead. Her light soaks into my skin and I sigh. The light in the bedroom is on upstairs, and I imagine Cal is getting ready for bed. Showering...

Without me.

Good lord, I have it bad.

Slipping into that cozy bed of his. Like he did during the cold snap when we were both freezing. The fright I got waking up next to a very naked, very perfect Cal. I still feel the thrill in my bones even now as the memory takes.

Writing in his journal. The one I tossed at his feet the day he kissed me.

That was our catalyst. That very moment.

A small cluster of seconds that changed my life.

Completely.

Entirely.

Relaxed and getting sleepier by the minute, I walk back to the shack and change. When my head hits the pillow, I smile, thinking of all the moments Cal is going to find when his memory returns. The joy I will witness as he discovers the depth, the intensity of what we had.

I only hope he hasn’t changed his mind about me.

Hopefully he’ll conveniently never remember the ridiculous promise he made me swear to. That’s one part of us he would do well to forget permanently.

The hope that’s been poking its head up since the moment I found out he was alive and well rears up for another look. It’s a shy little thing. But in its defense, it has every reason to be afraid. Despite that, I stay positive. I can do this.

After everything we have been through, falling in love again should be the least of our worries.

We can do this.

I can do this.