Page 13 of Fire Island (Fire Island #2)

Twelve

CALLUM

I can’t do this.

I lie in my own bed. In my own damn house.

The shower is running. The door is open.

What the hell? Has the twentysomething never heard of boundaries?

She hums away like she hasn’t a care in the world.

And my traitorous mind is flooded with images of her naked, wet, and soaping her elegant fucking limbs one by one.

Now I’m goddamn hard.

Impossibly so.

With a groan, I roll over and bury my head into the pillow on the other side of the bed. Something floral hits me, and I jerk back up. It smells suspiciously like the woman now occupying my shower.

The hell?

Did the little pervert sneak in here in the middle of the night and sleep in the big bed?

Who does that?

My engorged cock presses into the mattress, not helping where my head is at right now.

The water shuts off, and I do my best to feign sleep.

The door is half open, steam curling out as I force my eyes closed.

The curtain rustles, gliding along the metal rod.

I imagine she steps over the side of the tub with one long, elegant leg.

Fuck’s sake, pull yourself together.

Christ, must have been a solid three years since I’ve been laid, too, if the rock-hard cock in my boxers is anything to go by. Just my luck, holed up on a floating rock with the only woman that’s ever had this effect on me. The only woman who is entirely out of bounds.

She’s far too young. She ain’t staying. And she’s Iris’s friend.

No-go zone.

A hard no.

Urgh, that makes it fucking worse. I tried being nice, thinking it would help. But the moment I saw her in Iris’s tiny bathroom back on the mainland, biting her bottom lip like she was keeping back a million thoughts that were desperate to transform into words, I felt it.

The duality of déjà vu slips over my mind. The closest thing to a memory I’ve had since I woke up. Her bottom lip through her teeth.

Fuck .

“Oh, morning,” a happy voice chirps.

I open my eyes to find a dressed woman toweling her long hair, a sweet smile plastered over her face. Like she isn’t in my bedroom while I’m in bed. Like she didn’t just get naked mere feet away from me. Making herself at home.

Christ.

“You shower in strangers’ homes often?” I grunt out.

She opens her mouth to respond but closes it a beat later.

I slide my hands under my head, letting the blanket slip down my bare torso. Two can play this game. Her gaze snags on my body before she schools it away. “I’ll just...” She points to the door and pads for it.

I suppress the chuckle that wants out and throw the covers off. My boner tents my boxers. Gonna have to take care of that before it drives me crazy.

Before she drives me crazy.

So I head for the shower.

When I close the door, I see two towels on the rack instead of one. She didn’t take hers with her. Two toothbrushes stand in the cup on the vanity.

A live-in caregiver would stash her own shit in her room. Not leave it around my goddamn house like she fucking lives here.

I fling the shower curtain back further, and sure enough, body wash and conditioner sit on the shelf by my stuff.

Who the fuck is this little woman? Why are her things in my house?

Does she live here? If so, what is she to me?

Iris has some explaining to do.

I don’t give two shits what Jamieson said, I’m getting answers. As soon as Em comes back and I can get to the mainland. For now, the cheery little twentysomething is going to give me something to work with if she wants to keep living here.

I slam the bathroom door.

Finding my reflection in the mirror, it looks like I’ve aged a decade. Not just the three years everyone keeps telling me I’m missing.

Which begs the question, how did a woman so young wind up here with me?

“Who are you?” I corner her in the greenhouse.

She sets her shoulders back, but no fear shows on her face.

Like it damn well should. A strange man who she’s only just met, as far as I know, has cornered her against the back of the greenhouse by the flower bed.

Instead, she glances at the green shrub littered with white flowers and hordes of small yellow butterflies.

“What do you mean?” she says softly.

“I may have lost my memories, but not my damn marbles, woman. Who are you?”

“I’m Eve.” She pushes her chest out, tilting her head up in the slightest. “Eve Holland.”

“Cut the shit, you know what I mean.” This mindfuck has run its course. I’m done feeling helpless in my own mind and body, in my own fucking home.

“I—I’m Iris’s friend, from New York.”

“Oh yeah, how’d you meet?”

“Livvy, she’s my editor.” Her face shows no sign of a lie.

I cross my arms. “Livvy’s your editor?”

“Yes, for over six years now.”

“So, since you were twelve?” I ask, raising a brow.

Her mouth gapes, and an incredulous expression contorts her pretty face.

“Sorry,” I say, tamping down the chuckle bubbling in my throat. “Inside joke, I guess.”

Inside my own damn head.

“I will have you know she was my editor for my debut novel at twenty-two. And every book after. I’m twenty-eight, not eighteen.”

“Sure.”

Her brows drop as she glimpses the butterflies once more.

“Should I leave you with your friends, then?” I nod to the bush bustling with the small yellow insects.

She shakes her head, rolling her lips together.

“Alright, Eve. Tell me about this accident you were in.”

It’s the Spanish Inquisition, I’m aware. I’m also aware I’m an asshole right now. But every single person in my life is walking on eggshells around me, holding a wealth of information about my life from me. It’s as good as lying, if you ask me. Which nobody has...

“My accident?” she asks, the trill in her voice making it evident she wasn’t expecting to have to talk about it. By the way her voice skipped an octave, maybe she should.

“The reason you ended up banged up and at Iris’s house, now here. To do what? Recover? Help out? How did you end up on this island, Eve?”

She hugs her arms around her body as her gaze hits the ground.

Fuck. Too far.

I should stop.

I should let her process her own things on her own time. It’s most likely nothing to do with me. By the way she glared at the shattered glass in the lantern room, I’m guessing car accident?

But then, her things are in my house. Was she in the boat I found?

I’m clutching at straws here.

And it’s winding me up like a spinning top, ever-revolving, never-ending, but set to topple over at any second its foundation isn’t perfect.

“It was a car accident. And I’d prefer to leave it in the past where it belongs, if you don’t mind.”

She stalks past me, her shoulder brushing mine. I don’t miss the silver lining her eyes as she gets the hell away from me as fast as she can. The greenhouse door slides shut, and I hang my head.

“Fuck me.”

Was I really willing to destroy someone else’s peace just to find mine? I need to apologize. Christ, that was uncalled for.

I trudge my way to the shack. Looking through the door, I find it empty. I head for the house. Inside, I find my living room empty. I take the stairs two at a time, only to find my room and bathroom also empty.

Would she go to the top?

Surely not.

I climb the twisting stairs and step into the lantern room. She leans on the wall of the round room, wiping furiously at the tears streaking down her face. The louvers shine in the morning sun. The brilliant chamber is a stark contrast to the storm clouds lining her beautiful brown eyes.

“I don’t want to talk about it, Callum.” She doesn’t look at me.

I lean on the doorframe.

“Sorry, that was too much. You don’t owe me anything. If you want to put your things in my house, go ahead. I got my wires crossed. Thinking we...”

Now she turns and stares at me. “You thought what?”

I study the tight look on her face and decide better of it. “Nothing, I thought nothing.”

I roll off the frame and pad back down the stairs.

So the woman put her things in my house. She doesn’t have a bathroom. She’s comfortable here, that is all this is.

Of course it is. She’s far too pretty, young, and smart to end up stuck on an island with a grump of a lighthouse keeper.

God, I feel like an idiot.

I am an idiot.

Best I keep my distance. As soon as the three-month checkup rolls around, she can go home and I can go back to my life of solitude. Just the way I like it.

Deciding to distract myself with my chores, I check over the weather station and report the daily update to the watchhouse on the radio.

Next, I head for the locked-up shed. I’ve been meaning to ask Em to help me clear this old crap out for months.

Twisting the combination, I tug the lock open and slide the chain from the handles.

The old weathered doors swing open of their own accord, like they’ve been waiting, holding their breath, and only now has it been released.

Dust and piles of old things that used to hold meaning greet me.

Boxes of books, old records, random items I haven’t used in the house for years take up far too much space.

But I’m only focused on one thing in the back.

I pad to the bulky shape covered by a sheet.

The material has yellowed and started to rip in places.

I tug it off in one fell swoop, and dust explodes around me.

I cough, waving it away. It finally settles, and my beloved Indian Chief motorcycle stands stoic, right where I left her just shy of twenty years ago.

Even covered in filth, she tugs on my heart strings.

I walk around her, taking in the damage that years of sitting hidden away have done as memories of speed and wind in my hair flood in. Ava holding my waist, giggling before she buries her face in my neck as we roar along the highway. Going nowhere in particular, just happy to be together.

Happiness is a man and his motorbike, the girl he loves wrapped around him.

My last breath chokes out . . .

Fishing hut. Bunk . . .

My arms wrapped around a soft body flickers and fades.

That one was definitely a missing memory. Or the film negative of one. The inverse, static, and untouchable facade of someone, sometime in the last three years.

In the fishing hut.

Who would I take there? To my sacred place that not even Em goes to? She must have been?—

I shove my hands into my hair and sit on the bike. The old leather creaks and splits with my weight.

“Dammit,” I say on a groan.

A knock rattles the hanging door of the shed. I look up to find Eve, her hands sunk into her back pockets as she looks around the dim interior of the shed, her eyes finally landing on me. “There you are.”

Her gaze drops to the bike I’m sitting on. A soft smile blooms before she clears her throat. “Did you want some lunch? I made sandwiches.”

I rise from the bike and brush the dust out of my hair, then from my clothes. “Sure.”

I walk from the shed and close the doors. I don’t bother with the lock. Who would want anything in that old shed, anyway?

“An Indian, hey?” Eve says, glancing up at me.

“Yeah, years ago. Know much about bikes?”

“Not really, this guy I once knew had one.” She shifts her focus toward the house, and we walk in silence.

I hang back a little as she reaches the door to the house.

The sway of her hips has me mesmerized, the way she sweeps a hand over her hair and pulls it around her shoulders, letting it drape over her chest as she turns back.

“Hope you like chicken on rye. It’s all we have left. ”

Blood harrying through my veins, I swallow past the rock in my damn throat and simply nod.

She steps inside, and I force my feet to move forward.

“Ain’t happening, McCreary,” I mutter before crossing the threshold, etching that particular hard line in my mind.

Shutting the effect she has on me down.