Page 58 of Leather and Longing (Island Tales #3)

Prologue

Ben Whitaker hadn’t planned to run.

Hell, he’d become a master of staying. Enduring. Treading water in a sea of corporate handshakes and empty toasts.

He’d built his life on the glossy veneer of success: sleek elevators that whispered shut behind him, marble kitchen counters that never felt the weight of a chopping board, designer shirts starched so stiff they could stand on their own.

His penthouse apartment glowed under cold, clinical downlights, the furniture a study in muted grey and glass.

A space designed to impress, to intimidate.

Never to invite.

He thought he was happy. Or at least, he thought happiness was something you wore like an expensive suit, something you could slip into before a meeting, that sat tight on your shoulders but looked damn good from across the room.

There’d been moments, small fractures in the facade, but he’d ignored them.

The first crack? Tokyo.

A year ago, he’d gone on holiday there. He’d stood in front of a ramen shop at midnight, the street alive with laughter and sizzling yakitori smoke, neon lights reflecting on the wet pavement.

He’d watched two young men slurping noodles side by side, one of them wiping broth off the other’s chin with an absent-minded tenderness.

Ben had turned away quickly, pretending to check his phone.

That same night, he went back to his hotel room, lay on the pristine white bed, and scrolled through dating apps.

His thumb hovered over profiles, men with bright eyes and hopeful captions.

His heart pounded, a traitor in his own chest. He closed the app and ordered a whisky from room service instead.

Another crack: His thirty-ninth birthday dinner, a private dining room filled with colleagues and investors. Someone gave a toast, calling him “the iron spine of the company,” “the man with the plan,” “a fortress.” Everyone laughed, glasses clinked, but cold trickled down Ben’s spine.

Fortress. A word meant to protect something within its walls—but also to keep others out.

Later that night, he sat alone on his balcony with a slice of molten chocolate cake, listening to the city traffic. He tried to remember the last time someone had sung “Happy Birthday” to him because they wanted to, not because they were obliged to.

There were smaller moments too, countless and insidious: a colleague’s wedding where he had been the lone plus-one to himself; the forced smiles at family Christmas dinners, his mother asking when he’d finally “settle down, with a nice girl, of course”; and the carefully curated social media posts where every sunset was a placeholder for a life he wasn’t really living.

Ben had become fluent in avoidance and justifications. He pretended he didn’t ache for something real and messy that would ruin his perfect white shirts and shake the walls of his carefully managed silence.

Then came the Tuesday that broke him.

He’d just closed a monstrous deal, the sort that made headlines and bonuses rain from the heavens. The boardroom smelled of espresso and stale croissants. Someone popped champagne, the sound too sharp, like a gunshot.

Ben took the offered glass and raised it to his lips. The bubbles fizzed and died against his nose, and he tasted nothing but metallic emptiness. Around him, people clapped, patted him on the back, called him a genius.

His assistant Fiona leaned in, her eyes wide and shining. “How does it feel to win again, Ben?”

Ben looked at her, at all of them, their bright, eager faces turned toward him like sunflowers. He opened his mouth, but the words slipped away like fish through trembling fingers. It didn’t feel like winning.

It felt like drowning.

Later that night, he returned to his apartment. The city twinkled below like a field of stars someone had smashed and scattered across black velvet. He unbuttoned his shirt with care, each rustle of cotton whispering in the sterile hush of his living room.

He went to water the fern by the window, a plant he’d bought after reading an article on mindfulness in a men’s health magazine. Its leaves were curled, yellow at the tips, some already falling onto the marble floor. He ran his fingers over them and felt the crackle of dry veins.

A surge of unexpected grief rose up in his throat, raw and sour. He could save billion-dollar mergers, restructure entire companies overnight, but he couldn’t keep a single plant alive.

Ben dropped to the floor, his knees thudding against the hard surface, and pressed his forehead to the cold marble.

This can’t go on.

He had no idea how long he stayed in that position, but at last his knees protested he’d been down there way too long. He stood and retreated to his leather couch, desperate to escape the cavern of his own mind. His laptop sat on the coffee table, and he reached for it.

He didn’t know what he was looking for. Flights to Kyoto. Farm retreats in New Zealand. Dog adoption sites. Anything that might promise a different heartbeat.

And then he saw it.

A real estate listing, tucked away in a forgotten corner of the website, like a lost child in a crowded station.

A restaurant in Adelaide. Sage a waitress doubled over in laughter; a hand-painted chalkboard menu with smudges where someone had wiped away a misspelled dessert.

The headline read:

“Loved by locals. Looking for someone to love it back.”

Something fluttered in his belly, then adrenaline spiked through him.

He clicked through each photo, studying them.

There were scratches on the wooden floors, ivy creeping up the garden wall, a patio with crooked lanterns swaying in the breeze.

In one image, an attractive dark-haired man in a black apron lifted a glass toward the camera, his grin wide and mischievous.

Ben could almost hear the clatter of dishes, the laughter, the smell of olive oil and basil seeping into the night air.

It was messy. It was alive.

It was everything his life had not been.

His phone vibrated, and he opened a new email: Follow-up on your investor dinner speech notes . He closed it without reading.

At 2 a.m., he typed a short email to the broker.

Subject line: Interested in the Adelaide restaurant.

When he pressed send, his hand trembled.

What the hell am I doing?

A single thought pierced him, sharp as a blade: For the first time in years, something feels alive inside me.

The next two weeks were a blur of polite lies and quiet unravelling.

He attended meetings with a serene mask, while his mind raced through possibilities. He found himself daydreaming in boardrooms, scribbling olive trees and chalkboard menus in the margins of his notes.

He booked the flight to Adelaide on impulse, telling no one. When he arrived, he didn’t go straight to the broker’s office or call the owner to schedule a viewing. He needed to see it for himself, quietly, without the weight of introductions or expectations.

On his second evening in the city, he walked past the restaurant three times before finally stepping inside.

From the street, it looked unassuming: a small front garden tangled with potted herbs, a chipped sign painted with a barely legible name, and strings of warm fairy lights sagging slightly under the winter air, illuminating empty tables.

He stood for a moment under the awning, his breath clouding in front of him. Then, almost against his own will, he pushed the door open.

A small bell jingled overhead, and the warmth hit him like a punch. The space was alive with low music, laughter, and the clatter of plates. The scent of garlic and simmering tomatoes wrapped around him, enticing and dizzying all at once.

A young waitress in a loose linen shirt glanced up and offered a quick smile. “Just you tonight?”

Ben hesitated, the instinct to lie immediate.

Then he nodded, sliding into the first small table by the window, a quiet corner where he could observe without being watched.

He sat, his hands clasped, aware of the strange rush of adrenaline.

It felt almost illicit, as if he was trespassing in someone’s private joy.

From his corner, he saw everything. A young couple sharing a bowl of pasta, twirling strands between them like a private game.

An elderly man at the bar reading a battered paperback, occasionally looking up to banter with the bartender, a guy possibly in his thirties.

A middle-aged woman comforting a friend who was wiping tears with her napkin.

In the open kitchen, a man of Indian appearance in a white apron moved with choreographed grace, tossing pans and barking playfully at the tattooed sous chef.

Every so often, he’d slip a piece of something into a passing server’s mouth, and they would light up, shaking their head in mock exasperation.

A waitress dressed in red, her bun half undone, the hair escaping like wild vines, rushed by his table with a basket of bread. As she passed, she winked at him, a quick, impulsive spark.

Ben’s chest tightened.

He ordered a simple pasta, too nervous to study the menu properly. When the plate arrived, he hesitated before taking the first bite. But when he did, it was as if someone had suddenly dropped colour into a grey painting.

The sauce was bright and warm, the pasta silky and al dente, but obviously handmade. He tasted lemon zest, basil freshly torn, and a whisper of chili heating the back of his tongue.

A sound escaped him before he could stop it, a quiet, involuntary hum.

All around him, the restaurant pulsed with life, the kind of energy he had chased for years but never found in boardrooms or private lounges.

It wasn’t about the food or the décor. It was the laughter that cracked across the room like lightning, the kitchen’s symphony of sizzling pans and shouted jokes, the servers touching shoulders, sharing conspiratorial smiles.

Ben leaned back in his chair, his fingers still wrapped around the fork. He watched a young boy at a nearby table proudly present a drawing to a waiter in a black apron, who took it as though it were a priceless painting.

“Brilliant! I’m putting this up in the kitchen,” the man declared, pressing a kiss to the boy’s forehead.

The mother glowed with gratitude. The boy beamed.

Ben looked down at his plate, the sauce smudging the edge in an unpolished swirl. It wasn’t perfect plating. It wasn’t curated for Instagram.

It was real. It was love, served up without apology.

The noises in his head—the investor reports, the calendar alerts, the constant gnawing voice asking “What next? What more?”—fell silent.

For a few more long moments, he sat there and simply existed.

When the bill came, he paid quickly. As he stood to leave, the waitress in red called after him.

“Hope you enjoyed it. You looked like you were having a religious experience over there,” she teased, her eyes bright.

He blinked, then laughed too, a rough, unfamiliar sound that stilled her for a second. She smiled again before heading back to the kitchen.

Outside, the cold air slapped him awake. He turned back once, looking through the steamed-up glass windows at the warm chaos inside.

It wasn’t his life, not yet.

But it could be.

For the first time in years, he knew what he wanted. He thought of his apartment, empty and echoing, the dying fern, the hollow champagne glass.

This place was alive in a way he hadn’t been for years, maybe ever.

That night, he didn’t sleep. He lay on his stiff motel bed, replaying the glances, the laughter, the taste of that first bite of pasta.

He got up and walked over to the window, gazing at the city lights flickering outside, drinking in the hush of the street broken occasionally by drunken laughter drifting up from a nearby pub.

He pressed his forehead to the glass, shivering with something that felt a lot like fear.

But also, impossibly, hope.

At dawn, with the sky barely brightening, he emailed the broker.

Subject line: Ready to make an offer.

Back in Melbourne, he packed quickly. He was leaving behind most of the trappings of his former life: the suits, the ties, the endless rows of carefully polished shoes…

He filled a single duffel bag and one suitcase with underwear, a few shirts, several pairs of jeans, a couple of pairs of shoes, and his favourite mug, the one he’d bought years ago on a forgotten beach trip and never used.

On reflection, he decided one suit might be a good idea, and he placed it with care in a bag.

First impressions, right?

When his colleagues had demanded to know what he was doing, he’d smiled and said, “I’m going to find out what it means to actually live.”

His last night in the city, he sat on his balcony, a cheap beer in his hand instead of whisky. The skyline glittered, so full of promise it had never really delivered.

And then he laughed, really laughed. The sound startled him, and it cracked something open in his ribs.

Tomorrow, I step into the unknown . Into a garden tangled with ivy and warm voices, a future that included chaos and feeling.

He didn’t know what would happen, only that he needed to find out if there was something beyond survival.

Something like love.