Page 18

18

KIT

Y ou’ll never be this happy again.

It’s a thought I’ve had several times this morning. And maybe it’s not true—I hope it’s not true—but I’m a realist. I’m between jobs, in the most beautiful place in the world, and I get to share it with the only guy I’ve ever adored, aside from Rob.

What are the odds that this is ever going to repeat itself? I’m pretty sure it can’t. I know Maren and Mom are blowing up my phone and guilt would gnaw at me if I allowed it to. I’m trying to ignore that. I really want to enjoy this while it lasts.

After a morning in the water, we head back to the house and make avocado toast and smoothies, which we carry out to the patio, him on the wide lounger and me in the big, comfy chair a few feet away. The smoothies are okay…the avocado toast is appalling.

“It troubles me that we managed to fuck up avocado toast,” I say. “Your mom should have taught you how to cook.”

“ Your mom should have taught you how to cook.”

“I believe you’ve met my mom, have you not?” I ask.

He laughs. “Fair enough. She should have had one of her husbands teach you to cook.”

When we’re done eating, I persuade him to take the paddle boards out. There’s a long inlet off to the right of the bay, the water so clear you can see to the bottom, running between miles of white sand beach, dotted with nothing but small, squat palms.

“This place is magic,” I tell him, as we paddle side by side. We’ve yet to see another person here. There’s no noise—no music, no cars, no construction. Aside from the occasional plane passing overhead, it’s as if we’ve dropped back three hundred years.

“It was my first big purchase after my company took off,” he says. “I came here as a teenager and it stayed in my head from then on.”

“Maybe if I ever hit it big,” I reply, “I’ll buy here too. And by hitting it big, I refer to coming into my trust fund, obviously.”

He shakes his head. “You’re probably out of luck. Only a handful of us own the island, the land can’t be subdivided, and no one’s selling. You may just have to keep staying with me.”

I smile and look away, suddenly bashful and swept with a longing for that precise thing: to keep coming back here with him, year after year. Of course, in this fantasy, he doesn’t have a wife or children. It’s still just the two of us, platonic besties, with lives that never move forward.

“I’ll have to figure out a way to earn my keep,” I reply.

His gaze sweeps over me, head to toe, and I shiver in response. “This conversation suddenly turned interesting.”

I laugh. “I meant, you know, cooking or something domestic.”

“From what I’ve seen of your domestic skills,” he says, “we might need to consider other options.”

We exchange another glance, and my throat is suddenly dry. There’s something about having a devastatingly attractive man say those words that sends my brain to all the worst places. Or maybe it’s just when that man happens to be Miller.

Back at the house, I strip out of my suit and step into the huge shower off of my bedroom. Under the spray, with the massive skylights overhead and the breeze from the open door, it’s as if I’m still outside…and I’m perfectly at peace. I guess I’ve felt like this all day because I’m more myself here than I’ve felt anywhere in a long time. Kilimanjaro came close, but there I was exhausted, uncomfortable, struggling with the altitude and the food and Gerald’s bullshit, secretly worried that I was going to fuck it up for everyone else.

Here, I’m just me, and when was the last time I felt this way? When was the last time that I just felt good , and relaxed? That I wasn’t fatigued by my life or dreading the next thing? It’s been years…probably on some trip with Rob, and that’s a very long time to not feel good, isn’t it?

I walk to the deck in cut-off shorts and a tank, with wet hair. Miller’s stretched out on the wide lounge chair, shower-clean and shirtless, reading a book he lowers as I approach.

“Your father texted me,” he says. “He’s asking that you please check your messages.”

I sigh. “I’d really rather not.”

He sets his book on the table beside him. “Just get it over with. You know there’s a pit in your stomach wondering what they’ve said.”

I suppose that, as much as I’d like to continue pretending the situation doesn’t exist, I can’t pretend forever.

I go to my room and retrieve the phone. When I turn it on, I have two hundred texts and the battery’s at twenty percent.

“The battery’s really low,” I say as I walk out, hoping he’ll let me off the hook.

He scoots over and pats the space beside him. “Kit.”

By which he means… it’s not that low. Stop making excuses.

I slide into the space he’s vacated and swallow as I pick up the phone again and open my messages. Some of the texts are just from my friend group, the regular slew of memes and articles.

But there are dozens from Maren and dozens from my mom and several from Blake’s mom and his sister.

I open them in order of least likely to be furious to most , beginning with my dad.

Dad

You’d better write them. I’m worried Maren’s going to contact the FBI.

I told them I heard from you. Maren did, in fact, call the police. She also told them your apartment appeared to have been ransacked, as if that isn’t its normal state.

Now they’re upset that I’VE heard from you but they haven’t, btw.

I go to Maren’s next.

Maren

Kit, what’s going on?

Look, I hate that I’m ruining this, but you’ve got to come back. Blake’s here and so is his family. He’s going to propose. Mom’s been setting it all up for the past month.

I’m freaked out that you’re not replying. Please let me know you’re okay.

I’m coming over.

I’m at your apartment. Where the hell are you? I called the police but since it’s only been a half hour and you texted earlier, they won’t do anything.

I wrote Dad. He says you’re fine. Why aren’t you answering?

There are more after that. Her feelings are hurt that she had to learn everything from Dad, and why wouldn’t they be? Since when do I confide more in him than her? I’d be hurt too.

I’m with a friend and I’m fine. Sorry about the radio silence. My phone was off and it’s nearly dead now, but I’m fine.

Maren:

Prove you’re my sister so I know you weren’t murdered or taken hostage.

You want to be peed on. It’s your secret kink.

OMG. I guess you’re alive. I hate you. Never do that to me again. Also, disloyal much? Why are you texting Dad but not me?

“Your sister wants to be peed on?” asks Miller, wide-eyed. “I…would not have guessed that.”

I laugh. “No, she doesn’t want to be peed on. I told her this story about it happening to a friend, and she literally started retching. So I bring it up when she’s annoying me.”

He grins. “Okay, now read the ones you can’t get out of with urination humor.”

“My family loves urination humor,” I reply. “You’d be surprised.”

I go to my mother’s texts next. They follow the same path as Maren’s, but are more outraged, especially when she discovers my dad was privy to information she was not.

Mom

I fully expected you’d humiliate me at some point, and now you have. I’m shocked by your behavior.

If you fully expected it, you shouldn’t be all that shocked.

Miller laughs. “I love seeing your thorniness directed at someone other than me.”

And then I’m left with the texts from Blake’s mom and sister. I hand him the phone because I can’t stand to read them myself.

“Blake’s mom says she’s appalled by how selfish you are. I’m personally appalled that she’s spelled selfish with two e’s. Does she not have spell check? You’re going to tell her that,” he says as he starts to type.

I laugh. “Stop. I think she already hates me enough. What about his sister?”

“Krestley? Is that her? What an incredibly stupid name. Krestley says she always thought you were a stuck-up cunt and that Blake could do better. She also says you think you’re so hot but that your mother was prettier at your age, and your looks will fade.” He frowns. “Your mother definitely was not prettier, but she may have a point here. I’ve heard looks can fade, over time, in a small percentage of women. God, maybe you should have married her idiotic brother. You know, just in case that part’s true.”

I laugh and lean my head against his shoulder as that last bit of worry releases inside me. “Thank you.”

“Anytime, Kitten,” he says softly. “That’s what I’m here for.”

A light breeze blows and I close my eyes.

“Why am I so tired?” I ask. “I wanted to take the bikes out.”

“It might be because you’re treating this trip like some kind of athletic event and trying to squeeze it all in at once,” he says. “Take a little nap here.”

I shouldn’t. This is all getting too convoluted, and if I want to take a nap I could just return to bed. Except it’s incredibly pleasant leaning against his warm shoulder. And I don’t want to be away from him.

He wraps an arm around me and I rest my head on his chest. His skin is warm and smooth and smells like his soap. There’s never been a more perfect pillow.

“You won’t be able to turn the pages of your book,” I whisper.

“I like this better than reading.”

Me too. And I love to read.

I will never be this happy again.

* * *

I wake alone. I don’t know why I’m disappointed that he didn’t stay.

I find him inside, making a pitcher of margaritas. When I hop onto the counter, his gaze jerks toward me.

“Sorry. Bad habit,” I say, preparing to jump down. “I shouldn’t be doing this in someone else’s kitchen. Stepmother number three hated it.”

His hand shoots out to keep me in place and lands on my thigh. “Stay,” he says with a quiet purr at the bottom of his throat. “I like it.”

My gaze falls to that hand, hot and rough on my skin. I picture it sliding higher. I can’t quite get a full breath.

He releases me, but it’s as if I’m still at high altitude and thinking some crazy, high-altitude thoughts. Like… we’re already here. This is already a secret…so what harm would another secret or two do?

I cough. “I never pictured you being so domestic.”

He grins, pouring a frozen margarita in a glass and handing it to me. “You’ve seen me make coffee and margaritas. I’m not sure that makes me Martha Stewart. And I wasn’t aware that you’d pictured me at all.”

“Until recently,” I agree, “it was mostly about what I’d say to you in hell.”

“ Hell? ” he asks, raising a brow.

I nod. “It’s where you go when you break up with someone by text.”

He shrugs. “That’s fair. So, will you be needing a tentmate there?”

I grin. This is the extent of my infatuation with Miller: he suggests sharing a tent in hell, and it sort of sounds like a good idea.

For dinner, we take the golf cart and bounce down the bumpy dirt road to a small hotel that sits right on the beach. Even here, there are very few people, and the staff knows Miller by name. He introduces me as his “friend,” but it’s clear they think the word is a euphemism, and it’s a strange, delicious thrill, being thought of as more. Being thought of as someone who slept in his bed last night, someone he might have pulled close to kiss right before we walked in here together.

Except if that were true, we wouldn’t be here at all. We’d be back in that big, soft bed. Or at his kitchen counter, enacting my favorite fantasy—him the aggressor, unwilling to listen to a single one of my objections.

I order a burger. He orders a steak. I groan as I bite into it, and he watches with a look on his face that I’m seeing from him more and more. A look that says the choice is mine, and he really wishes I’d make it.

“What are you going to do when you get home?” he asks.

“About Blake?”

He shakes his head. “Blake is done. I’m talking about work.”

I hitch a shoulder. “I can’t just jump ship the day I get back to the city. I’ll go join the finance team and see if I like it. But I haven’t ruled out med school.”

“Look,” Miller says after a moment, “even if it’s not med school…get out of publishing. If it doesn’t interest you now, it won’t interest you in ten years either. I’m not sure why you ever thought it would.”

“I’m not sure I did think it would,” I reply. I was broken after Rob died. I’d tried to create a new life away from Manhattan by going to med school, by falling for a guy from California who didn’t give two fucks about money. It went disastrously, so I ran home to what I knew, as if it could shelter me from all the coming storms.

“My family and New York—they were like this island of safety. And when my own island sank…I rushed back to theirs.”

“That makes sense,” he says. “But it’s been four years. Don’t you think maybe it’s time to start looking for your own island again?”

That was what I’d thought I was doing. But on Monday I’ll return to all of it, and I think I’d rather just stay here, on his.

I will definitely never be this happy again.