Page 45

Amelia finished scrubbing the plates. Then she dried them. Once that was done, she took a good look around. Nothing else to do in the kitchen.

She went quietly into the living room, careful to avoid Tara’s sharp blue eyes, on the lookout for a job. Oh, look! Her knitting bag. It was long overdue a sorting out. Amelia sat down and stared into the pleasing mess.

She could feel Tara watching her. But Amelia refused to look at her. If she could find enough busy work to last until the boat arrived tomorrow, maybe she’d never have to speak another word to the wretched woman.

‘Amelia,’ Tara said.

Amelia didn’t respond, though her hands did pause briefly before continuing their work, winding loose threads into neat balls.

‘What do you want to take back?’ Tara asked her.

Amelia’s jaw tightened.

‘Amelia, I know you can hear me.’

Amelia dropped the ball she’d been working on. ‘Stop it!’

‘Stop what?’ Tara asked with infuriating innocence. As if she didn’t know.

‘Haven’t you ruined my life enough?’ Amelia demanded.

‘But I haven’t ruined Solhaven,’ Tara said. ‘Have I? I mean, I’m a mainlander, and all I’ve done is conform to the expectations of that. If anything, I’ve probably strengthened the place. You should have an annual festival where I’m scapegoated. You could burn an effigy of me,’ she said dryly, getting back to her old self far too quickly.

Only an hour after nearly drowning and making jokes. Incredible. Well, Amelia wasn’t laughing.

‘You were supposed to help us,’ Amelia barked at her. ‘And while I’ve been pinning all my hopes on you, I’ve wasted days that I could have been writing the lease application.’

‘I did mean to help you with that,’ Tara said, her face serious again. ‘And I still could. I’ve been here long enough to see that it’s not what I thought. It’s not some mad cult. It’s just... it’s just a place. A place full of people trying to live.’

‘Why would it be anything else?’ Amelia demanded.

Tara took a long, deep sigh. ‘I suppose I just thought…’

‘What?’

‘That’s there’s no such thing as real community,’ Tara admitted.

‘That’s incredibly sad,’ Amelia told her without any sympathy.

‘I am sad, Amelia,’ Tara admitted without defensiveness. ‘I’m a very sad person when I stop moving. Which is why I never stop. That’s exactly the reason I broke that lock. To keep going. It’s why I nearly drowned myself.’

Amelia blinked, the rawness of Tara’s confession unsettling her. She wasn’t ready to feel the full weight of it. Not yet. ‘If you think I’m going to feel sorry for you…’

Tara laughed sharply. ‘Of course I don’t. I can’t walk us back to where we were. I know that. I’ve fucked this so far past the point of no return, I’m almost impressed with my own self-destructiveness.’

‘You’re being very…’ Amelia searched for the right word for it.

‘Self-aware?’ Tara supplied. ‘Yeah. Nearly dying will wake you up like that.’ She stared into the fire. ‘Maybe you’re right. Maybe I did want to break this place. Because I was jealous. You all act like life can be simple if you want it to be, and I’ve never had a simple life for even a minute.’

‘No one ever said life could be simple,’ Amelia corrected her. ‘We’re not simple people. We just live simply.’

Tara nodded. ‘I know,’ she said, embarrassed.

Amelia’s anger lept up again. ‘Suddenly, it’s clear?’

Tara nodded. ‘Yes. Because I’m looking at you, and I can see... I don’t know how I missed it before.’

Amelia frowned. ‘Missed what?’

Tara looked at her in utter consternation. ‘You’re the most complicated person I think I’ve ever met.’

The comment made Amelia feel like someone had hit her on the head with a frying pan. ‘That can’t possibly be true,’ she said, flustered.

‘It is. I can never predict a thing you’ll do or say,’ Tara confessed.

‘That sounds exhausting,’ Amelia said honestly.

‘It’s not.’ Tara cleared her throat nervously. ‘It’s wonderful.’

Amelia told herself to put down the knitting needle before she accidentally poked her eye out with it. She was completely discombobulated, and madder things had happened lately when she was flustered.

‘I never ever thought you’d kiss me. I couldn’t have imagined that in a million years,’ Tara said.

There it was. The kiss. Spoken of.

‘Neither could I,’ Amelia admitted quietly.

‘But you did it,’ Tara said, the corners of her mouth lifting ever so slowly.

‘Yes, and I shouldn’t have,’ Amelia said quickly.

‘Why not?’ Tara asked.

Amelia looked at Tara and laughed. ‘Why not? Lots of reasons. But chief among them, the moment I did it, you ran off and tried to drown yourself.’

‘That’s not exactly what…’

‘Anyway, it’s not for Solhaven,’ Amelia said, looking back down at the knitting bag. There had to be more to do in there.

Tara frowned. ‘What isn’t?’

Amelia sighed and looked up. ‘That. It’s a mainlander thing. Like the smartphone. I don’t know what possessed me.’

Tara cocked her head. ‘Oh, Amelia…’

‘Don’t.’

‘Don’t what?’

‘I can hear you starting to take that tone. That, “Amelia, you na?ve Solhaven twit” tone.’

Tara looked appalled. ‘I wasn’t going to—’

‘You don’t know what my life is,’ Amelia told her flatly.

Tara opened her mouth to say something and then seemed to think better of it, closing it again. Amelia thought she was safe. But then the mouth opened again. ‘I know you never loved your husband,’ she said quickly.

Amelia sat bolt upright in her chair. ‘How dare you! I did!’

Tara shook her head. ‘Not like that. And I also know you’ve been a widow for a long time and that there’s plenty of men on this island who’d take a run at someone as beautiful as you. You’d be remarried by now if it’s what you wanted. Ten times over.’

Amelia could feel herself passing some sort of line. Maybe her last line. ‘What are you trying to say?’

Tara sighed. ‘I should shut up now.’

‘No, go on, say it,’ Amelia instructed her. ‘Tell me all about how I feel. Tell me how I closed my eyes and waited for it to be over with him. Tell me how I was a little relieved when he died because at least I’d never have to do it again. Tell me how something changed in me when I went to the mainland and met you. Tell me how I suddenly understood the way the women talk about their husbands. Tell me how I never wanted anyone the way I want you.’

Amelia gasped and put her hand to her mouth, her eyes wide with shock at her own admission.

Tara shifted on the chair, throwing the blankets aside. She rose slowly, her movements cautious as though any sudden gesture might shatter the fragile moment. She moved toward Amelia and knelt in front of her. ‘I don’t want to tell you how you feel,’ Tara said softly, her voice carrying a tenderness Amelia wasn’t sure she could bear.

Amelia’s chest heaved. ‘I don’t even know what I’m saying. You shouldn’t listen to me,’ she said and covered her mouth again, hoping it wouldn’t say any more stupid things.

‘I could listen to you all day,’ Tara admitted with a small smile.

Amelia’s hand dropped slowly from her mouth, and she looked into Tara’s eyes, searching for something—an answer, a reason, a way to make sense of what she had just said.

Tara’s smile faded, her expression shifting. ‘I didn’t mean for this to happen,’ she said, her voice unsteady. She glanced down, unable to hold Amelia’s eyes. ‘And If I’d been honest with myself—if I’d accepted how I was starting to feel—I wouldn’t have come to the island. It was never my intention to make anything happen between us. I wouldn’t have wanted to open this Pandora’s box for you…’

Amelia stared, her mind spinning. ‘How you were starting to feel?’ she asked, the single word heavy with disbelief.

Tara’s gaze flicked up, surprised. ‘Yes, of course.’

‘I thought… I thought this was just me. That I was the one…’ Amelia stuttered.

‘It’s not just you,’ Tara said, her voice soft but insistent. ‘You can’t see that?’

‘See what?’ Amelia asked.

‘That I’m falling in love with you,’ Tara said with imaginable sadness in her beautiful blue eyes.

Amelia couldn’t answer. She couldn’t speak. All she could do was feel the unbearable heat between them. And when she finally closed the distance, pressing her lips to Tara’s, it was like being set alight.

Tara’s hands slid into Amelia’s hair, pulling her closer as though the space between them was intolerable. Amelia’s knitting bag toppled to the floor, forgotten, as her hands found Tara’s waist, clutching at her like she was the only thing keeping her grounded.

For a moment, there was nothing else but the heat of Tara’s mouth and the wild, thrilling sensation of getting exactly what she wanted.