“That’s right, go hide behind the cabinets. I’m pretty sure they can’t shield that inflated head of yours.”
“You sure do know how to bust a man’s balls,” he muttered lifting two glasses from the cabinet.
“You shouldn’t be so quick to assume I wanted your balls or any other part of your anatomy, professor. Besides,” I said as I stood on the other side of the island while he poured more wine, “I’m sure your students are all too eager to play teacher’s pet.”
He grinned down at his wine glass. “Never went there. Had a few chances.”
“Ah, that’s right. You chose to break your gentlemen’s virtue on the side of my house.”
His head snapped up and my smile vanished as something passed between us. Three or four heartbeats later, he looked over my shoulder.
“You know you’re living in a time capsule. No TV, no computer, what gives?”
“My sanity. Do you even remember life without cell phones?”
“I do. Barely.”
“Well, I use them only when I have to. Do you have any idea how much time I got back in my day from putting that damn thing down?”
Still smiling he answered, “I can only imagine.”
“So much time. So. Much. Time.”
“I want to be you when I grow up,” he said softly.
“I don’t want to grow up,” I whispered back.
“Suits me.”
An hour later, we sat on my porch love seat after finishing another bottle of wine and listened to my latest mix as Neil Diamond sang “Love on the Rocks.”
Throwing myself into the song I mouthed the words, using my fist as my microphone and he chuckled and shook his head. A few minutes later, we were back to comfortable silence before he spoke up.
“God, this is so true,” Ian whispered.
“What?”
“This song. It’s so true. Every bit of it. You get so high off love and then it all turns to shit.”
I laughed inappropriately at his bluntness and glossy eyes before I saw brief emotion flicker over his face. I sat up and winced. “Sorry.”
He pulled up to sit and clasped his hands between his legs. “Don’t be. I haven’t been upset about my wife in years.” He stood and looked over at me. “This was truly a great time, Koti.”
“It was a unicorn type of night, right?”
“Most definitely.”
He looked over to me with a warm smile. “Goodnight, puffer fish.”
“Goodnight, crocky.”
I stood and leaned over to blow out the first candle.
“Koti.”
“Yeah?”
“Thank you.”
I bit my lip and nodded before he disappeared out the door.
HOURS LATER, FLESH BURNING FROM the wine, alcohol-induced insomnia had set in. I rose from bed still in my dress and washed my face in the bathroom. I cranked my AC unit up high and spent a few minutes in front of it, cooling my skin from burning thoughts.
Ian’s eyes haunted me, and in being honest with myself, they were what kept me awake. His eyes, his voice, the way I felt at ease with him. He looked at me like I had something he needed. I wondered briefly if he saw the mess inside of me would he look at me that same way. I loved the heat of his stare when he thought I didn’t notice, and in my wine-induced haze, I felt sexy when I remembered catching that gaze before it flitted away. I opened my porch door in the pitch-black night and shut it softly instead of letting it snap close.
As I tread across the sand, I glanced at the Kemp house where Ian slept. In the past few days, he unknowingly revealed so many truths about me and accepted them like no man in my life ever had. We’d been at odds a majority of his time on the island and in just a matter of days, he’d unearthed so much. I should have felt uncomfortable, instead all I felt was relief.
Holding my dress to my thighs, I walked through the cool water in a daze, splashing around to cool the inferno that was building inside with thoughts of him. Finally able to feel some relief from my Ian-induced heat wave, I was taken by surprise when an unexpected wave had me scrambling to keep on my feet. Over the breeze, I could have sworn I heard his chuckle and narrowed my eyes in the direction of his house. I couldn’t see past his porch stairs, but I had the distinct feeling I was being watched. Before I had a chance to investigate, another rogue wave smashed into me and leveled me flat onto my back.
Choking, I snapped to my feet before I was yanked in by the undertow. Freshly sober and trying my best to clear my throat, I heard Ian’s porch door and in seconds he stood in front of me as I made it to shore.
“I’m trying—really, really trying hard not to laugh. Are you okay?”
“Yes,” I answered, shaking off the pain like a wet dog before I looked at him accusingly. “You were watching me?!”
Shirt-free, tousled and deadly sexy, Ian stood in front of me, his eyes hooded.
Wiping my hands on my chest, I discovered one of my breasts was peeking through the shoulder of my dress. I twisted my body and righted it as Ian’s breath hit my face. “Isn’t that what you wanted?”
“I was hot!”
“Fucking right you were, until you wiped out,” he said playfully as he pushed a heavy wad of hair off my forehead. “It was a good start, shitty finish. If someone put a gun to my head, I’d give it a six out of ten!”
“What is it with the freakish waves today? That came out of nowhere!”
“Just obeying the moon, I suppose,” he said with a chuckle as I righted my dress while his eyes lingered on my bare shoulder.
“Or their muse,” I whispered inaudibly, but he caught it.
“Muse?”
“I have a thing for Greek mythology,” I said defensively. “Nothing wrong with that.”
“So that’s it? That’s why you walk around dressed like Aphrodite?”
I rolled my eyes though I wasn’t sure he could see.
“Old habits die hard I suppose,” he said before lifting the strap of my dress back to my shoulder. “You are a right mess, Miss Vaughn. I suppose it’s good fate we ended up on this island together.”
“Agreed. But you must admit, you’re the victor of the mess this month.”
“Not arguing with that,” he said softly.
“Can’t sleep?”
“Not tonight.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“No, I don’t. So please don’t ask.”
“Okay.”
I didn’t get a chance to blink before he turned the tables. “You tell me. What brought you here?”
“That’s not fair.”
“No, it’s not.” He took a seat on one of the smaller boulders nearby. “But you did offer.”
“I did, didn’t I?” I stood silent for several moments. It was hard to convey what happened to me, why I was there because it seemed so trivial to some. A few really bad days was the gist of it. A few really bad days was the sum of it. For a long time, so much of me believed my issues were trivial because I was told they were. I was told my attacks were just temporary setbacks. But they just kept coming. It had always seemed impossible to explain my circumstances to anyone other than my therapist. No one in my life, especially my mother, who heard about my condition gathered that my disorder wasn’t anything other than someone trying to seek attention. Even my ex-boyfriend, Trevor, had downplayed my attacks and told me I just needed to relax.
I hated that word. As if it could really be so easily executed by a person with generalized anxiety disorder on demand. As if it was that simplistic. Relax.
That word was a hundred percent of the reason why I left him holding the bag of our new relationship in New York. It took me a few months to start liking Trevor enough to commit to him and only minutes for me to decide that commitment was a mistake.
“Trevor, I need you.”