My vision razors, everything suddenly sharp and in focus.
My heart is steady and I slide my hands against his chest, feeling the fabric and the hard shape of his muscles underneath. His scent is on my lips; he still smells like the ocean, even though we’re a thousand miles away.
“Charlotte.”
My fingers find the thin strap of the dress, pausing there before tugging it downward. There is nothing underneath this thin veil of fabric. Excitement writhes inside my belly. The strap moves easily from my shoulder, trailing down my arm.
His hand lifts, touching the strap on my other shoulder, sliding his fingers beneath it. His touch is like fire and his eyes trace my lips. I silently plead for him to kiss me, lifting up onto my tiptoes.
He swallows, a heavy movement, like his mind is battling the rest of his body. “I told you, Charlotte,” he murmurs, eyes focused intently on the strap he holds between his fingers. But then: “I told you how it had to be.” Tate’s fingers move swiftly, sliding out from beneath the strap—leaving it where it is—then touching my other arm, dragging the other strap back up to my shoulder.
No, my mind shouts. My gaze snaps to his face, but his eyes are blank, the heat I swore I’d seen moments before gone as if it had never been.
“It’s too soon,” he says, and I want to scream, I want to cower and hide. “I’m sorry—”
“Don’t,” I interrupt, humiliation swelling big and hot beneath my skin, threatening to burn me from the inside out. “Don’t bother.”
Those dark eyes seem to darken even more, cast over with some blackness I can’t see through.
My head throbs, little pulses shooting through my temples. I bend down and yank the robe from the floor and leave him standing in his bedroom. I can feel his gaze on me as I leave, but I don’t look back. My eyes are already burning.
Once inside my room, I bury myself beneath the sheets, still in the dress. The weight of my mother’s ring feels like an anchor on my finger.
For an hour, I toss and turn. Just as I begin to drift, I hear a soft knock at the door. Eagerly, pathetically, I race to the door, certain it’s Tate. Certain he’s here to apologize, to tell me the truth about what’s happened to him, why he keeps pushing me away.
It is Tate. But he’s not here to make up. One look at him—the set mouth, the eyes that won’t quite meet mine—and I know what he’s going to say.
“You’re sending me home.” Because I crossed a line—I dared to breach the invisible barrier that Tate has built between us, the one he’s told me is for my own good. But studying the distant look on his face, I realize it was never about my protection. It was always about his. Keeping me at a distance, preventing me from getting too close. And when he doesn’t deny that he’s sending me home, I say, “So that’s it? We’re just done?”
His shoulders seem to tense at my words. “Charlotte—”
“It’s fine. It’s for the best, actually.” I can’t believe how steady my voice is, how calm. “What time am I flying out?”
The question stretches between us. He could apologize. He could tell me that I’m wrong, that he’s sorry and that he doesn’t want me to leave. But he doesn’t say any of those things. He lets the silence bury me, suffocate me. In that moment, I think I might hate him.
His eyes close briefly, and he almost looks pained, before opening them again to fix on something just over my shoulder. “A car will be here at seven.”
I want to scream at him. I want to pound my fists against his chest and tell him how much he hurt me, how much he’s still hurting me. But instead I choke down every bitter thought, and turn away, closing the door on Tate. Closing the door on us.
FOURTEEN
A STORM IS PRESSING DOWN on the town, a wall of dark gray in the distance. We’re almost to the airport when the snow begins swirling around the car that carries me away from Telluride. It’s Christmas day, and I’m heading back to LA alone. The car skids a little, drifting toward a snowbank before the driver corrects our course, but for some reason I’m not scared. I feel an odd sense of numbness. Like I’m drifting through a dream again—but a different sort of dream.
I board the same jet we had taken here, and the same flight attendant greets me. The green-and-blue orchid is in place in her hair, but today it looks droopy and somehow bereft.
“Coffee?” she asks when I sit down on one of the reclining chairs. I make a point not to sit where Tate and I sat on our way here. I don’t want to remember how differently I felt on that flight, how hopeful.
“Thank you,” I tell her gratefully.
Once we’re in the air, I stare out the window at a world of white as we fly through layers of endless clouds. There is no blue sky, no land far below. Just white.
“He seemed happy,” the flight attendant says midway through the trip. She is pouring me a fresh glass of water.