Heat Wave

“What did you mean? You said duplicitous. Just now. When you scared the shit out of me.”


“The flowers are not what they seem,” he says, finally breaking our heated gaze. Thank god, because that was getting a bit intense. My heart is still pounding so hard I’m afraid he might hear it over the waves.

He runs his hand along the flowers and their dark, shiny leaves. “Plumeria, Tiare, Frangipani. No matter what name we give them, they remain a lie.”

I peer at him closely. “Are you drunk?”

He cocks a brow. “What makes you say that?”

“Well I’m drunk and we’ve all been drinking Dan’s potent punch. Plus you’re talking about lying flowers, so there’s that.”

“I’ll have you know I’m not drunk,” Logan says but he kind of slurs it. And it’s kind of adorable. “And I don’t have to be drunk to be talking about lying flowers. Here, smell.” He plucks one off the tree and steps even closer, the distance between us tightening up into intimate levels. He raises the center of the flower to my nose and I don’t have to lean far to stick my nose in. I take a deep breath just as I had been earlier when I was hitting the blooms up like I was huffing paint.

“They bloom at night,” he says, taking the flower away and smelling it himself, rather delicately. “To lure the sphinx moth. Only they don’t have any nectar—it’s all a rouse. So the bloody moth flies from flower to flower, in a fruitless search for nectar. And while it does that, the moth pollinates, ensuring the flower’s survival.” He flicks the flower to the sand and stares at it for a few moments.

“Is this a metaphor for something?” I ask after a few beats.

He glances at me quickly before turning his attention to the waves, the spray illuminated by the moon and the faint light of the hotel rooms. “If it is, you’ll have to let me know who you’d be…the flower, or the moth.”

“Neither,” I say. “I’m just the girl who wants to put the flowers in her hair.”

He chuckles at that and nods a few times, shoving his hands in his pockets. Silence is a line between us, weighted and heavy. I have this feeling that if I don’t say a word, the silence will continue, thickening by the minute, like adding flour to water.

I look at him. “Can I ask you something?”

“No.”

“It’s about Juliet.”

Finally, his eyes come back to meet mine, brows furrowed with worry. “What?” he says hesitantly.

“Did you cheat on her with that girl Charlotte? The one who worked here?”

For a second it seems like he hasn’t heard me. Then his eyes widen and he physically recoils, shaking his head. “What the bloody hell, Veronica?”

“I just want to know. I need to know.”

“Why?”

“Why?’ My voice can’t help but rising an octave. “Because she was my sister. I have a right to know.”

“We’ve already been over this. You don’t have a right to know. That was our marriage and our business.”

“She confided in me!” I exclaim. “Don’t you understand? That means that she saw me worthy of her secret, worthy of me knowing she was married to a liar and a cheater, that one aspect of her life wasn’t perfect.”

“You think that gives you the right?”

“Yes! I do! You don’t understand, she never gave me anything. That’s all I got from her and I need the whole truth.”

“Fucking Jack Nicholson.”

I twitch in confusion. “What?” I hiss.

He rubs his hand down his face and sighs. “I can’t even respond to you without sounding like I’m borrowing from a movie cliché.”

“What? That I can’t handle the truth?”

“Much better when you say it.”

“I can handle it!” I yell. “I just need to know.”

“Why?”

“Stop asking me that!”

“But I want to know. Is it because if you knew how terrible I was, you would stop being attracted to me?”

Now it’s my turn to recoil. “Oh my god.” And fuck! Dammit! My cheeks are flaring up, betraying me right away. I turn away from him, shaking my head, wondering how on earth I can squash his idea. This is the last thing I want, the last thing his ego needs, the worst thing for my job.

“Is that why?” he keeps going, following right behind me as I walk aimlessly down the beach, sinking into the sand with each step. “Why you’re walking away right now? Because it’s your own truth that you can’t handle?”

“Oh fuck off, you don’t know me,” I scowl. I keep going and I don’t turn around. “Don’t change the subject.”

“This has nothing to do with me at all, Freckles, and you know it. That’s why you’re so fixated on it.”

“I’m fixated because she was my sister.”

“And because she was your sister, that means that whatever you feel for me, whether it’s lust, whether it’s more, you think it’s wrong. Unforgiveable. You hate yourself for it.”

This can’t be happening; this can’t be happening.

He grabs my arm, whirling me around. The sand goes flying.