The warmth that had bloomed during the last hour of conversation began to fade away, and my body stepped back into familiar heartache.
“Who have you told about all of this?” I asked, a bitter edge to my question.
“Almost no one.” He wanted me to realize his candidness was a gift.
I wouldn’t accept it. “Did you tell Amber? Did she know all of this before she went to him?”
A beat passed. “Yes.”
“Why didn’t you just tell me too?” My pain was apparent and raw. If he’d just told me the truth from the beginning…
“Do you think it’s some sort of validation of my affection? To have heard this story?” He kept his voice low, but it was thick and full of emotion. “Every time I’ve brought someone into that part of my life, things have ended badly. Look at Amber. Missy. Chris!”
“We can’t be sure about Chris.” It was a lie – we were sure. But I was looking to poke holes in his excuses, because there was no excuse he could give for why he hadn’t told me things he’d told Amber that would satisfy me. “And you think your uncle was involved with Missy after all?”
“I don’t know what happened to her. But I do blame him for who she was in the end. He seduced her with his drugs and power the same way he seduced me. Eventually he would have expected payment. Is that what you wanted me to open you up to?”
“I wanted you to open up, period!”
“I have. More than with anyone else. I’ve told you this.” His body language, his gravelly voice, the way his eyes pierced into my very being – he was desperate for my acknowledgment.
“What did his e-mail say?” I challenged, likely proving his theory that nothing was ever good enough for me, but really I was looking for reasons to stay mad. It was so much easier to hate him when I was.
“Nothing,” he said, as I’d expected. As I’d half hoped.
“That’s what I thought.”
Then he surprised me. “Your name,” he said softly. “Your real name. Nothing else.”
He’d played the higher card. I had nothing that would compete. He should have been the winner.
I laid my head back against the seat and gripped the armrests tightly, as though I might fall out of my chair if I didn’t. The world was spinning and my stomach felt like it was dropping and I knew that, no matter what I said from here on out, it was too late to save myself from being loved by Reeve Sallis. Really loved. Everything I’d thought he’d done to protect Amber he’d done for me.
How could I push that away?
But Amber had done those things for me, too.
I closed my eyes and concentrated on breathing in and out so that I wouldn’t do something stupid like cry.
“I miss you,” he said, his voice a near whisper.
I shook my head. “Don’t say that.”
“I miss your body.”
I opened my eyes and the expression on his face was primal. Hungry. “You miss what it will let you do to it.”
“Yes,” he admitted. “But I miss you too.”
His words sliced through me, cutting me into shreds of the person I’d once been – a person who knew who she belonged to and who she loved.
Needing to be reminded of who I was, I turned my head toward Amber and back to him. “You can’t have both of us.” And according to his uncle, he couldn’t save both of us either.
“I don’t want both of you.”
No. I couldn’t hear that. I wouldn’t. “She’s the only one you can have.”
He sat stoic for five seconds. Then he bolted out of his seat and leaned his hands on either side of me in my chair. “You don’t get to decide that, Emily.” His chest rose and fell heavily. “That’s not how this works between us.”
He held his stance for a moment, his jaw ticking, his body tense. Then he pushed off the armrests and disappeared into the bedroom cabin behind me.
I curled up in my chair and pretended I didn’t miss him too.
CHAPTER 18
Even though we stopped in LA to refuel, we still had most of the day ahead of us when we arrived on the island because of the five-hour time difference. I’d moved over to a window and watched as we approached, the tiny speck of land growing larger and larger, but still small enough that I glimpsed the opposite shore before we touched ground.
The airport consisted of a runway and a hangar with restrooms and a vending machine. Two cars pulled up alongside the plane as we landed, and the driver of one got out and met us at the bottom of the stairs.
“Filip!” I exclaimed, recognizing him as Reeve’s driver from LA.
He smiled cordially as he helped me down the stairs. “Welcome to Oinopa.” His accent, though Mediterranean, somehow seemed fitting in the Pacific setting. “Alex and I will get all the bags. Please take a seat in my car.”
Amber and I climbed in the backseat while the plane was unloaded. A few minutes later, one of the security guards got in the front seat along with Filip. Reeve joined us in the back. This time, I was in the middle, and even though I kept my body as small as possible, the length of his leg pressed against mine as we rode, sending bolts of electricity through me.
To distract myself from his nearness, I kept my eyes out the window in front of me and asked questions about the island. “What does Oinopa mean?”
“Wine-dark.” I swear Reeve pressed even tighter against me. “It’s how Homer described the ocean in The Odyssey. My father thought it made a good sound bite for the marketing brochures. ‘Experience your own odyssey on the island of Oinopa.’” He proclaimed the last sentence like a television announcer. “It loses its effect when I try it.”