I watch him stride down the hallway that once barred him, each footfall an exclamation point on his victory.
When he disappears around the corner, the heavy silence returns. I press trembling fingers to my lips—lips that tingle as though he’s already claimed the kiss he threatens.
This isn’t just a marriage of convenience.
It’s siege warfare.
And I’m the city walls, cracking brick by brick.
But I don’t crumble yet.
I square my shoulders, gather the fractured shards of Kane pride, and climb the stairs to pack the remnants of my life, determined that if I must walk into the enemy’s fortress, I’ll doit wearing my crown of thorns like diamonds and dare him to bleed.
4
NAOMI
Itell myself I hate him.
Ineedto hate him.
I rehearse the word in my head until it becomes something chalky and stubborn that sticks to the backs of my teeth; but hatred is a brittle thing when set against a place you love, and nothing has ever unstitched me quite like Dillinger Island.
The way the ocean pours itself in sheets of hammered silver onto a crescent of pale sand at midnight, the way the old lighthouse throws its slow, patient blink across water that looks black until the sun lifts it into magnificent cobalt.
Even the way the dunes smell of wild thyme and salt and sun-warmed rope, the way gulls draw lazy cursive in the sky while the tide inhales and exhales and the whole world seems to remember how to breathe.
I grew up on this shore, scab-kneed and salt-streaked, building crooked kingdoms from driftwood and shells while the adults argued in rooms with heavy curtains and heavier words; I learned to swim in the wind-chopped shallows with Grandpa shouting instructions and pride in equal measure from the pier.
I memorized the jagged rocks that bite at the northern point and the secret cove where the sand is soft as talc and the seaweed ribbons your ankles in greeting when you wade out too far, and I learned the sound of summer rain on the old boathouse roof, the metallic tang of storms when the sky breaks green before it breaks open.
And once—this is the memory I don’t want, the one I fold into the smallest corner and still can’t make small enough—once there was a boy who wasn’t supposed to be anything to me, the housekeeper’s son with callused hands and an awkward smile who kept showing up, arrogant and persistent and…dammit, irresistible.
Who grew into something sure, something…more.
Who showed me the tide pools that only reveal themselves at a certain moon and taught me where the starfish hide and where sea glass is born.
Who kissed me in the shadow of the lighthouse as if he’d invented the idea of mouths meeting and mating in that specific filthy, intoxicating way, as the island itself leaned in to witness it…gave its blessing.
Dillinger Island, once Kane’s Reach, my home, the home of every Kane going back five generations, is his now, and as much as I strive to pretend that doesn’t matter, but my bones know better; they hum with every step I take on the dock as the launch knifes through the channel, and by the time we reach the private harbor and the house lifts itself into view—stone and glass and arrogance and pride—I’m wound so tight I could snap on a breath.
Dinner is a performance in the main dining room with crystal props and a view that could make a saint genuflect.
Felix, the white-haired butler, and his staff ghosts in and out with plates that belong in a magazine: oysters like openedmoons, an exquisite salad and a main that smells of butter and lemon and a chef’s quiet pride.
They’re all thrilled with the reinvigorated energy on the island and while I’m happy for them, I can’t help the flash of resentment when I glance at the man responsible for all this.
Vasso sits at the head of the long coastal oak table because of course he does, and I sit at his right because optics are important, even without the audience we’re meant to be performing for.
Between us the candles hiss faintly as if they’re trying to speak sense into people who have none.
He sends me smug, heated looks, unbearable little weapons slung across linen and candlelight, and tosses remember whens with surgical precision, cutting where he knows it will bleed but not kill. “Remember when you said the lighthouse was the island’s heartbeat,” he murmurs, voice low enough for only me. “You cried when your father toyed with the idea of decommissioning it.”
“I was sixteen,” I say, spearing a too-perfect asparagus, not looking at him. “Foolish at the best of times, I expect.”
“You were passionate,” he corrects, storm-gray eyes the color of simmering mercury, catching the flame. “Remember when you learned to drive the skiff and nearly ran us into the pilings because you were laughing too hard?”
“I laughed because you screamed,” I answer, the smile I don’t mean to give him cutting my mouth and then vanishing. “I also have the scar to show for it.” As if on cue, the crescent-shaped scar on my knee tingles and I hate that my body reacts so viscerally to this man.
