I hope she never truly understands how much control she has over me. It’s too much power.
Enough power to make me think about rings hidden in velvet boxes.
About babies with her eyes and my rage.
About futures I'd never wanted until her.
Terror hit my chest.
The same terror I'd felt standing over my mother's remains in the morgue.
Over my brother's.
The fear that anything I loved would be ripped away, leaving me with nothing but the need to control what remained.
I'd built this island to control something.
Anything.
Now she was here, and I couldn't control how much I needed her.
Still, I pushed the terror away and led her down more steps.
"Again, they're really so stunning." She gazed at more flowers trailing the steps. "Once you brought them to this island, did you think they were worth the trouble?"
"Of course."
Below, the beach curved in a crescent of pristine white sand, almost blindingly bright in the sun.
The water beyond shimmered in that captivating blue-green, gentle waves creating a melodic whisper against the shore.
Nyomi stopped mid-step. "Kenji. . .the beach. Holy fuck."
“Do you like the sand?”
“God yes. It’s so white and shimmering.”
"I had seven hundred tons of sand delivered from Okinawa."
“Excuse me? Are you serious?”
"Definitely. I had the entire beach replaced."
She turned to me and widened her eyes. "So you just. . .redesigned the beach?"
"It wasn't perfect enough. The sand was this tannish brown." I pulled her closer as we continued down the steps.
Wrong.
Everything about it had been wrong.
The color, the texture, the way it didn't match the vision in my head—the vision of something I could fix, something I could make exactly right when everything else in my life had gone so catastrophically wrong.
An odd shiver ran through me.
I cleared my throat. "They had to be white to go with the perfect blue water. Do you see how clear the ocean is here?"
“Yes. I can see straight to the bottom even though we are so far out. It's going to be like swimming in glass.”
