“Yes,” I say, because it’s what I’ve always said.
He studies me for a beat too long, then nods once. “Good. They’re boarding.”
As we walk down the jet bridge, my heart pounds so hard I feel it in my throat, each step forward a small, irreversible choice. I take my seat beside Noah, buckle in, fold my hands in my lap like a good girl.
The plane taxis.
The engines roar.
My phone vibrates one last time.
I don’t look.
I don’t need to.
The locket is heavy against my skin, a silent promise and a threat all at once, and as the plane lifts off the ground—my stomach dropping, the world tilting—I close my eyes and let the tears I’ve been holding back slide down my cheeks in silence.
Because I know, with a clarity that terrifies me, that I am not flying away from him.
I am flying straight into whatever he has planned.
And some twisted, broken part of me is already bracing—not to escape—but to meet him there.
Scarlett
The jet lands like a knife sliding into silk — smooth, silent, clinical.
Everything Noah touches is like that.
Perfect.
Polished.
Dead inside.
Even the runway looks staged for him — a private strip carved into lush island greenery, the tarmac shimmering with heat, the distant hum of waves swallowed beneath the low, controlled roar of the engines powering down. Beyond the glass, the horizon stretches in endless blue, a postcard-perfect paradise curated for the kind of people who believe money can sterilise reality.
The door opens and heat slaps me in the face.
Thick. Tropical. Heavy enough to crawl under my skin and cling like sweat and guilt.
The air tastes like sunburnt salt and ripe fruit left too long in the sun, heavy with humidity that sticks to my throat. Palm trees rustle lazily in a breeze too warm to be refreshing, the fronds casting trembling shadows across the sand as if even the trees can’t stay still under this kind of heat.
The world outside the steps is blinding white sand and turquoise water — the kind of place influencers lie about loving, the kind of place rich people pretend heals them, the kind of place Noah brings me when he wants the world to think he’s a good man.
But even paradise smells wrong.
Salt.
Heat.
Decay.
Like something beautiful rotting from the inside out.
The scent of dying seaweed drifts faintly beneath the perfumed air pumped from luxury villas up the hill. It’s an island trying too hard to hide its ugliness — a manicured façade stretched thin over something older, darker, unpolished.
Noah’s hand presses to the small of my back as we descend the steps — gentle enough that anyone watching would call it loving.
