He lunges for the frosted glass of the toilet stall, kicking it open, then spins to the towel rack, ripping the linens down and treading them into the wet floor. He’s breaking things just to hear the sound of it, just to feel like he’s still the biggest monster in the room.
He doesn’t know. He has no fucking clue that the real monster is three feet away, watching him crumble with a grin that would freeze his blood.
“There’s no one here!” Scarlett screams, her voice cracking as she pulls her knees to her chest, trying to hide the mess of her. “Noah, stop! You’re hurting me!”
He stops, his chest heaving, his face a mask of sweating, ugly fury. He looks down at her, then at the open balcony door I left swinging in the wind.
He storms over to it, his boots crunching on the broken glass of the perfume bottle. He stares out into the jungle, into the black mouth of the island that’s been mocking him since he arrived.
“The door was open,” he says, his voice dropping to a low, dangerous hiss. “The humidity is everywhere. Everything is ruined.”
He turns back to her, his eyes narrowed to slits. He walks back to the shower, stepping into the spray with his expensive shoes, and leans down until his face is inches from hers.
“If I find out you’re lying to me, Scarlett,” he whispers, the threat cold and absolute. “If I find out there’s a reason you can’t look me in the eye… I’ll make sure the wedding is the last thing you ever see.”
I watch his hand reach out, his fingers tracing the wet curve of her shoulder, right over the bite mark I left. He doesn’t see it in the dim light, but I do. I see his hand on my property, and the rage in my gut turns into something cold and crystalline.
He thinks he’s the one in control because he can break a bottle.
I’m the one in control because I’ve already broken her.
Scarlett
Idon’t remember deciding to stand up.
I just realise I am—bare feet on cold, wet marble that still carries the ghost of his heat, the room tilting slightly on its axis like the foundations of the villa are being swallowed by the jungle.
My balance is off, my equilibrium shattered, as if my body hasn’t finished processing the wreckage Kai just made of me while my brain is already screaming in a language I don’t recognise.
The mirror across from me catches my reflection, and I don’t recognise the woman staring back through the thinning haze of steam.
Her eyes are too bright, wide and glassy with a frantic, animal light. Her skin is too pale, except for the high, feverish flush on her cheekbones and the dark, blooming marks hidden beneath the silk of her robe. Her mouth keeps opening like she’s about to scream, a silent, jagged prayer for help, and then remembering she’s not allowed to—that she’s a prisoner who’s started to love the taste of the iron in her cage.
He’s here. The thought detonates again, a violent, unstoppable explosion in the centre of my chest.
He’s here. Not a memory. Not a nightmare. Not a goddamn voice I invented to survive the suffocating loneliness of the life Noah built for me.
Kai is on this island, and the very air feels heavier, thicker, like it’s saturated with his scent—salt, rain, and a dark, obsessive hunger.
My hands start shaking so badly I have to grip the edge of the vanity until my knuckles turn into white stones to keep myself upright. The stone is cool and grounding, but it doesn’t fucking help. Nothing helps. My chest feels too tight, like my ribs have shrunk overnight, crushing my heart, and my lungs didn’t get the memo that they’re supposed to keep me alive.
I press my palm flat against the mirror, my fingers smearing the condensation.
“You’re not real,” I whisper, the words breaking against the glass because if I don’t say it out loud, I might believe something even worse. “You can’t be. You’re a haunting. You’re a ghost.”
But my body doesn’t listen to my lies. My body already knows the truth—it can still feel the way he stretched me, the way he claimed me, the way he ruined the very concept of Noah’s touch.
I drag my fingers down my face, smearing leftover steam, leftover tears, and the leftover panic that tastes like copper on my tongue. My reflection looks… unhinged. Like a woman who’s been holding herself together with a single, fraying thread and just watched someone set a match to it and laugh while it burned.
He came back. After all this time. After everything. After I tried—God, I tried until my soul was numb—to erase him from the map of my skin.
I built a whole life around the jagged, hollow absence of Kai. I told myself he forgot me. I told myself I was nothing more than a bad chapter in a book he’d already thrown into the fire, amistake, a place he burned down and walked away from without looking back. I told myself that his silence was mercy.
And now he’s here, breathing the same humid, salt-choked air, walking the same ground, watching me with those predator’s eyes like he never fucking left.
A sob claws its way out of my throat, raw and ugly, before I can stop it.
“No,” I whisper, shaking my head as if I can reject reality. “No, you should’ve stayed gone. You should have let me stay dead.”
