The knot between her shoulder blades loosened incrementally. “I needed air.” She flattened her voice to practiced neutrality, the same tone she used with demanding guests who thought their room wasn’t quite ocean-view enough.
Walter stopped beside her, careful to leave a respectful distance, his hands tucked in the pockets of his linen trousers. The gold chain at his neck sparkled in the sunlight. He studied the waves crashing beyond the reef, giving her space, giving her time. The man had always been good at reading when someone needed to not be read.
“You’re thinking about it, huh?” he asked after a long minute, his voice barely audible over the surf.
“If it’s true, that it’s someone inside…” She shook her head, fingers flexing over her arms, pressing harder as if she could physically hold herself together. “I don’t know who I can trust anymore.”
The admission sat bitter on her tongue. Trust had never come easily to her—growing up as she had taught her that people’s kindness often came with strings attached, invisible ones that would yank you back when you least expected it. But here, at Ivory Sands, with people she worked with every single day, people whose birthdays she remembered and whose families she asked about… she’d thought she was somewhere safe.
Stupid. So stupid.
“Don’t think about trust like a yes-or-no button,” Walter tilted his head toward her, his sun-weathered face creased with the wisdom that only came from surviving his own share of betrayals. “It’s more like a dimmer switch. Just because it’s on doesn’t mean you hand out your deepest secrets to everyone who smiles at you. It means you listen to your gut. Pay attention to the signals people send when they think nobody’s watching.”
Lena forced a smirk, the expression fragile on her face, like thin ice over deep water. “Great. So I’m supposed to get in touch with my inner lighthouse and somehow beam out warnings about who’s trying to destroy everything I care about.”
“Or,” Walter countered, and she heard the gentle amusement threading through his concern, “you could tune in to the person you know damn well doesn’t want you hurt. The one who’s been working himself into the ground to protect you. And who might be a little crazy about you, if you’d pull your head out of your ass long enough to notice.”
Her smirk faded into something more like sorrow; the corners of her mouth drooped down against her will.
David.
His name settled in her chest with the weight of an anchor. Ever since her arrival at Ivory Sands— barely holding herself together after the complete implosion of her life—David had been the one constant. Logical when she spiraled. Loyal when everyone else had questions about her sudden appearance and rise in management. Always with that damn tablet clutched like a lifeline—although now she understood why—but it wasn’t only code he was studying these days.
He was seeingher. Learning her. Too well. The way his blue eyes tracked her movements across a room. The way he kept granola bars in his office because he discovered she skipped lunch when stressed. The way his hand would hover near the small of her back when they walked through crowded spaces, not quite touching but ready to catch her if she stumbled.
Which made her want to bolt. To run as far and as fast as her legs could carry her, back to being alone, where at least she could only hurt herself.
Because if someone was leaking information from the inside—watching, reporting,sabotaging—then every moment she spent with David painted a bigger target on his back. Or on hers. Each smile, shared joke, accidental brush of hands when they reached for the same report… all of it was ammunition for whoever wanted to tear them down.
And if he got hurt because of her, because she’d been selfish enough to let herself care?—
The thought cut off, too painful to finish. Her throat constricted.
“Don’t run from the one person looking out for you,” Walter said quietly, and damn him for being perceptive enough to see where her mind had gone. She hated that he was usually right. “Whatever’s happening, whatever’s coming… you’ll handle it better together than apart. Just… don’t run.”
The words landed like stones in still water, ripples spreading outward. Lena wanted to argue, to list all the reasons distance was safer, why caring less meant hurting less, why she’d always survived better alone.
But she didn’t answer. The arguments wouldn’t come, or maybe they weren’t true anymore.
She turned on her heel, her sandals sinking into the warm sand, and thanked him with a single nod and a smile—brief, acknowledging, giving away nothing else. She walked straight back toward the main building, her stride purposeful, her heart hammering in accompaniment.
Alone.
The way she’d always been most comfortable. The way she knew how to be.
Even if some traitorous part of her whispered that maybe comfortable was not enough.
Chapter 31
Downburst
It had takenhim three days to admit it.
David’s fingers glided across the glass screen of his tablet, the hum of data tripping through his senses like background noise against the louder silence around him. The air conditioning floated through the vents overhead, a steady rhythm that usually soothed him. Tonight it felt cold.
She was pulling away.
He couldn’t prove it—there was no metric for fear, no diagnostic flag for distance—but Lena was quieter. More careful. And her sarcasm, that spark that used to crackle between them, had gone missing.
