"Tonight we eat questionable pasta."
"That's the plan."
And tomorrow night, we figure out what happens when there's no one left to save but ourselves.
Chapter 16
Wreckage & Clarity
January 31 | Day 8 Anguilla Noon | Wedding Day
West
She's in her new dress—deep green, fitted, the kind of thing that hugs her waist and flares just above the knee.
She found it at a shop in the village three days ago and haggled the price down by twenty percent, which she told me about in detail for eleven straight minutes.
The straps are thin. Her shoulders are sun-kissed and freckled. There's a smudge of mascara on her cheekbone that she hasn't noticed yet.
She's the most distracting thing in any room she enters. And she doesn't know it.
She’s leaning close to the glass, left eye squinted shut, her right hand steady with eyeliner. The tip of her tongue pokes out the corner of her mouth. Concentration so fierce she could be defusing ordnance.
The small box in my jacket pocket has been burning a hole through the linen since eight a.m.
I bought it during my run—or what I told Jane was a run. Six miles along the beach at dawn, then a detour through Meads Bay to the only jewelry shop that opens before the roosters finish arguing.
The owner, a woman with silver locs and reading glasses on a beaded chain, took one look at my face and said, "You've got it bad, baby."
I didn't argue.
She gave me a look when I asked for engraving on the spot. She'd seen my type before.
Except she hadn't.
Because I wasn't buying a gift for a girlfriend. I was buying a gift for a woman who will be on a ferry in twelve hours, heading back to a life that doesn't include me.
And I wanted her to have something that says what I can't.
"Jane."
She doesn't look up. "If I stop now, my left eye will look like a completely different person than my right eye, and I'll spend the entire wedding looking like a Picasso."
"Jane."
Something in my voice catches her. She turns from the mirror, eyeliner suspended mid-air.
I'm holding the box.
Her gaze drops to it. Back up to me. Down again.
"West." She sets the eyeliner on the counter with care. "You didn't have to—I don't have anything prepared for you."
"Open it."
She takes the box carefully, lifts the lid and her fingers go still.
Inside: a bracelet. Delicate Caribbean filigree work in white gold, the metalsmith's signature style—organic curves that look like ocean waves frozen mid-break. Set into the center link, three one-karat diamonds catch the sunlight filtering through the curtains.
