I slip the dress over my head, smooth it down, take a breath, and step back into the main cabin.
He hasn’t moved.
I clear my throat, and he opens his eyes, giving me that lazy look from beneath his lashes.
I don’t ask him about the text message. I don’t have time for that.
“I need to find Moira Foster,” I tell him instead. “She’s the ship’s events manager, and then I’ll be heading down for the Muster Safety thing. We need to check in at four thirty sharp.”
He gives a mock salute. “Aye aye, cap’n.”
But I’m not in the mood to be teased. So I just stare back at him. “The welcome party starts at six. If you’re late, Luna will notice.”
He holds my gaze, and then dips his chin. “Got it.”
I step into the hallway and close the door behind me.
Beckett’s stare still affects me.
It shouldn’t. After everything.
I’ll get over it. Every book about divorce says these feelings are totally normal at the end of a long-term relationship. It’s… like a bad case of the flu or something. Unavoidable.
It’s just something I’ll have to suffer through. It’ll fade with time.
I have to believe that.
ECHOES
BECKETT
The second the door closes behind her, the silence swells to fill the room, ringing in my ears, in my head. Just me. In an empty room. Again.
No Ashley. No wife chattering away about her latest big idea while she runs her fingers through my hair. No twins crawling onto the bed to snuggle or giggling over in the next room while they huddle around that damn tablet of theirs.
Just the echo of everything I managed to screw up.
I drag myself off the bed, scrubbing a hand over my bleary eyes. I should be dead on my feet after the red-eye, the taxi detour to the wrong port, the sprint through check-in. A nap should be no question, easy, but I can’t. I’m too wired to get anything like proper rest. I’d only been resting my eyes while Ashley was getting ready, though I’m pretty sure she thought I was sleeping.
I rub the back of my neck, that familiar sting of shame crawling up my spine.
I open the bathroom door. The edges of the mirror are still fogged over, though I can see the faint impression of a few streaks where Ashley must’ve cleared a little window to see.
Then the scent hits me—not the flowers or the bath products, but something else which I recognize intimately.
Delicate. Sophisticated.
Ashley.
The perfume I bought her on our trip to New York. We’d been celebrating… what? My promotion? The house? It all blurs together now. I just remember her laughing, turning her wrist so I could smell the inside of it, and saying, “This smells like happily ever after.”
She’d been wearing it ever since. Even now, apparently.
My wife.
The woman who kicked me out three weeks ago, promising divorce papers were coming.
The woman who still shivered when my hand found her back.
