The cottage looked entirely different in the morning.
At two in the morning it had been dim and slightly foreboding, all unfamiliar shadows and the musty old house smell. In the early light it was something else, small and imperfect and genuinely charming. The windows faced east, and the sun came through them in long, warm rectangles. There was a couch with faded cushions next to the window, a small kitchen with canned food stacked in neat rows, and a ceiling fan that turned slowly in the morning breeze.
And Jason, still on the couch.
He had been there when I’d finally closed the door to the only bedroom in the cottage, sitting upright at the edge of the couch nearest the door, his gun in his hand, utterly still, like he was prepared and waiting for Scarlett’s men. Now he was slumped sideways against the armrest, asleep as if his body had simply overridden everything else, the gun slipped from his hand and resting on the floor beside him.
I stood in the bedroom doorway and looked at him for a moment.
My instincts almost made me pick up the small folded blanket from my bedroom and cover him with it.
I stopped the instinct firmly and went outside instead.
The morning air was extraordinary.
Not the air of the town, which was beautiful in its way but carried the texture of people and machinery and tourism underneath the salt. This was something cleaner, untouched and dense, with the smell of pine and ocean. The palms moved in a slow, early-morning way.
I followed the sound of the waves.
The path was narrow, just a sandy track between the trees, and it opened suddenly onto the beach. I stopped at the edge of it and just looked.
No one. No sun loungers, no rental kiosks, no voices. Just the beach in its original form — wide and pale, the water moving onto it and receding with complete indifference to whether anyone was watching.
I walked to the water’s edge and stood there.
I thought about the animal shelter fundraiser. About Sparkles, who had eaten two treats from Jason’s palm and whose small body had trembled with the effort of deciding to try. About Audrey, who would be opening Dog-Eared this morning without me and would do it perfectly. About the cottage, and the tent in my demolished garden, and Noah’s taillights disappearing down the lane.
Then I heard my name.
Jason was running across the sand from the tree line, and his relief upon seeing me was so immediate and unguarded that it momentarily displaced whatever else I’d been prepared to feel about him this morning.
Then the relief shifted into something else. “What are you doing out here?” He reached me and stopped, breathing slightly harder, his voice getting louder. “Camila, I didn’t know where you were. You cannot just—” He stopped.
He tried to collect himself, but I could see he was afraid, and trying to hide it with authority. “It’s not safe to be out here alone. You understand that. We talked about this, Camila.” He shouted.
Something in me flared up immediately and completely.
“I didn’t ask you to come back.” I snapped. My voice got louder, and before I knew it, I was screaming at him.
“I didn’t ask for any of this. I didn’t ask you to find me, or camp in my garden, or drive me to a safe house, or any of it. You came back into my life and since you did, nothing has been mine anymore.”
I felt my voice shaking and didn’t try to stop it. “What are we, Jason? What is this? Are we a couple? No, we’re not. We’re divorced. We’re divorced because you spent six months fucking another woman. And now you’re here, telling me what I can and can’t do—”
“Camila—”
“Why didn’t you think of another way while we were still married? Huh, Jason, answer me? Why does it take a divorce for you to figure out how to fight back? Why couldn’t you do all of this — the FBI, Briggs, any of it — while we were still together? Why didn’t you try to save our marriage, Jason? Why?”
Jason looked at me for one long moment.
Then he went to his knees.
His knees simply went into the sand, and he stayed there, all of him — the six-foot-two, broad-shouldered, self-made man who had rebuilt an entire identity from nothing — kneeling in the sand at the edge of the Bahamian ocean, his hands pressed together.
“I’m sorry,” he begged. “Camila. I am so sorry.”
“I thought I was protecting you, but I was just being a coward. I was so scared of losing you, Camila, that the truth was never an option for me.”
He had his hands pressed together, as if how whole life depended on this gesture.
