Diwa’s mouth curved against his skin. “This is ten thousand times better than the lamp.”
Colin levered himself onto one elbow with an audible grunt. The sheet slid off his bare shoulders. Diwa was already sitting up beside him, dressed in pale linen, his hair damp from a shower.
“How long have you been up?”
“A while. Now get into the bathroom. I’ve put your toothbrush out and I’ve laid out coffee in the sitting room for when you’re ready. We need to leave in twenty minutes.”
Colin swung his legs off the bed and sat with his head in his hands. Diwa kissed the top of his head as he passed, and went to prepare for their departure.
? ? ?
Amanpulo,it turned out, was significantly better than the sun lamp.
Colin established this within seconds of stepping off the boat from the seaplane terminal, with its endless expanse of white sand, and surrounding waters so clear it looked digitally rendered. He stood there with his bag on his shoulder and his shoes in his hand, speechless. Diwa watched him and smiled.
Now he was in a sun lounger with a coconut in his hand, the top hacked off by one of the staff with a machete as though this were a perfectly ordinary thing that happened. The coconutwater was cold and faintly sweet and nothing at all like what came out of the tins from Tesco.
“Take a photo,” he commanded. “For my boys.”
Diwa looked up from his own lounger. His sunglasses were on his head, his shirt open. “Put on a shirt first. Your shoulders are really red, Colin.”
“Take the photo, Diwa.”
“Stephen’s going to be furious that I let you get this sunburned.”
“I’m not sunburned. I’m fine!” Colin held the coconut up, angling himself towards the water. “Now take the photo.”
Diwa took the photo.
Colin reviewed it carefully and then sent it to Stephen and Lysander.
He settled back into the lounger with the coconut. The sun sat on his shoulders, and the water moved in small bright shifts at the edge of the beach. Colin had never in his life simply sat somewhere with nothing to do. There’d always been a job to run off to, or a bill to sort out.
The coconut water was nearly gone. He tipped the last of it back.
Diwa’s hand settled on his shoulder. He pressed down briefly with his finger and then lifted it off. Colin watched the skin where he’d pressed down blanch and then flood red again. He’d think about that in a minute. He just needed more coconut water first.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Diwawas not brave enough to sayI told you soto Colin Huxley. He’d understood this about himself since the third week of their relationship, when he’d suggested Colin try a different brand of tea and received a look so flat and terminal that his survival instincts had filed the moment undernever againand moved on.
So when Colin flinched getting out of bed, his shoulders pulling tight against the sheet as the linen dragged across his badly sunburned skin, Diwa kept his mouth shut. When Colin hissed sitting down at breakfast, the wicker chair back pressing into the worst of the damage, Diwa said nothing. When Colin stood under the outdoor shower with the water hitting his shoulders and made a sound that was technically a word but functionally a death rattle, Diwa fetched the aloe vera gel from the bathroom shelf and waited.
Colin sat on the edge of the bed with his back to Diwa, his shoulders glowing a shade of pink that would have suited a cocktail umbrella. The skin across his upper back had gone tautand shiny where the burn was deepest, the freckles he’d picked up over the last two days submerged under the flush.
Diwa squeezed a line of gel across his palm. It was cold, and when he pressed his hand flat between Colin’s shoulder blades, Colin’s spine went rigid.
“Cold.”
“It’s meant to be cold. That’s the point.” Diwa worked the gel outward in slow circles, keeping his touch light where the skin was hottest. The flesh under his palms radiated heat like a pan left too long on a hob. “The cooling sensation is the anti-inflammatory response. The polysaccharides in the aloe bind to the damaged skin cells and—”
“Diwa. Shut up.”
Diwa shut up. He kept his hands moving, spreading the gel across the width of Colin’s back in careful, even strokes, his thumbs tracking the edge of his shoulder blades where the burn gave way to paler skin that his shirt had covered. Colin’s head dropped forward as the gel warmed and sank in, and Diwa leaned down and pressed his mouth to the side of Colin’s neck, just below his ear, where the skin was cool and untouched, smelling of soap and sleep.
Colin grunted. Diwa kissed him there again, slower, and went back to slathering him with the aloe.
He’d set big things in motion back in Manila, getting his team going on standing up a foundation for content moderation workers across the Global South, funded entirely from his own equity from Orthos Analytics, with his mother’s name on the advisory board and her network behind it. It would cost him a significant chunk of his fortune, and he didn’t care. He’d still be rich, and he’d still be with Colin, even if he lost $250 million.
