When she comes back, she always has a book.
Most days she settles in the shade outside the shelter, legs stretched out in the sand, hair falling forward as she reads. She turns the pages slowly, like she doesn’t want to miss a thing.
The chores are starting to pile up.
I don’t say anything. I just pick up the extra work—gathering fruit, checking traps, hauling water from the stream. It’s all routine by now, muscle memory more than effort.
And if reading makes her happy, I’m not going to take that away from her. There aren’t many things left on this island that bring joy.
She went back to the yacht yesterday. When she returned, there was another book tucked under her arm. I caught a glimpse of the cover before she flipped it over—two people standing very close, the kind of story you can probably predict from the image.
Romance.
I try not to think about that.
Instead, I focus on the driftwood in my hands, splitting it beside the fire pit. I keep an eye on her across the clearing. She’s tucked beneath the palms, completely absorbed in that book.
She used to roam the island with me—climbing the ridge, swimming in the lagoon, wandering through the jungle looking for anything that broke up the sameness of the days.
Now she reads for hours at a time. Every so often she bites her lip and turns another page, like something important is about to happen if she just keeps going.
I wipe the back of my wrist across my forehead and look away before she catches me staring.
Whatever she’s finding in those books has her attention in a way nothing else here ever has.
I’m not sure how I feel about that.
My thoughts drift back to the yacht more often than they should. Not the boat itself but what happened the day I saw her in that dress.
My brain didn’t register what I was looking at.
Then it did.
This is the Charlotte I’ve spent the last eight years ignoring.
She looked grown.
Of course I already knew she was a woman. We’re both adults now. But knowing it and actually seeing it are two very different things—and that dress made it impossible to ignore.
She looked good. Really good. Even now, thinking about it makes my jaw tighten.
I stood there, like an idiot, my brain completely blank. She said something to me—I couldn’t tell you what. All I could focus on was the way the sunlight caught in her hair, the way the fabric moved when she stepped closer.
That was the moment I knew I needed to get out of there. So I did. I turned around and left before I did something I couldn’t take back.
Night is the only time she isn’t reading. Which means evenings are the only chance I get to have her to myself.
We sit across from each other on the sand, the fire between us throwing slow, flickering light across the clearing. Charlotte is focused on one of the crabs we caught earlier, cracking the shell with a rock while the rest cooks.
The book rests beside her knee, closed for once.
I glance at it, then back at her. “So,” I say, nudging a stick deeper into the fire, “how many of those have you gone through now?”
She looks up. “For someone who doesn’t care, you seem to be keeping track.”
“Hard not to notice.”
She shrugs. “I don’t know. A few.”
