Something flickered in her gaze that made a cold thread wind down his spine.
He tried again, softer. “Tell me what’s going on.”
Nothing in his life had prepared him for the stillness that slid between them. He felt something shifting, making him want to run and snatch it before the feeling slipped away. Her face closed up, but it was the agony in those green-gold eyes that speared him with pure fear.
“I can’t do this, Everett.” Her voice shook. “I can’t move to New York with you.”
Rowan had rehearsed the words on the drive home. She’d whispered them with the windows down so the night air could carry away the pieces she didn’t want Everett to hear.
The fear. The longing. The awful ache in her gut. But standing here now, with him watching her like she was everything he’d ever loved and wanted, she felt her chest cave in.
His voice scraped raw. “What do you mean?”
The few feet between them stretched with tension. “I’m happy for you, Everett. God, I watched you tonight and finally saw everything so clearly. How good you are at your job. How you love what you do and how everyone around views you with such respect. And I thought I could be part of it because I love you, and the idea of not being with you?” She shook her head hard. “It’s too much to imagine. To finally find you and then have to let you go? But I’ve realized something about myself.”
The question dropped like a hard stone. “What?”
“I can’t go with you. I need to stay here, where I belong.”
The hope drained from his expression so quickly it hurt to watch. “What do you mean you can’t? Rowan, I’m asking for you to give it a chance. You’ll love New York. There’s energy and food and opportunities—”
“I don’t want opportunities.” Her voice rose, then broke. “I want my life. My home. My ocean.”
He stared at her, stunned. “Hawaii will always be here. We’ll come back, I promise.”
She flinched. “You still don’t hear me.”
She forced herself to keep going, each word a small betrayal of what she wanted most. “When I got back in the water with Lea, something clicked. I realized I’ve been hiding. And I don’t want to hide anymore. This place ... it holds everything I lost. Everything I’m trying to rebuild.” Her throat thickened. “I need to stay here to heal.”
He shook his head once, hard. “You can heal anywhere.”
“No,” she whispered. “Not anywhere. This isn’t just a place for me—it’s who I am. I’ll die in the city. I know it in my soul. And I won’t hurt Kelsey like that. I can’t start a life with you and leave. That would break her forever.”
His jaw worked. Anger gleamed in his dark eyes, but underneath was a desperation she understood. Because saying no to this man meantshe’d lose a part of her heart forever. “So that’s it? You’re choosing the island over me?”
Her chest twisted. “No. I’m choosing myself.”
“And what about us?” He stepped toward her, voice low and furious and breaking. “You said we were building something. You told me—”
“I know what I told you!” she cried. “And I meant it. Every minute with you has been ...” Her hand pressed over her heart as if to hold it in place. “More than I expected. More than I thought I could feel again.”
“Then why are you running?”
“Because loving you doesn’t fix the part of me that’s still broken,” she whispered. “Because you’re meant for New York. And I’m meant for here. Because I won’t ask you to give up your dreams when you finally got what you always wanted.”
“What if they’re not my dreams anymore?”
Her eyes closed, pain slicing clean. “You don’t mean that.”
“Rowan—” He moved forward.
“You’re overwhelmed and emotional and trying to solve a problem with another sacrifice.” She stepped back, out of reach, because she knew if he touched her she’d crumble completely. “But sacrifices breed resentment. I won’t be the reason you hate your life. And you will, Everett, because I’ll slowly die in that pretty condo penthouse and take you with me.”
“I could never hate my life with you in it.”
“You think that now,” she whispered. “But one day ... you’d wake up in a place you never wanted, far from everything you built, and you’d look at me and wonder how you lost your line. And we can’t do that to Kelsey. I’d die before we hurt her because we refused to be real with each other.”
The silence seethed with raw emotion. Each second felt like a lifetime, moving toward the decision that would tear them apart.
