Page 101 of Last Resort

For not realizing any of this sooner.

“Callahan,” she murmurs as she brings her lips to mine. “Please.” She kisses me again. “Not yet.”

I lean back and see the tear escape the corner of her eye and fall to the pillow beneath her head. It stomps on my heart that already feels like it’s breaking. “I know.” I press my lips to hers again. “I know,” I say between kisses. “I know.” I repeat it as we both strip our clothes off with a quiet urgency. “I know,” I whisper, as I push my way into her and begin the process of saying goodbye.

It’s her eyes on mine as we move together.

It’s her fingers linked with mine as I try to show her what she means to me.

It’s her name on my lips as I try to memorize the look on her face.

We say goodbye in the early morning light with the palm trees rustling in the breeze outside and with what feels like a hurricane of emotion raging inside me.

We say goodbye with quiet kisses and gentle sighs.

We say goodbye after I’m dressed again, her body pressed against mine as I hold her there and kiss the top of her head.

We speak in looks, in tender kisses, in a glance over my shoulder to where she stands in the hallway before I walk out the door and out of her life.

The image of her sticks with me as the driver takes me to the tarmac where the Sharpe International private jet awaits me.

It’s all I see as the jet takes off, Ocean’s Edge Resort a shrinking speck beneath me.

I’m such an asshole for doing it this way.

For being this way.

For proving her right.

She does deserve better than me.

“Maybe one day you’ll fall in love and bring her to this place too, Callahan. Your mother would love that.”

“I did, Dad,” I murmur below the hum of the jet’s engines before leaning my head back in my seat and closing my eyes.

But I didn’t know how to keep her.

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

Sutton

In the distance I hear the roar of a jet overhead. It’s too early for commercial flights so I know it’s him. Callahan Sharpe. My Johnnie Walker.

I love you.

Those three words repeat in my head just as they were on the tip of my tongue when he looked over his shoulder and met my eyes one last time.

I know he wasn’t called back early for meetings.

I know because if that were the case, Ledger would have told me that when I talked to him last night on the phone. When I set up a meeting with him in the office in Manhattan for the coming week.

Callahan left to make it easier on him . . . on me . . . on what? I have no idea.

While I’m hurting, I’m almost grateful to him for doing it this way. Long goodbyes are brutal and he just saved us that.

But he also proved to me that I’m right in my decision.

That I need to put myself first, because with Callahan Sharpe, I’d be at his whim. I’d be the one left behind when things got too real, and he didn’t know how to deal with them.