"He wants out after the deal. The whole arrangement. The rotation, the island setup, all of it." I stop at the edge of his shadow on the sand. "He wants more than this."
Santos is quiet for a beat.
Then he looks back at the water.
"Yeah," he says.
"You agree with him," I say.
“For about two months." He picks up the book again, but he's not reading it. "I just wasn't sure you were ready to hear it." A pause, his jaw doing something complicated. "I miss her, Matteo. I've been missing her since we left that city and I'm tired of pretending I'm not."
I stand on the sand with the sun coming down and the water going endlessly turquoise behind him.
"The omegas here," I start.
"None of them are right and you know it." He looks up at me again. "Not even close. You felt it the second they arrived and so did I, and so did Tomas, because we've all been walking around this island for four days being politely miserable about it without saying so."
I think about the note I left on a hotel table three months ago.
"We find her after the deal," I say.
"What if she doesn't want to be found," he says. "She may not be the solution. You left the note. So, she may think the three of us did, but in all honesty this feels like history repeating itself."
"What do you mean?"
"I've always felt like Chiara betrayed us, but maybe we betrayed her. We didn't let her get close enough. We pushed her away, because we are safe, the three of us together. We're all we've ever really known. And that feels safe."
He's right, but I can't fix what we broke. I can't relive the past, but I know one thing for sure, we can't repeat the mistakes we made before. Maybe the best thing is for us to go our separate ways, so we can figure out what will make each of us happy, because being together isn't doing that.
10
JENNIFER
Igather my things, but a crew member, a young beta with sunburned forearms, takes the box from me before I can argue. He carries it like it weighs nothing. Maybe it does to someone who lifts marine equipment for a living, but it holds my books, which makes it precious, and I track every step he takes with the expression of a woman prepared to intervene.
He sets it down on deck with surprising care, proving I may have judged him unfairly.
"Guests usually sit there," Carmen says, nodding toward a bank of cushioned seats facing the water. "Staff is below. I'll show you."
I follow her across polished teak that gives softly underfoot. Ropes creak overhead. Somewhere metal taps against metal in a slow rhythm. The marina slips past around us as we move, sunlight flashing off white hulls, gulls shouting at everyone for reasons of their own.
A narrow stairwell takes us below, the air cooler with each step, the smell of salt giving way to cedar, clean linen, and engine hum deep in the bones of the boat. It feels different down here, quieter, steadier, as if the world above is already further away.
Staff quarters turn out to be perfectly decent, which I mean with full sincerity because I had prepared myself for a storage closet with a camp bed and one suspicious hook on the wall. Instead, it's a small cabin with two bunks, a narrow window, and a fold-down table bolted in place. Everything neat. Everything solid.
The mattress has a fitted sheet. There's a power outlet beside the lower bunk.
I could cry.
I don't, because Carmen is still in the doorway, and I don't want her having any doubts about hiring me. I have to hold it together on the outside, even if I'm dying on the inside.
Don't let it show.
"How long is the crossing?" I ask.
"About ninety minutes. Calm today." She checks her phone. "I'll go through the guest brief up top when we're underway. Get settled."
She disappears. I put the duffel bags on the upper bunk and the box on the lower one and sit next to it and breathe for a moment.