“You’re right,” I say, tears of rage and hurt springing to my eyes. “I don’t know you atall.”
“You know me, Violet. You know me better thananyone.”
“I thought I did, but apparently I was wrong. Because I don’t know where you grew up, or where you went to college. I don’t know where you lived before this island, or why you agreed to shoot photos for the Flint Group if you’re such a damn good photographer. And I sure as hell didn’t know abouther!”
“You want to know about my life before? That’s what this is about? You want details to flesh out some backstory that’s no longer relevant to the man I’ve become?” His eyes flash. “Who I was, who you were, where we came from… none of that matters, Violet. Don’t you see? We’re here now. And we both know there’s a pretty fucking good chance we’re going to spend the rest of our lives on thisisland.”
“God forbid!” I snap, just to be cruel. “I don’t think I can stand to be trapped here another second with someone who lies as easily as youdo.”
“I have never lied to you,” he growls in a lethaltone.
“You omitted. It’s the same thing and you knowit.”
“It’s not the same at all.” His pissed-off expression now rivals mine. “Tell me… what would’ve been the ideal time to share my marital status with you? During the crash? On the life raft, dying of thirst? While we were cutting off Ian’s leg? Or maybe when I found out about the thirteen year age gap that made all the things I was feeling for you completely null and void? Forbidden, unequivocally, no matter how much the thought of never touching you tore meapart?”
My heart clenches at thosewords.
He leans closer. “And while we’re on the subject, how many details have you revealed to me about yourself? How much have you offered up about your past? Snippets of overhead conversations with Ian don’tcount.”
My mouth goesdry.
He’s right. I’ve never told him a thing. Never volunteered any meaningful information about who I used tobe.
“Violet…” The pain in his voice makes me tremble. “The truth is, it’s never been about who we were before. I don’t know that girl from that tiny New Hampshire town. Maybe I caught a glimpse of her at a Los Angeles airport one afternoon. Maybe I thought, fleetingly, that she was beautiful, with a smart mouth I wanted to slam against mine the first instant she opened it and called me an ass. But if circumstances were different, if we’d never boarded that plane… that girl wouldn’t have ever crossed my path again. We’d have gone our separate ways, lived totally disconnected lives, and never even had an inkling of what we weremissing.”
“Maybe that would’ve been better,” I murmur, feeling broken. “Maybe we weren’t meant to meet. Maybe all this is one giantmistake.”
“I don’t believe that, and neither do you. You and I… the people we’ve become, though all this struggle… it’s the one thing I understand with perfect clarity. Maybe it’s wrong, maybe it’s unconventional, maybe no one else would even begin to accept it. But that doesn’t make it a lie, Violet.” He sighs. “If you want details, I’m happy to share. Eventually, I’d love to hear yours as well. But I think we both know, this connection between us runs a hell of a lot deeper than trivial details about favorite colors and college majors and how you take your coffee in the morning. What I feel when you look at me, when your hands touch my skin—” He physically shudders, as though the effort of keeping himself in check is damn-near killing him. “I’ve been looking for that feeling my whole life, in everyone I’ve ever met, half-convinced it didn’t exist at all. Never thought I’d find it on a deserted island, of all places. Never would’ve guessed I’d find it withyou.”
The tears gathering in my eyes threaten to spill over. All those words — more than I’ve ever heard him speak in a single stretch — are tumbling around inside me, filling up the vacant chambers of my heart, taking the pressure off my lungs until I can breatheagain.
Beck’s eyes lock on the single tear that’s escaped down my cheek. He reaches out to brush it away with his left hand, moving cautiously, as though he’s afraid I might flinch back from him. I hold myself perfectly still, staring at his empty ringfinger.
“You don’t wear a weddingband.”
“Does this mean you’re ready to hear the story,now?”
My hesitation is relatively brief. With a nod, I settle a few purposeful paces away from him on the sand, not trusting myself when he’s within reach. I watch as he paces by the water’s edge, struggling to find the right words. My heart thunders inside my chest as I wait for him tobegin.
“I met her in D.C. — that’s where I’m from, where I went to school, where my whole family lives. We were young, still in college, when we met. I was studying photography; she’d signed up to be a model in one of my portrait classes. She was a beautiful foreign exchange student from Paris; I was a starstruck shutterbug in need of a muse. We hit it off immediately. We both wanted to see the world — I thought we’d see it together. Join the Peace Corps, teach English classes in Spain, anything we could think of, so long as it took us far from the bubble of political prosperity I’d been raised in.” He swallows roughly. “When we graduated, her student visa expired. She gave me an ultimatum: either we got married, or she was going back to France and I’d never see her again. I was so young, barely twenty-two, and she was the first woman I’d ever been crazy about. I thought I was in love. I didn’t want to loseher.”
“You gave her aring.”
He nods. “We were married a few short weeks later. The first year was fine. The next two were not.” A grimace contorts his features. “Turns out, all those things she’d told me about seeing the world, experiencing new cultures, traveling to far off destinations… All lies. She’d filled my head with exactly what I’d most wanted to hear, spun her web of exaggerations so thoroughly I didn’t know I was trapped until the life began to leech from my bones. Instead of a partner, I found myself married to an aspiring fashion model, consumed entirely by her looks. A woman who wouldn’t leave the Virginia suburb she’d insisted we move to as soon as we signed the marriage certificate. The only trips she’d go on were to the posh resorts her friends frequented for spa treatments, or expensive hotels the night before callbacks for modeling gigs she neverlanded.”
I’m hardly breathing, awaiting his next words with batedbreath.
“I tried to make it work. Surprised her with plane tickets to Africa on our second anniversary so we could spend the summer on safari, fixing our marriage while volunteering with an organization that protects endangered elephants. She turned me down flat. Resented me for asking. Wouldn’t even consider going.” Pain crosses his face at the memory. “Suddenly, I was a twenty-five-year-old man, stuck in a marriage I didn’t want to a woman I no longerrecognized.”
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, meaning it. “That soundsawful.”
“It wasn’t ideal, that’s for sure. Neither of us was happy the way things were. She thought a baby would solve all our problems, I thought bringing a child into an unhappy marriage would make things worse, not better. I was getting ready to ask her for a divorce when an opportunity fell into my lap. The newspaper I’d been doing freelance photography for was sending a team to Turkey, to cover the migrant crisis and the increasing threats of terrorism to the region. It was the perfect opportunity to escape, and I jumped atit.”
“And…yourwife?”
“To say Monique was unhappy would be a graveunderstatement.”
“She didn’t want to loseyou.”