Chapter 4
SADIE
The kiss is all wrong.
I want to prolong it, to feel Kai’s tongue sweep into my mouth and tangle with mine, to lose my mind in the pleasure.
Instead, as I press my lips to his, he’s already easing away, meaning our kiss is brief, perfunctory, almost platonic.
What the hell?
“Happy New Year, Sadie,” he says, tweaking my nose like he used to when we were kids.
Humiliating.
“Happy New Year,” I mutter, sounding anything but happy.
I’ve misread the signals yet again. Assuming that Kai’s wicked smiles and occasional wink mean more than his customary flirting he probably does with every woman.
I’m an idiot. A mortified idiot.
He sinks to the sand and pats the spot beside him. I want to flee, but that will show him I still care, and how pathetic would that be, a decade after our first kiss?
“I heard your dad is retiring,” he says when I sit beside him.
“Yeah, I’m still spinning out a little, because I thought he’d be working till he’s ninety.”
He chuckles. “Your dad’s a great guy. Grumpy, but great.”
“He’s always been a tad grumpy since Mum left.”
He’s not the only one. I’d been seven when she fled the island, old enough to resent her yet miss her like crazy. Dad had tried to make up for her absence by plying me with treats, but they soon petered out when he realised nothing could make up for my mother abandoning me.
For a long time, I wondered if I’d done something wrong.
I withdrew into myself, becoming introverted, preferring to lose myself in fictional worlds than dwell on the problems in my real one.
Kai and Walker saved me. The more I retreated, the harder they’d push for me to join them in beach cricket, crabbing, and body surfing.
I owe a lot to the younger Spade boys, which is why I said no to Kai when he asked me to leave with him ten years ago.
I didn’t need his protection anymore, and I knew he asked out of obligation.
Kai has always been the shining knight. Cheering up his brothers when they needed it, helping my dad whenever he could, looking after me. The thing he’ll never understand is, I don’t need rescuing. I’m a big girl now.
A big girl who thought she might get more than a peck at midnight.
“You’ve never heard from her?”
I shake my head. “I thought she might reach out when I turned eighteen, but nothing.”
He glances away, with the oddest expression on his face.
“What’s that look about?”
He swivels towards me, hugging his knees to his chest. “I saw her once.”
An icy chill sweeps over me despite the humidity. “Where? When?”
“In Melbourne, about a year after I left Ceto Island. I was staying at a hostel; she was working as a tour guide.”
Stunned, I ask, “Are you sure it was her? You were a kid when she left.”
“It was her,” he murmurs, his hand snaking across the sand to grasp mine. “She looked the same.”
Pain cleaves my heart. “Did you speak to her?”
Sheepish, he nods. “My exact words were, ‘You’re fucking selfish for abandoning a daughter as special as Sadie,’ and she burst into tears before running away from me.”
“Wow, she actually has emotions. Go figure.”
He smiles at my sarcasm. “I wrestled with whether I should tell you for a long time, but eventually decided that it would probably hurt you, and that’s the last thing I ever want to do.”
I refrain from saying, ‘You already have, by not realising how I feel about you.’
“Will you think I’m a bad person if I tell you I sometimes wish she’s dead, and that’s the reason she hasn’t contacted me?”
“I’d never think you’re a bad person.” He squeezes my hand and releases it. “Don’t you know you’re one of the good ones?”
When I remain silent, absorbing the enormity of what he revealed, he bumps me gently with his shoulder. “Should I not have told you?”
“No, it’s okay. I’d rather know.” My laugh is bitter. “Not that it changes anything. If my mother hasn’t reached out in twenty years, I doubt she will anytime soon.”
He hesitates before saying, “You could find her?”
“It’s not like I haven’t thought about it. But private investigators are expensive, and what’s the point? If she wanted contact, she knows where I am. Why waste money on a potential confrontation that will probably make me feel worse?”
“Good point.”
We fall silent again, and this time, he scuttles closer and drapes an arm across my shoulder. I lean into him, and I have no idea how long we sit like this, the waves lapping at the shore, my thoughts a jumble, but seeking solace in the heat from his body warming mine.