Chapter 9
Chapter nine
Isla
The late-afternoon light slants through the kitchen window in long golden bars, catching dust motes that drift lazily in the air.
I’ve spent the day trying to keep my hands busy—wiping counters that were already clean, folding laundry I’d left in the dryer too long, anything to stop my mind from circling back to last night.
To Ronan’s mouth on mine. The way he held me was like I was something precious and breakable.
The way he pulled away, like touching me, burned.
I’m standing at the sink, rinsing a coffee mug for the third time, when I hear the crunch of tires on the gravel drive.
My heart gives a quick, uneasy thud. Ronan’s truck sounds different—deeper, steadier. This engine is higher, sharper. I set the mug down carefully and move to the window, peering through the thin curtain.
A black sedan I don’t recognize sits behind my car. The driver’s door opens.
Travis steps out.
The world narrows to a pinprick.
He’s wearing the leather jacket I bought him last Christmas, the one he said made him look powerful. His hair is slicked back the way he likes it when he’s trying to appear in control. He scans the cottage as if he owns it already, then starts up the porch steps.
I back away from the window, pulse roaring in my ears. My phone is on the counter. I grab it, thumb hovering over the sheriff’s number I programmed in weeks ago. But my hand shakes so hard I nearly drop it.
The knock is sharp—three quick raps.
“Isla.” His voice carries through the wood, smooth, reasonable, the tone he uses when he wants to sound like the reasonable one. “Open the door. We need to talk.”
I don’t move.
Another knock. Harder.
“I know you’re in there. I saw your car. I drove all this way. The least you can do is let me in so we can discuss this like adults.”
My throat closes. I force words out, small and thin. “Go away, Travis.”
Silence. Then a low laugh, soft, almost fond.
“You can’t keep hiding, baby. You think this little nowhere town is going to keep you safe? You think you can disappear and I won’t find you?” His voice drops, intimate, like we’re lovers sharing a secret. “I always find you.”
I press my back to the wall beside the door. “I’m not coming back.”
The doorknob rattles. “You don’t get to make that decision. We’re engaged. You don’t walk away from a commitment like that. Not without consequences.”
My stomach twists. “We’re not engaged. I never said yes.”
“You wore the ring for six months.” His tone hardens. “That means something. You don’t get to change your mind because you got scared.”
“I got scared because you hurt me.”
A beat of silence. When he speaks again, the smoothness is gone. “I never meant to hurt you. You know how I get when I’m stressed. You pushed buttons. You always push buttons.”
I close my eyes. “Leave. Please.”
The door shakes as he slams his palm against it. “Open the damn door, Isla, or I swear I’ll—”
Footsteps on the porch, different this time. Heavy. Measured. Coming from the side of the house. Ronan. I don’t see him yet, but I feel the shift, the way the air changes when a predator steps into another predator’s territory. Travis must feel it too. His voice cuts off mid-sentence.
Ronan rounds the corner of the porch, boots deliberate on the wood. He stops at the top of the steps, hands loose at his sides, posture relaxed in the way only someone who knows exactly how dangerous he can be stands.
Travis turns slowly.
Ronan’s gaze flicks to me through the window, a quick check, making sure I’m upright, making sure I’m breathing, then settles on Travis.
“You lost?” Ronan asks, voice low and even.
Travis straightens, sizing him up. “This is private. Family business.”
Ronan doesn’t blink. “Doesn’t look private. Looks like you’re scaring a woman who told you to leave.”
Travis laughs short and sharp. “You're her new boyfriend? Cute. She always did like the strong, silent type. Doesn’t last. She’ll come running back when she realizes no one else can handle her.”
Ronan takes one step forward. “You’ve got five seconds to get in your car and drive away.”
Travis’s smile thins. “Or what?”
“Or I make sure you don’t walk straight for a week.”
The threat is quiet. No shouting. No posturing. Just a fact.
Travis glances at me again, eyes dark with something ugly, then back to Ronan. He must see whatever I see in Ronan’s face because his posture shifts. Not retreat, exactly. Calculation.
“This isn’t over,” he says to me through the glass. “You can’t run forever, Isla. You’ll miss me. You always do.”
He turns, walks down the steps, and gets into the sedan. The engine starts. Tires spit gravel as he backs out, then peels down the road.
The silence that follows is deafening. I unlock the door with shaking hands and pull it open.
Ronan hasn’t moved. He’s still standing there, watching the taillights disappear around the bend.
I step onto the porch. “You didn’t have to do that.”
He finally looks at me. “Yeah. I did.”
The wind moves through the pines, carrying the salt of the sea. My hair whips across my face. I brush it back.
“You care,” I say quietly.
His jaw tightens. “Doesn’t matter.”
“It does to me.”
He exhales through his nose and looks away toward the bluff, where the lighthouse beam is just starting to cut through the gathering dusk.
“I told you last night,” he says. “I’m no good for you.”
“You keep saying that.” I step closer. “But you keep showing up.”
He meets my eyes then—dark, stormy. “Because I can’t stay away. And that’s the problem.”
“Ronan—”
He turns abruptly and starts down the steps.
“Don’t,” I call after him. “Don’t just walk away again.”
He pauses at the bottom, shoulders rigid. Doesn’t turn.
“I’m trying to do the right thing,” he says, voice rough. “For once.”
Then he keeps walking, down the drive, toward the road, disappearing into the lengthening shadows.
I stand on the porch, arms wrapped around myself, watching until he’s gone, and the wind picks up, cold and sharp.
Inside the cottage, the coffee mug still sits in the sink, water pooled around its base.
I close the door, lock it, and lean my forehead against the wood.
Travis is here.
Ronan is gone.
And the hollow place in my chest feels bigger than ever.
But beneath the ache, beneath the fear, something stubborn flickers to life.
I’m not running anymore.
Not from Travis.
Not from Ronan.
Not from myself.
I walk to the window and watch the last of the daylight bleed out of the sky.
I breathe in.
I breathe out.
This breath feels like the beginning of something; it doesn’t feel like surrender.