CHAPTER TEN
LUNA
Standing on the dancefloor, alone, the night met me like an embrace I didn’t deserve.
The air was thick, humid, alive with the salt of the sea and the sweetness of nature.
Beneath it lingered the faint sting of chlorine from the pools, sharp enough to bite my lungs when I drew in a shaky breath.
The sounds of the reception softened around me, dulled to a heartbeat I could almost mistake for my own.
My feet moved of their own accord, carrying me away from the crowd, away from the chaos, in the opposite direction of Riley’s retreat, into the hush of shadowed corners where it felt like no one could reach me.
The world out here was dark and alive and honest. Just moonlight spilling over the terrace railing, painting the ocean in broken silver.
I leaned against the cool marble and closed my eyes.
Then try me.
My words echoed still.
I’d thrown those words at him, trembling inside. I’d meant them as defiance, but the truth was uglier. They had come from fear, from the raw edge of desperation.
He had seen it. I knew he had.
It wasn’t bravery that had driven me. It was instinct. A feral need to protect what little control I had left, even if it meant challenging him on a field I could never win. I could still see the flicker in his eyes when I said it. The promise. The threat.
And soon the moment would come to honor it.
If I didn’t show up by that pool, he’d know. He’d know that all my sharp words and polished smiles were nothing but papier-maché armor. He’d know that beneath the elegant dress and family name, I was soft, uncertain, scared.
I stared out toward the shadows below, where the water shimmered like temptation and danger both.
If I went to him, I might lose.
If I didn’t, I already had.
A gust of wind lifted the hem of my dress, brushing it against my legs like a warning. The night itself seemed to whisper his name, pulling at me, daring me to step further into the dark.
Riley Maddox had turned this wedding into a battlefield. And I, fool that I was, had agreed to fight him on it.
The thought sent a shiver through me. Not of fear. Not exactly. Something deeper, sharper. The kind of thing that burned in the bloodstream before it destroyed you.
I pushed off the railing, the distant laughter behind me nothing more than a ghost. My pulse had become a drumbeat, slow, relentless, inescapable.
I started walking toward the path that led down to my suite.
Each step was a promise.
Each breath, a surrender.
The night waited.
And so did he.
I made it back to my room, the world outside dissolving into the hush of ocean air and the heavy quiet that lived inside these walls.
The wooden floor gleamed beneath the low light, cold and unyielding, its perfection mocking the chaos beneath my skin.
I paced its length again and again, each step an argument with myself, each turn a silent scream.
The clock on the wall ticked with exquisite cruelty. Its second hand slid forward in delicate, deliberate motions, carving time into me. The minute hand crawled toward midnight as if it knew the threshold I was about to cross, as if it wanted to give me a chance to stop.
The older, primitive part of me, buried but not gone, was howling.
It wanted me to stay. To lock the door, tear off the mask, crawl into bed, and pretend I hadn’t heard the challenge in Riley’s voice.
That voice screamed inside me: Don’t go.
You don’t owe him anything. This is wrong. This is dangerous.
But there was another voice too. A newer one.
A quieter, colder creature born in the furnace of his gaze earlier that night.
It wasn’t afraid. It whispered against the shell of my ear, soft as poison, If you don’t go, you prove him right.
You prove you are weak. Afraid. Exactly what he thinks you are.
The war between them filled the room, invisible but suffocating.
I stopped pacing, my reflection catching my eye in the long mirror across the room. For a moment, I didn’t recognize the girl staring back. She looked too composed, too calm, like a doll carved from stillness. Only her eyes betrayed her, wide and bright and desperate.
I turned toward the wardrobe, my fingers trembling as I pushed the hangers aside.
Denim brushed against cotton, whispers of clothes that belonged to another life.
Finally, I found what I was looking for.
A bikini, dark blue, almost black beneath the lamplight.
It was simple. Functional. This would be my armor.
I peeled the dress from my skin, letting it fall in a soft sigh of fabric to the floor. It lay there like shed skin, like a confession I couldn’t take back. The air was cool against my bare shoulders, raising goosebumps across my arms as I pulled on the swimsuit.
When I stood again before the mirror, the girl looking back at me was different.
Her eyes had hardened into something steadier, something colder.
Her mouth was set, no tremor, no uncertainty.
I smoothed my expression. I practiced the indifference I would need, the stillness of someone who couldn’t be shaken.
Inside, the panic remained as a small, coiled creature deep in my stomach, but I pressed it down until it became something sharp and usable. Fear could be shaped into purpose if you held it long enough.
This wasn’t surrender. This wasn’t about him.
This was reconnaissance.
I told myself I was going to observe, to understand, to see the battlefield from his side. Knowledge was power, and I needed it. I would not play his game, but I would step onto his field.
My phone flickered to life. 11:58 PM.
It was time.
The door opened with a quiet sigh, and the humid night reached for me like an accomplice. The corridor was empty, the world between the reception and the ocean transformed into something secret, intimate, and heavy with consequence.
The path wound through lush gardens, the air thick with the metallic bite of an incoming storm. The tiki torches lining the walk cast small, trembling halos of light that did little to soften the darkness between them. Each step I took made the shadows shift, alive with movement.
The resort had gone still, the laughter and music from earlier swallowed by the vastness of the night.
Only the ocean remained, a restless, unseen force that breathed and sighed beyond the beach.
Its rhythm used to comfort me, but now it sounded like warning.
Like the slow exhale of something watching.
The sound of the waves was no longer soothing. It hissed against the rocks like it disapproved of what I was doing, like it wanted to drag me back before it was too late.
But I kept walking.
The air grew heavier as I drew closer to the pool. Every nerve in my body was awake now, every heartbeat a countdown.
I told myself I wasn’t afraid. I told myself I was in control.
But the truth was simpler, quieter.
I was being pulled toward him by something I didn’t understand.
And beneath all the defiance and logic and lies I wrapped around myself, one thought pulsed like a living thing inside my chest.
He’s already winning.
The path narrowed as I neared the pool, winding through a grove of palms that swayed lazily in the wind, their leaves whispering secrets I wasn’t meant to hear. The night seemed to thicken around me. The air was warm and heavy and the low hum of distant waves rose and fell like breath.
When the trees parted, the pool came into view.
It was vast, the kind of luxury that didn’t need to announce itself, secluded and impossibly still, a mirror of blue glass laid out beneath the open sky.
The soft lights along its edges shimmered across the surface, breaking into ripples of silver and pale gold where the water met the infinity edge.
Beyond that, the ocean stretched into blackness, an endless void that seemed to swallow the stars whole.
And there he was.
Leaning against the far edge of the pool as though he owned the night itself.
The faint glow from the water gilded his skin, tracing his shoulders, his throat, the line of his jaw.
His dark hair was slicked back, damp and careless, his eyes half-lidded with the kind of calm that wasn’t natural, it was crafted. Perfectly deliberate.
He wasn’t alone.
Three others were with him. Two boys, with the same careless posture Riley wore like a second skin, and a girl bronzed and pretty in a way that only came from knowing it.
Cousins, I guessed, or close enough to carry the same air of entitled ease.
They lounged in the water like creatures born to it, soft laughter blending with the distant sigh of the ocean.
An audience.
A jury.
I paused at the edge of the stone steps leading down to the pool, my heart tapping out a frantic rhythm that my face refused to show. My instinct screamed to turn back, to walk away before he even noticed I was there. But he already had. I felt it before I saw it.
Riley’s gaze found me across the distance.
I braced myself for the smirk, the one that always cut too deep, that made me feel seen and flayed at once. I waited for the arrogance, the quiet cruelty that lived in the tilt of his mouth when he decided to remind me of my place.
But it didn’t come.
Instead, his smile was easy. Warm. Disarming in its casual perfection. It was the kind of smile that could win over anyone, the kind that made you forget every reason you had to hate him.
“Well,” he said, his voice low and smooth, carried easily over the still water. “Look who decided to join the fun.”
The words should have dripped with mockery. They didn’t. He said them lightly, as if I were an old friend, late to the party but forgiven for it. He even laughed, a sound so natural it made my stomach twist.
“The water’s perfect,” he added, gliding a slow stroke closer to the edge. “Glad you came.”