Chapter 14 #2
But he could still feel her beneath him. Still hear her voice breaking on his name. Still see the way she'd looked at him afterward, open and vulnerable, like she'd handed him something precious and trusted him not to drop it.
He'd dropped it anyway.
Ask me to stay.
Three words. That's all it would have taken.
Stay.
One word, technically.
And he couldn't even manage that.
The sun was sinking toward the horizon when Alex finally returned to the cabin, exhausted in a way that had nothing to do with physical exertion.
He'd walked the entire island. Every beach, every path, every spot where her laugh had once filled the air. A self-inflicted tour of his own failures.
Now he sat on the porch—their porch, where they'd shared coffee and watched sunrises and slowly stopped being enemies—and let the silence press in around him.
This is what you chose, the silence reminded him. This is what safety feels like.
It felt like drowning on dry land.
A memory surfaced, unbidden. Megan's voice, sharp and knowing, from a phone call three weeks ago. Right before he'd left for the island.
"So," she'd said, in that tone that meant she was about to poke at something he didn't want poked. "Any romantic prospects I should know about? Or are you planning to die alone surrounded by fish specimens?"
"I'm going to a deserted island for six weeks, Meg. Not exactly prime dating territory."
"Right. Because location is definitely the problem. Not the fact that you've been single for—what is it now? Three years? Four?"
"I've been focused on my career."
"You've been hiding."
He'd bristled at that. "I'm not hiding. I'm just—"
"Avoiding. Deflecting. Convincing yourself that the reason you're alone is because relationships are too complicated, when actually you're just terrified of letting anyone get close enough to leave."
"Thanks for the amateur psychology."
"I'm not being amateur about it." Her voice had softened, which was somehow worse. "Alex. Mom dying didn't teach you that love hurts. It taught you that love ends. And instead of accepting that and loving anyway, you decided never to start."
"That's not—"
"That's not what? Not true?" She'd laughed, but there was no humor in it. "You've dated exactly four women since grad school, and you found reasons to push away every single one. Too clingy. Too demanding. Too present. You know what those things actually have in common?"
He hadn't answered.
"They wanted you to show up. Actually show up, emotionally, and you couldn't handle it."
"I show up."
"For your research, sure. For your fish.
But for another human being?" A pause that felt like a finger pointed straight at him.
"You don't avoid relationships because you're bad at them, Alex.
You're bad at them because you avoid them.
And at some point, you're going to have to decide if dying alone is really preferable to risking something real. "
He'd changed the subject after that. Made some joke about her nursing degree not qualifying her for therapy. She'd let him off the hook, because Megan always did, but her words had lingered like a splinter under his skin.
He'd dismissed them. Told himself she didn't understand. That his solitude was a choice, not a prison.
But sitting here now, in a cabin that still smelled like Lily's shampoo, surrounded by the evidence of everything he'd let slip away...
He couldn't dismiss it anymore.
Megan was right. She'd always been right.
He didn't avoid connection because he was bad at it. He'd made himself bad at it so he'd have an excuse to avoid it. Built walls so high he could pretend they were load-bearing, essential to his structure, when really they were just keeping out the light.
"That's not protection," Megan had said. "That's just loneliness with extra steps."
God, he was tired of the extra steps.
Night fell slowly, the sky shifting from orange to purple to the deep blue-black of a tropical evening.
Alex should have gone to bed. Should have surrendered to sleep and hoped tomorrow would hurt less.
Instead, he grabbed his flashlight and headed for the eastern shore.
The turtle nest.
The path was familiar, his feet finding the way without conscious thought. The jungle sounds surrounded him—night birds calling, insects humming, the distant crash of waves against the reef.
He emerged onto the beach and trained his flashlight on the sand, careful to keep the beam indirect. Disturbing a hatching nest with bright light could disorient the babies, send them scurrying toward the wrong destination.
At first, nothing looked different. The same subtle depression in the sand. The same undisturbed surface that had greeted him every night for weeks.
Then he saw it.
Movement.
Barely perceptible—a slight shifting, a disturbance in the sand that could have been wind if there'd been any wind to speak of.
Alex's heart stuttered. He clicked off the flashlight, letting his eyes adjust to the moonlight, and crouched at a safe distance from the nest.
Another shift. Then another.
And then a tiny flipper broke the surface.
Oh God.
They were hatching.
He watched, barely breathing, as the first head emerged—impossibly small, barely the size of his thumb. The baby sea turtle blinked in the moonlight, oriented itself, and began scrambling toward the water with single-minded determination.
Behind it, another emerged. Then two more. Then a dozen, bursting from the sand like living popcorn, a chaos of tiny flippers and determined little faces.
Alex had seen this before. Twice, in his career. Both times, he'd cried.
He was crying now.
But this time, the tears weren't just about the turtles.
She should be here.
This was supposed to be ours.
He’d told her about this moment with reverence, shared his passion for these creatures that had survived for over a hundred million years. And now the moment was happening, and she was on a plane, flying back to California.
Because he'd been too much of a coward to give her a reason to stay.
The turtles kept coming—twenty, thirty, more than he could count. They poured from the nest in waves, each one pausing just long enough to orient itself before making the desperate sprint for the sea.
They didn't hesitate.
That was the thing about sea turtles. They emerged from darkness into an unfamiliar world full of predators and obstacles and impossible odds, and they didn't hesitate. They didn't calculate the risks or build walls or convince themselves that the ocean was too dangerous to attempt.
They just went.
Instinct drove them forward, the same magnetic pull that had guided their species for millennia. The call of something essential, something worth risking everything for.
How do they know? he'd wondered as a child, watching that first aquarium video with his mother.
"They just do," she'd said, her hand warm in his. "Some things, you don't think about. You just feel them. And then you have to be brave enough to follow."
He'd spent the next twenty-six years thinking about everything. Calculating every risk. Building protections against every possible loss.
So afraid of the journey that he'd never let himself begin.
The last of the hatchlings disappeared into the surf, swallowed by the dark water and the vast unknown beyond. Alex stayed where he was, knees pressed into the sand, face wet with tears and salt air.
New beginnings, he thought. Right there. Dozens of them. Choosing the unknown over the safe darkness of the nest.
The beach was empty now. Just him, the waves, and the moonlight illuminating the sandy trail left behind—evidence of courage he'd spent his whole life avoiding.
Some things, you don't think about. You just feel them.
He felt it.
He'd felt it for days—weeks, if he was being honest. The pull toward something essential. The call of something worth risking everything for.
He'd just been too scared to follow.
And then you have to be brave enough.
The words echoed in his mind—his mother's voice, blending with Megan's, blending with Lily's.
Ask me to stay.
She'd been brave. Over and over, she'd been brave.
New beginnings were possible.
If only he’d been brave enough to grab one.