Chapter 37
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Jade
I must have dozed off, I guess.
I wake to the scrape of a chair, and turn my head to see familiar stormy eyes gazing at me. Relief floods through me.
“Axel.”
He’s pale, the strong lines of his face drawn. His sandy hair is tousled, muscles flexing in his arms as he shifts in the chair. I just want to sink into him, want him to wrap around me so I can smell his bonfire scent, kiss him the way I want to.
But he just sits in the chair, looking at me.
“Axe?”
“Myles Brandon is going to buy the land. He offered triple what my family were prepared to pay. And the council went for it.” His voice is bleak, his eyes like winter.
No “How are you feeling.” Nothing about what we are, what we were to each other. Just this quiet calm voice, threaded with a deeper thunder.
Still. Relief washes through me.
“I’m so glad.” I reach out to him, but he doesn’t take my hand.
Pain ripples through me. “This is what I was trying to tell you. Myles has a foundation, preserving the special places on the planet. It’s why I called him, and took him to the cave.
The temple, the land, it will be saved for the island. ”
Axel shakes his head, holding my gaze. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why did you let me go to Jakarta, waste my time with the banks when I could have been here, could have spoken to Myles as well?”
“Because I didn’t figure it out until after you left!
” My throat hurts so much. But I need to explain, while I still have a voice.
“Myles was already in the area, so he came over when I asked. Axel, please.” Tears burn my eyes.
“Please, believe me. I would never betray you, or the island. I… I care about you too much for that.”
There. It’s out there. Surely now, now that I’ve opened my heart to him, he’ll take it. Return to the beautiful smiling Axel I know.
But he still sits like a statue, his hands clenched where they rest on his long muscular thighs. “You said to me, before you… You said that trust goes both ways. If we can’t trust each other, how can we be together?”
“What the hell?” I try to push myself up against the pillows, but they slide against me. “I do trust you! Despite … everything.”
“Everything? Do you mean the photograph you found?” There is white at his knuckles, now.
I don’t say anything. My breath hitches, more tears coming. I don’t understand what’s happening.
“I was engaged,” he says, his voice low and rough.
“Thought she was the one. That’s the girl you saw in the photograph.
Susie. Everything was good between us. We had a place together in California, on the coast. I had my business.
I thought we were building a life together.
We were going to move here, after we got married.
Then one day, when we were out surfing together, she told me it was over.
That she’d been seeing someone else, someone I knew.
That I was too busy with my surfboards and celebrity friends to spend time with her. ”
“Oh, Axel.”
“That’s not the worst part – that she’d been cheating on me – though I thought it was at the time.
” He pauses, his throat moving. His mouth twists, and he looks down for a moment.
Then his eyes, blazing lightning, are on me again.
“I left her out there. I told her what I thought of her, told her whoever he was, he was welcome to her and I surfed into shore.”
I open my mouth, but he holds up his hand.
“A storm blew up. Quick, like they can on the water. Like today.” He wipes his eyes. “I tried… I tried to get back out there, to help her. But the waves, the currents were too strong. She… They found her a week later.”
“Oh god.”
“I shut down, then. Shut everything down. My business. My life. Who I was. All gone. Because I got angry, and I left her out there. And she died.”
“It wasn’t your fault.”
“Everyone said that.” His face is pale as bleached bone, his expression bleak. “But I know it was. Just like today. I nearly fucking lost you, because I got angry again.”
“But I’m here. I’m okay.” I don’t reach out to him again, because I can’t bear it if he doesn’t respond.
“I can’t do this, Jade. We went too deep, too fast. I care about you too, but this just shows me how wrong it is.”
“How wrong it is? It’s wrong to … care about me?”
He shakes his head, his expression pained. I feel as though a weight is on my chest, crushing me.
“What’s wrong is how fast it happened. The reasons for it. I can’t… I’m not ready for this.”
“This is bullshit.”
“I’m not ready to go back into your world, Jade.”
“My world? Don’t we have a world together? A space where we can be just us?” I’m trying so hard not to cry. How is this happening?
“I don’t know.”
“Just go.” I’m so tired, my whole body aching. And I can’t do whatever this shit is. “If we’re breaking up, if you’re breaking us, then go. Fine. I don’t want to talk about this anymore.” I turn my head away from him.
A moment later I hear the scrape of the chair, and then a door closing.
And I burst into tears.
Axel
How can someone I hadn’t even met a month ago leave such a gaping hole in my life? I keep telling myself I’m doing the right thing as I walk back home, as I sit on my sofa and stare out at the waves. Alone. Just like I wanted.
But later, I find a single frangipani flower on the ground. It’s crushed, the petals browning, yet it still holds a faint fragrance.
And I wonder why doing the right thing has to hurt so damn much.