4. Melody #2
Melody is standing in the hallway, barefoot, wearing an oversized t-shirt that falls to her thighs and nothing else that I can see. Her hair is damp from a shower and her eyes are red-rimmed and she’s hugging herself like she’s trying to hold her own pieces together.
“I couldn’t sleep,” she says. “I walked to the bar but it was closed and I didn’t know where else to go and then I remembered, you mentioned your room number and I just-” She stops. Takes a breath. “I’m sorry. This is insane. I shouldn’t be here.”
She starts to turn away.
“Wait.” The word comes out before I can stop it. “Don’t go.”
She freezes. Looks back at me. And something in her expression cracks open, vulnerable in a way that makes my chest hurt.
“I keep seeing the water,” she whispers. “Every time I close my eyes. And then I think about his texts and I can’t breathe and I just - I needed to not be alone. But this is crazy, I barely know you, I should just-”
“Come in.”
“Noah-”
“Melody.” I step back from the doorway. “Come in. I’ll make tea. We don’t have to talk about anything you don’t want to talk about.”
She hesitates for a long moment. I can see her weighing it - the inappropriateness, the intimacy, everything that could go wrong. I should tell her to go back to her room. I should be the responsible one here.
I don’t.
She steps inside, and the door clicks shut behind her, and my entire suite suddenly feels smaller.
“This is...” She looks around, taking in the floor-to-ceiling windows, the private infinity pool on the terrace, the art on the walls that cost more than most people’s houses. “This is not a regular room.”
“No.”
“How did you get-” She stops. Turns to look at me. “Who are you, exactly?”
I should tell her. Right now, in this moment, I should tell her that I own this resort and three others like it, that I’m not just some stranger she met in a bar. But the way she’s looking at me - like I’m just a person, like I’m just Noah - I don’t want to lose that yet.
“Someone who couldn’t sleep either,” I say instead. “Tea?”
She watches me for a beat, and I can see her deciding whether to push. Then something in her shoulders releases, and she nods.
“Tea. Yeah. Tea sounds good.”
I move to the kitchenette and she drifts toward the windows, drawn to the view the way everyone is. The moon is high now, casting silver light across the water, and she stands there with her arms wrapped around herself, a silhouette against all that beauty.
“I almost died today,” she says quietly. “I keep thinking about that. I almost died on my honeymoon, two days after I found out my marriage was a lie.”
“You didn’t die. You’re here.”
“Because of you.” She turns to look at me. “You saved my life.”
“Anyone would have-”
“No. They wouldn’t have.” She shakes her head. “The other swimmers were closer. You said so yourself. But you were the one who came for me.”
I don’t have an answer for that. The truth is too big, too strange, too soon. I came for you because I couldn’t not come for you. I came for you because the thought of losing you felt like losing something essential, and I don’t understand why, and it terrifies me.
“Here.” I hand her a mug. Our fingers brush, and I feel it everywhere. “Careful, it’s hot.”
She wraps both hands around the mug and holds it close to her chest, like she’s trying to absorb the warmth. We stand there in silence for a moment, the ocean glittering beyond the glass, and I try not to notice the way the moonlight catches in her hair.
“Can I ask you something?” she says.
“Anything.”
“When you pulled me out of the water. When you-” She touches her lips, briefly, unconsciously. “Was that real CPR, or were you just looking for an excuse?”
I nearly choke on my tea. “That was - I wasn’t - you weren’t breathing, I had to-”
She laughs. Actually laughs, soft and surprised, and the sound does something dangerous to my chest.
“I’m kidding.” Her eyes are still sad, but there’s something else in them now. Something warm. “I’m kidding, Noah. Mostly.”
“Mostly?”
“You did technically kiss me today. Even if it was to save my life. I feel like that counts for something.”
“It doesn’t count.” I set down my mug because I don’t trust my hands right now. “It doesn’t count because you weren’t very conscious for most of it and because-”
“Because what?”
I look at her. Standing in my suite at midnight, barefoot, vulnerable, the kind of beautiful that makes my chest ache. And I know I should lie. I know I should say something light and easy, something that keeps us safely on the side of friendship.
“Because when I kiss you for real,” I say, “I want you to remember it.”
The words land in the space between us, heavy and irreversible. Her lips part. Her breath catches. And for a long moment, neither of us moves.
“You can’t say things like that,” she finally whispers.
“I know.”
“I’m a mess. I’m broken. I’m not someone you should want.”
“I know that too.”
“Then why did you say it?”
“Because it’s true.” I take a step toward her, then stop myself. This is the line. This is where I have to decide what kind of man I’m going to be. “And because you deserved to hear something true tonight, after all the lies he told you.”
Her eyes fill with tears, and I hate myself for making her cry again, but then she sets down her mug and closes the distance between us and wraps her arms around my waist.
She’s not kissing me. She’s just holding on. Her face pressed into my chest, her fingers gripping the back of my shirt, her whole body trembling with something that might be grief or relief or exhaustion or all of it at once.
I wrap my arms around her and hold her there, and I think about how I’m supposed to be the one in control. I run a hotel empire, make decisions that affect hundreds of people, have dated models and heiresses and women who could buy small countries.
But none of them ever felt as real as this broken woman in an oversized t-shirt, standing in my arms at one in the morning, crying into my shirt.
“I’m getting your shirt wet,” she mumbles.
“I don’t care.”
“I should go back to my room.”
“Probably. I’m trying to be a good person here, Melody. You’re not making it easy.”
She laughs again, soft and wet, and pulls away from me just enough to wipe her eyes. “Sorry. I’m a mess. I told you I was a mess.”
“You’re not a mess. You’re just going through something.”
“Isn’t that the same thing?”
“No.” I tuck a strand of damp hair behind her ear, and I feel her shiver under my touch. “A mess implies permanent. You’re not permanent. You’re just in the middle.”
“Thank you.” She smiles and quickly disappears into the hallway.