5. Melody
— ? —
Melody
I spend the next morning walking the resort alone, trying to remember how to breathe like a person.
The grounds are beautiful in that deliberate, magazine-spread way - white stone paths curving through gardens, infinity pools that blend into the ocean, restaurants with floor-to-ceiling glass and menus I can’t afford.
Everything is designed to make you feel like the outside world doesn’t exist. Like you could stay here forever, suspended in some tropical bubble where nothing bad ever happens.
The illusion would be more convincing if my husband hadn’t cheated on me in one of the suites upstairs.
I find myself in the main building, drifting past a corridor of boutiques and spa entrances, not really going anywhere, just moving.
The walls are mostly glass here - elegant and clean - and through them I can see the signature restaurant, the one with the waterfront terrace and the waitlist that stretches three days out.
Leo tried to get us a reservation when we first arrived.
I told him I didn’t need a fancy dinner. I just wanted the beach.
I stop walking.
Through the glass, at a corner table with the best view of the water, Leo is sitting with a woman I’ve never seen before. She’s beautiful - the kind of beautiful that looks effortless but definitely isn’t - with dark hair and red lips and a hand resting casually on his arm.
He’s laughing. Relaxed. Leaning back in his chair like a man who got away with it.
She says something and he grins, and my stomach drops so fast I think I might be sick.
He stayed.
He told me he was flying home. He looked me in the eye and said I’ll leave tonight if that’s what you want, and I believed him because I was desperate to believe anything that would make him go away. But he didn’t go anywhere. He stayed. And the second he thought I’d left, he brought her here.
Alexandra.
It has to be her. The dark hair, the easy intimacy, the way she touches him like she’s done it a thousand times before. She’s sitting in the restaurant I paid for, at the resort I saved for, wearing a dress that probably cost more than my wedding gown.
My feet are moving before I make the decision. Through the glass doors, across the polished floor, between tables full of couples who don’t notice me passing. The host tries to intercept me - “Ma’am, do you have a reservation?” - and I walk right past him without breaking stride.
Leo sees me coming. I watch his face change in stages: confusion, recognition, and then something that looks almost like fear.
Good.
“Hi, Leo.” My voice is steady. I’m impressed by that. “Hi, Alexandra.”
The woman’s smile dies on contact. She looks at Leo, then at me, and understanding dawns in slow, ugly degrees.
“Mel-” Leo starts.
“Nice lunch? You two planned this the second you thought I was gone, didn’t you?”
Alexandra’s hand is still on his arm. She doesn’t move it. Up close she’s even more beautiful, with perfect skin and perfect eyebrows and a tiny diamond stud in her nose that catches the light. She looks like someone who’s never been caught at anything in her life.
“You said you were flying back to the States.” Leo’s voice is low, like he’s trying to keep this private. Too late for that. The tables around us have already started to notice.
“I decided to stay.” I smile at him, and it feels like a weapon. “In the resort I paid for. With the money I saved for two years. While you were texting your girlfriend that you couldn’t wait to get back to her.”
“She’s not my - it’s not like that-”
“Leo.” Alexandra’s voice is sharp. Annoyed. “You told me she left.”
“She did leave. She said she was-”
“I said I wanted a divorce.” I keep my eyes on Leo. “You said you’d go home. You lied. Again. It’s almost like that’s all you know how to do.”
“Can we not do this here?” He’s sweating now. I can see it at his temples. “Can we just - go somewhere and talk like adults?”
“No.”
“Melody-”
“I said no.” I pull out the chair across from them and sit down, crossing my legs, making myself comfortable. “Tell me something, Leo. Not the sanitized version you gave me in the suite. All of it, from the start. The truth.”
“I already told you-”
“You told me six months. But that’s not right, is it? Because six months ago we were picking out wedding invitations. Six months ago you were telling me you couldn’t wait to spend your life with me. So either you’re a world-class liar, or this started earlier than you admitted.”
Silence. Alexandra is staring at Leo with an expression I can’t quite read. Expectant. Waiting.
“A year,” he finally says. “Just over a year.”
The number lands like a slap. A year. He proposed to me nine months ago. Which means-
“You started sleeping with her before you asked me to marry you.”
“It wasn’t - I wasn’t planning-”
“You weren’t planning what? To propose? To cheat? To bring her to our honeymoon resort the second you thought I was gone?” I laugh, and it comes out harsh. “Which part wasn’t planned, Leo? Because from where I’m sitting, it looks like all of it was.”
Alexandra shifts in her chair. “Maybe I should go.”
“Stay.” I don’t look at her. I keep my eyes on Leo. “I want you to hear this too. I’m divorcing him. Today. I’m calling my lawyer as soon as I leave this table, and I’m filing for divorce, and there’s nothing either of you can do about it.”
“Mel, come on.” Leo reaches across the table like he’s going to touch my hand. I pull back so fast the silverware rattles. “I made a mistake. A huge mistake. But we can work through this. We can-”
“There is no we. There hasn’t been a we in a very long time, apparently. You just forgot to tell me.”
“I love you.”
The words hang in the air, ridiculous and obscene. He’s sitting across from his mistress, in the restaurant where they were just sharing an intimate lunch, and he’s telling me he loves me.
“No, you don’t.” I stand up, and I’m pleased to see my hands aren’t shaking. “You love the idea of me. You love having someone who plans your life and manages your schedule and makes you look good at parties. But you don’t love me. You never did. And I’m done pretending otherwise.”
I walk away without waiting for the answer.
The host watches me pass with wide eyes. Two women at a nearby table whisper to each other behind their menus. I don’t care. I don’t care about any of it. The only thing I care about is getting out of this building before the adrenaline wears off and I fall apart.
My feet take me to the terrace before my brain does.
The same terrace where I ate breakfast this morning, where Noah appeared with coffee like the day had planned him.
He’s not here now. The table is empty. The chair where he sat is pushed in, and I stare at it like it might tell me something useful.
“Melody?”
I turn. Noah is coming up the path from the beach, hair damp, towel slung over his shoulder. He takes one look at my face and his whole expression changes.
“What happened?”
I shake my head. The words won’t come. Leo’s face when I walked up to the table. Alexandra’s hand on his arm. A year. Just over a year. Everything I thought I knew about my own life, rewritten.
“Melody.” Noah is in front of me now, close enough that I could touch him if I reached out. “Talk to me.”
“He’s still here.” My voice sounds far away. “He told me he was leaving. He brought her instead. They were having lunch. In the restaurant. Like nothing happened.”
Noah’s jaw tightens. “The mistress?”
“Alexandra.” I say her name like a curse. “They’ve been together for a year. He proposed to me while he was sleeping with her.”
“Jesus.”
“I confronted them. In front of everyone. I don’t know why I did that. I just - I saw them and I couldn’t-” I stop. Breathe. The tears are threatening and I refuse to cry again. I’ve cried enough. “I told him I want a divorce. I told him there’s nothing he can do to change my mind.”
“Good.” Noah’s voice is fierce. “That’s good.”
“Is it? Because right now I just feel-” I don’t know how to finish the sentence. Broken. Empty. Furious. All of the above. “I feel like I don’t know who I am anymore. Like everything I thought was real was just - a story I was telling myself.”
Noah doesn’t say anything. He just stands there, solid and warm, and after a moment I feel his hand on my elbow. Gentle. Questioning.
I step into him before I can talk myself out of it.
His arms come around me immediately, no hesitation, and I press my face into his chest and let myself be held. He smells like salt and sunscreen and something underneath that might just be him, and I breathe it in and feel the knot in my chest loosen just slightly.
“You’re going to be okay,” he says into my hair. “I know it doesn’t feel like it. But you are.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do.” He pulls back just enough to look at me, and his eyes are very blue in the afternoon light.
“Because you’re the kind of person who walks into a restaurant and confronts her cheating husband in front of everyone.
That takes guts. That takes-” He shakes his head.
“You’re going to be more than okay. You’re going to be extraordinary. ”
I stare at him. This man I’ve known for two days. This stranger who pulled me out of the ocean and makes me laugh and looks at me like I’m worth looking at.
“I don’t even know your last name,” I whisper.
“Carter. Noah Carter.”
“Melody Hayes. Well. Melody Brooks, technically, but not for much longer.”
“Melody Hayes,” he repeats, and the way he says it makes something warm uncurl in my chest. “Nice to meet you.”
“Nice to meet you too.”
We stand there on the terrace, his hands still on my arms, the ocean sparkling behind him like it knows something we don’t. And for a moment - just a moment - I forget about Leo. I forget about Alexandra. I forget about the wreckage of my marriage and the mess waiting for me back home.
For a moment, there’s just this. Just him. Just the possibility of something I didn’t know I was allowed to want.
***
The elevator is small, or maybe it just feels that way because Noah is standing too close and I’m very aware of his breathing.
“I should go back to my room,” I say. “Make some phone calls. Start figuring out the logistics of-” I wave my hand vaguely. “Everything.”
“Okay.” He doesn’t move.
The elevator dings. The doors open on an empty hallway, and I take a step toward them, and then Noah’s hand is on my wrist and he’s turning me, backing me against the wall of the elevator, his palm sliding to my jaw.
“Tell me to stop,” he says, low. “And I will.”
I don’t tell him to stop.
His mouth hovers a breath from mine, so close I can feel the warmth of him, and I want this so badly it scares me. I want to kiss him and never think about Leo again. I want to lose myself in something good for once, something that isn’t tangled up in betrayal and lies.
But we’re not alone.
The doors have been open too long, and a family of four is standing in the hallway - mother, father, two kids under ten - staring at us with expressions that range from scandalized to delighted.
Noah steps back. The space between us feels cold.
“Sorry,” he says to the family, and his voice is rough in a way that makes my stomach flip. “Go ahead.”
They shuffle past us into the elevator, the mother pointedly not making eye contact, the kids giggling behind their hands. Noah walks me down the hallway to my door, and neither of us says anything until we’re standing in front of room 412.
“I should go,” he says. His hand is still on my elbow. “Or I’ll do something we both regret.”
“Would we regret it?”
The question comes out before I can stop it. He looks at me, and something in his expression makes my breath catch.
“I don’t know,” he says honestly. “But I know you’re still married. And I know you’ve been through hell in the last three days. And I know-” He stops. Takes a breath. “I know I don’t want to be something you regret.”
He steps back and puts distance between us.
“Get some sleep,” he says. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
The door clicks shut between us, and I stand there in the darkness of my hotel room, listening to his footsteps fade down the hallway, wishing harder than I’ve ever wished for anything that he hadn’t gone.