Chapter Nine
Isla
Lying in the dark, staring at the moonlight as it danced across the ripples in the ocean like it was kissing every one with ethereal beauty, I drew in a heavy breath of chilled air.
I hated the sanitized smell of the expensive hotel room as much as I hated the fact that I couldn’t sleep.
But what I really hated was the anxiety churning low in my belly.
I was back at that place.
The thick, murky waters of fear I couldn’t wade through fast enough to match my heart rate.
I told myself tomorrow didn’t matter. That no matter the outcome, it would be okay.
I had a plan, and I’d embraced acceptance years ago.
I was the memory, the dust, the blood, and the bones of every warrior that had come before me, and I would be that warrior now.
I would always be that warrior.
I had fought the fight. The scars of the battlefield ran through my veins. My soul now knew its place, and I had made my peace with this life. Nothing tomorrow, nothing my brother said, nothing anyone said would change my resolve.
Tonight, I breathed.
Today, I had lived.
Tomorrow, if it came, would be a gift.
That was who I was.
Isla. Warrior. Wanderer. Lover.
But I was no longer a fighter.
I didn’t have to be.
I had that choice.
So I chose this—lying on a soft bed, breathing the same air-conditioned luxury as my brother, and watching the moonlight dance.
A stealth shadow fell across the open bedroom doorway a bare fraction of a second before my brother’s frame filled it. “You’re not sleeping.”
Deep without being toneless, quiet without being a whisper, I took a moment to digest my brother’s voice and the comfort of its familiarity when sometimes I didn’t think there was a single thing I knew about him anymore. “Neither are you.”
“I’m going for a run.”
Rolling onto my back, I glanced at him as the same soft moonlight that caressed the ocean’s waves fell across him in sharp angles of harshness.
“Give me a minute to get dressed. I’ll come with you.
” I didn’t question why he was going for a run in the middle of the night.
How we grew up, the timing of any form of strength training was irrelevant.
“Stay.”
I was fast and had endurance, but not like him. We both knew I’d slow him down. Before tonight, before the past few years, that had never seemed to matter. Or maybe it always had, and I’d just told myself it didn’t. “Are you running the beach?”
“Rest, Isla.” With so slight a movement, I almost missed it, he set something thin and small on the dresser just inside the room. “I’ll be back in an hour.”
Just like that, as if he were a whisper of smoke, my brother was gone.
If it weren’t for the whoosh of the elevator doors opening a moment later, I wouldn’t have heard him leave.
Already out of bed, with a single glance at the bedside clock, I ignored the room card key he’d left and moved to the window.
But I didn’t stand directly in front of it.
Off to the side, mostly hidden behind the blackout curtains I couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to use, I took up a stealth position.
Then I watched.
I scanned the pool area. I counted down the number of seconds I thought it would take to get from the lobby to the neat row of empty cabanas. I looked out across the gardens that separated the sand from the hotel’s terrace, and I watched.
I watched the beach, all the paths to it, and every inch of the hotel’s grounds that I could see from my vantage point.
My brother never appeared.
Twenty minutes later, I retreated to the giant, soft bed.
Two hours later, my eyes were drooping, and he still wasn’t back.
Wondering if I knew my brother at all, I fell asleep.