Skye #2
The spa sat at the edge of the property, where the trees thinned out to volcanic rock. A woman in white linen met us at the entrance. The whole place seemed to breathe as slowly as she did. The scent of mineral water and an easy quiet stretched out in every direction.
“Welcome. You’re booked for the couple’s volcanic mud immersion.”
She walked us toward two stone tubs sunk into the floor, steam curling off the surface.
“The mud is rich in sulfur and magnesium. It pulls toxins from the skin, eases the muscles, and it also lowers the cortisol the body holds onto without you knowing. Most guests come out feeling lighter. Some say they leave things behind in it.”
I cut my eyes at Ducane. He was already looking at me.
“Soak as long as you like,” she said. “Rinse stations are to your left. I’ll bring water and fruit. Take your time.”
She slipped out, and the quiet folded in behind her.
I dropped my dress and stepped down into my tub. The mud closed over my legs, warm enough to make me groan, thick enough that I had to lower myself slowly. Ducane sank into his beside me with a grunt, head tipping back against the stone.
“Okay,” he said after a minute. “I see why people pay for this.”
“Mhhm.” I let my shoulders drop under the heat. “This is nice and look at this view.”
“I may need to make this a yearly trip. You can come if you behave.”
“Infinity Island will never be the same without me. Don’t play yourself like that, Sugar Cane.”
“Anyway, Miss Conceited, you remember the prompt for today?” His eyes stayed closed, head back against the stone.
“Unfortunately, I do. You set this whole thing up. You know what music means to me.”
“I set the whole day up, Spot. Keep up. What do we need to do?”
“I’ll get you back, don’t worry. But we need to build a playlist of five songs,” I said. “For each other. And we gotta say why.”
“Want me to go first?”
I had mine ready. And if I’m honest, some of them had been there for years. Songs I used to press play on when I needed a reminder of my happiest times and some of the hardest. You needed both.
“In My Mind. Heather Headley.” I looked at his face.
“Do you know it?”
“Not like you, probably. Tell me.”
The mud made everything slow, even my breathing. “Remember that dinner your mama called.”
“Yeah, I remember. Of course, I remember that night.”
“What you don’t know is that I saw the play with Bianca before you did, Cane. They weren’t hiding it. You just weren’t looking.”
“Why didn’t you speak up?”
I turned my head and leaned back. “In My Mind is about a woman watching the man she loves go on without her. Holding somebody else’s hand while her whole heart stayed right where it was and his too.
” I let that sit. “I had your soul, Ducane. Your people hated that more than they hated where I came from.”
“I’m sorry, Skye.”
“I stayed hopeful, but Christmas reinforced what I already knew.” I shrugged and sank deeper into the mud. “It is what it is now.” I glanced over at him. “Your turn.”
He worked his jaw. For a man who argued for a living, he chose his words carefully when they mattered.
“The Moon and The Sky. Sade.” A pause. “You know why.”
I did. It was a whole song about somebody who pushed a good love away and finally understood they were the one who broke it. His picking that for me wasn’t about the sky in my name. It was a confession.
“I didn’t book this trip to find you, Skye. I didn’t even know you’d be on that plane.” He looked at the steam instead of me. “I booked it because my body gave out on me.”
I sat up. The mud shifted around my chest. “What do you mean, gave out?”
“It’s handled.” He said it too fast, the lawyer in him reaching for the version that sounded smaller. “My blood pressure. Stress. A couple of dizzy spells in court. My body basically told me to sit my ass down.”
“Ducane.”
He exhaled. The real version came slower.
“They put me on a heart monitor for a week. I had to reevaluate my life and the people in it. Shit, those not in it as well.” He looked at the steam instead of me.
“I scared myself, Skye. That’s the truth.
I kept thinking, what if this is it? What if I die and the last thing I ever did was pretend I was okay without you? ”
I reached for his hand across the tub.
“No one knows about this but my doctor, Lola, and… now you.”
Now you.
He hadn’t told his mother. Hadn’t told Carter. Hadn’t told a soul who shared his last name. Yet somehow, he’d told me.
That meant something.
He meant something.
And for the first time in a long time, I stopped wondering if we’d ever find our way back to each other.
We already had.
He was back.
And listening to him talk about heart monitors and dizzy spells put things into perspective. I’d spent years agonizing over the right time to tell him the truth, but none of that would matter if life decided to make a decision for us first.
I’d already learned how cruel timing could be. I’d buried both my parents before I was truly grown.
I did not have room in me to bury this man too.
I looked over at him and sighed.
“I kinda wanna hug you right now.”
His eyebrows lifted.
“Then come here.”
I laughed under my breath, shifted carefully through the mud, and climbed into his lap. His arms came around my waist the second I settled.
I tucked my face into his neck.
“You don’t get to scare me like that and act like it’s nothing,” I murmured. “You take the medicine. You rest. You let people do for you for once. We need you around.”
We. It slipped out before I could trade it for I. My heart knocked once, hard, but he only pulled me closer. He hadn’t caught it. Thank God.
“That what we doing now?” he asked into my hair. “You doing for me?”
I pulled back enough to look at him.
“What makes you think I haven’t been the whole time?”
His jaw ticked, and his eyes went darker, hungrier.
“Give me a kiss.”
I kissed him. And tried not to think about the day this island bubble would pop, and reality would be waiting, with everything I hadn’t told him still in it.
Night had fallen and the much-needed nap had rejuvenated me. Shit, the whole trip had. But I was missing home.
Ducane was knocked out beside me, snoring softly, worn all the way down. I lay there a minute watching his chest rise and fall, and thought about what he’d told me in that mud. His body giving out. A week on a monitor. How close the math had gotten without me ever knowing.
If he’d lost that fight, he’d have died not knowing.
The thought put me on my feet. I slipped from the sheets and out onto the terrace, where the night was warm and the water kept its slow rhythm against the rocks.
It wasn’t late back home. The green icon told me the family was still up and moving.
I pulled up the thread.
Me: little girlie, do you miss me?
The bubbles popped up fast. She’d been waiting.
Cady: SO much. When are you coming home
Cady: did you find me something
Me: More than you know, my love. And yes, I did. Wanna see?
A slew of emojis took over the text box, letting me know CJ and Cartiera had joined the chat.
Me: Hey babies. Bathed?
CJ: Yes
Carty: Yep
Cady: All clean. Carter said big girls take showers. Is that true?
Me: Somewhat Sugar. Pajamas?
Cady: Check.
CJ: check
Carty: check
Me: Okay, I guess you all earned the gifts I got you.
I sent the group a picture of the dolphins I’d picked up from the gift shop when we landed.
CJ: yippyyy
Carty: i LOVE her thank you auntie
Cady: she’s so pretty. we can name her when you get back.
Me: It’s a date, little girlie. Goodnight, my babies. Dream big.
I set the phone down on the railing and looked back through the glass.
Ducane was still out, one arm thrown across the spot where I’d been, chasing me even in his sleep.
Behind me, in a phone going dark on a terrace railing, was a little girl with his eyes who’d be expecting my return in a few days to name a dolphin with her.
The two of them, twenty feet and one enormous lie apart, and me standing in the middle of it like I’d built the whole thing on purpose.
I had.
I wrapped my arms around myself and let the tears come, quietly, so I wouldn’t wake him.
This was not how it was supposed to go. When I met Ducane Simmons, I was twenty years old with a smart mouth and in need of a friend, and falling for him was the easiest thing I'd ever done.
Nobody warned me that easy could turn into raising our daughter alone, into a little girl who fell asleep some nights asking when her daddy was coming home.
Nobody warned me that loving a man that much would mean letting him go, then standing on a beautiful terrace on a beautiful island years later, happier than I'd been in ages, and still carrying the one thing that could take it all apart.
He almost died not knowing her. He almost left this earth, and Cady would’ve grown up with my silence where a father should’ve been.
I couldn’t do it anymore. I knew that now, standing there in the dark.
I picked the phone back up.
Me: I have to tell him soon, Sis.
Airalynn: It’s time. I’ve got your back, you know that. Carter too.
I did know that. I just didn’t know how to hand a man his whole life back and survive what he’d think of me for keeping it this long.
I wiped my face. Took a breath. Went back inside and slid under his arm, and he pulled me in without waking.
Soon, I told myself. Soon I’d tell him.
I lay awake a long time, listening to him breathe, grateful for every single one.