Chapter 21 #2
By the time they’d both finished showering, the rain had lulled to a drone. It patterned the windows in fat droplets, smudging the jungle beyond into an abstract idea. If she squinted, she could almost pretend they were perched in a Park Ave. penthouse, overlooking the greens of Central Park.
She met Waylon in the kitchen. Their picnic supplies had rapidly depleted, but he’d spread what was left of them across the island’s quartz countertop. “Ooh, you know how I feel about a charcuterie board,” she said, sliding one of the bruised tangerine slices into her mouth.
A tint of a smile touched Waylon’s lips.
Beneath it, a smolder. While the rain turned the afternoon into a soupy gray, the shaded lamps and scalloped sconces cast orbs of amber light.
Gold dripped off the lines of his face, gilding him.
He popped a couple yogurt-covered cranberries in his mouth.
Chewed. His gaze soaking her up. Finally, he said, “You look good in my clothes.”
Good wasn’t the word she would have chosen.
One of Waylon’s three-sizes-too-big Subtext shirts hung loose on her limbs, a wet patch rapidly growing beneath her plait of washed hair, and his pants bunched at her ankles but fell loose around her hips.
Her nipples forced her back into her bra.
They had no trouble remembering the way he’d kissed her, touched her, left her trembling and needy in the bathroom.
They pebbled against the fabric, sensitive and eager.
If he asked, she’d lie about how comfortable the soft knit of his shirt was, how she longed to submerge herself in the oud and amber notes of his cologne that lingered on the fabric. But for now, she slid on the painted-blue barstool and said, “Thanks for sharing.”
He hummed, amused. “Anytime.”
Another bite of fruit. “Let me know when you want to get stranded on an island together next. I’ll clear my calendar.”
She conveniently avoided the part where it took her a five-minute pep talk to convince herself to actually put his clothes on. Mortal enemies didn’t kiss in the rain and share clothes. And slipping his bar’s T-shirt over her head solidified that mortal enemies didn’t quite fit them anymore.
He wasn’t just her boss’s super-entitled, vaguely evil son.
Somewhere along the line, Waylon stopped being someone to hate or even someone to tolerate but someone she actually enjoyed spending her time with. Someone she was glad to have by her side, despite being on a corporate retreat from hell.
She could have blamed it on the week they’d had. The temperature and the frequent ring of adrenaline through her veins. Or the way they were so far from anything that felt familiar or normal or reasonable, so far from the Fletcher she’d been in New York.
But she’d be lying.
It was Waylon, whose protection never veered possessive, who surprised her by prodding her to define herself, rather than filling in the blank with his own definition. It was how much time they’d wasted despising each other and how little time they might have left.
“I decided what I want,” Fletcher said, and Waylon swallowed loudly. She took her time choosing her next bite if only to avoid the searing way his eyes bored into her still-damp skin. “I want to know you.”
There was a fraction of a second—of a millisecond—where he hesitated. He adjusted his cup on the counter, silver rings glinting. Straightened his shoulders, centered himself. “Okay.”
“It’s not an interview, I swear,” she said, laugh brittle. Some of his PR-trained posture whittled away. “I just—I know some things, obviously. Like your birthday and your alma mater. I know you snore like a freight train and own a jazz bar in Brooklyn, but I feel like I don’t know you.”
“You can ask me anything you want.” Fletcher opened her mouth to get started, but he stopped her with a finger. “If I get to ask a question back.”
“Deal.” Fletcher propped her chin on her hands. “Why Bubbles?”
“That’s what you start with?” He blew out a breath.
“I’m surprised you don’t know. It started the night Eliza dumped me, after I inexplicably crashed into the champagne tower at the charity gala at the hands of someone who shall remain unnamed.
Once my dad finished excommunicating me, Joplin stole a bottle of Dom from the back kitchen and met me outside.
We drank it all the way to Park and Fifty-Eighth, when she made me laugh so hard champagne came out of my nose. ”
“It’s cute. Bubbles,” Fletcher said. “Way better than Fizzgerald.”
Waylon laughed, tipping his head back. A sound Fletcher could get drunk on. “You know, you’re funny when you’re not so tightly wound.”
A surprised scoff escaped. “I’m not—” But her arguments dried up, her jaw hanging loose. Visions of checklists and meticulously organized Gantt charts twirled through her mind. Okay, fine, maybe she was a little tightly wound.
But now that she thought about it, she hadn’t itched to check her email or fought off intrusive thoughts about missed meetings for at least eighteen hours. It was a wonder the kind of perspective fighting for your life could give a girl.
All she could do was shake her head, a smile touching her lips, unraveling a little more. “Just ask your question.”
Leaning onto his elbows so their eyes met level, Waylon asked, “If we make it out of here, are you getting back together with Kent?”
“Definitely not. We’ve run our course.” She stared down at her freshly scrubbed cuticles as she asked, “Did you and Joplin ever…?”
“No. She’s been off and on with the same girl for years, but we are—fuck, were—good friends. My best, maybe.” A beat of silence stretched between them, neither antsy to fill it up. When Waylon finally caught her eye again, he asked, “What do you do for fun?”
“Fun?” The word felt foreign on Fletcher’s tongue. “Next question.”
“Come on, Spence. There’s got to be something fun you like to do.”
“Like what? I’m definitely not going to the racquet club or brushing elbows at soirees or whatever else you’re used to people answering this question with.
I haven’t taken PTO in three years, and when I’m not working, I’m taking photos so that I have a portfolio ready to try to convince everyone I’ve got what it takes to join Jet-Setter.
Except your dad destroyed my camera, so that’s off the table until I build my savings back up.
” Fletcher worried with the ends of her wet hair, somehow both amped up and exhausted.
“Right now, my apartment doesn’t even have an oven, and that’s only until next week, when they kick everybody out to turn it into a department store, so sometimes, when I’m feeling really wild, I’ll look at Zillow listings of homes with stoves. ”
Reaching across the counter, Waylon folded her palms in his. “You shouldn’t have to make yourself miserable for a job. Or basic kitchen appliances.”
“Easy for you to say,” Fletcher said, reaching for levity but coming up empty. “You’re a trust fund baby who had the luxury of disinheriting himself.”
“You’re right. The wealth-distribution system’s fucked up.”
“So fucked up.” She rolled the tension out of her shoulders, squeezed his fingers. “Anyway. New question.”
Waylon pulled away from the counter in favor of pacing. “What do you think Jackie’s up to?”
The sudden topic change had Fletcher choking on her charcuterie, little cracker crumbs shooting to the back of her esophagus. Tears sprang to her eyes. With two hands she reached for Waylon’s canteen, chugging it dry.
She swiped the back of her hand over her mouth, took a deep breath, and tried to remember how to function like a normal human being who didn’t have a giant deadly secret. She’d much rather discuss her apartment’s blatant lack of culinary equipment.
“What, um…What do you mean?”
It hardly sounded casual.
“Opal said Sheila knew something about her plan, but I haven’t seen Jackie in days.” Waylon scuffed his knuckles along the cliff of his jaw. “Do you think she’s heading to the marina?”
The truth was nuclear codes. A big red button that said Do Not Push.
Telling him the truth was something she’d assumed she’d get around to eventually—most likely around the time the yacht’s engine chugged to life.
But that was before she’d kissed him. Before she’d learned how the slant of his mouth felt against hers.
Before she realized Waylon was someone she could lose.
If the words left Fletcher’s lips, she would never be able to take them back. This thing between them—whatever it was, whatever it might become—would be blasted to smithereens.
Like sending documents through a paper shredder, Fletcher tore apart the honest answer until it was indistinguishable. All the information still there but unreadable. “Probably, right? You did say it was going to be a bloodbath over there. We’ll have to be careful.”
Waylon considered this. Evidently satisfied, he said, “Your turn.”
With all his attention on her, Fletcher’s skin felt too snug on her bones, her lungs too tight. Tapping her fingers along the countertop, she reached past a half-squashed pear where a bottle of alpine water acted as a paperweight. “What’s that?”
Clearly, she’d caught Waylon off guard. Rolling out his shoulders, Waylon took a moment to say, “That’s…the letter my dad left me. The one from his bedside table.”
Fletcher eyed it. Wrinkled, water-damaged, and woefully unopened. “I think he might have intended for you to, I don’t know, read it.”
“Maybe.”
“Are you going to?”
“Maybe.”
What it felt like, holding the last words your father would ever say to you, Fletcher couldn’t imagine. Estranged as they became, Dyer and Waylon hadn’t always been at such odds. Different men on different paths, sure. But how did you say goodbye to someone you had stopped speaking to for so long?
It wasn’t her turn again yet, but Fletcher asked, “What happened between you two?”
Waylon’s shoulders heaved with an Atlantean sigh.
“We never saw eye to eye, but things really started going downhill after my mom passed. She was like our translator. I’d always say the wrong thing, or he’d piss me off, but she helped us understand each other better.
Hard to believe it’s been five years already. ”
He rubbed at an ache in his chest. A raw spot of grief this week had only agitated.
“After that, everything became about the business—his legacy. Every conversation we had was just some checklist his lawyers gave him about preserving the company’s image or maximizing shareholder returns or whatever other bullshit thing they wanted to control me with.
All my life I’ve been Waylon Cartwright, whether I wanted to be or not.
People always think they know me. Think they can use me to get whatever they want.
I was sick of it, especially after Eliza.
The mold he wanted me to fit in, I refused.
Eventually, I guess it became easier to cut me out entirely. ”
His shoulders sagged, brows creased. Fletcher itched to smooth the wrinkle, massage the tension from his muscles.
“He loved my mom. I know he did. I even used to think he might have loved me.” Resentment lingered in his tone. “But never more than he loved Cartwright Media.”
Fletcher’s feet hit the floor, the distance between them vanishing.
Lifting her chin to meet his gaze, Fletcher could slather herself in SPF 50 and spend all day long swimming in those eyes.
Want readily pooled beneath her navel. Guys like him really should come with a warning label. “Can I kiss you again?”
He towered over her, and a striking smile touched his lips. “I think I get to ask the next question.”
“Maybe I’m tired of playing by other people’s rules.” Her fingers twisted into his shirt. She didn’t want to think about how they got here, or what happened when the sun rose tomorrow and her time ran out. They were here. Now. Together.
“Won’t this ruin your ten-year plan?”
“Yeah,” Fletcher said, just a breath punctuated with a laugh. “But I think that plan went out the window a few days ago.”
He grinned, a hand coming to rest against the dip of her waist. Desire bloomed in every corner of her body. “Sounds like a problem for us once we get off the island.”
Us. The word rang through Fletcher, bright and clear as a knife against a champagne flute. “If we get off the island.”
“If we get off the island,” he conceded.
His thumb traced the curve of her ear, down her jawline, until he caught her chin between his fingers.
Waylon kissed her. Or maybe she kissed him.
They met messily somewhere in the middle, kissing the same way they’d spent the last two days running: like their lives depended on it.