Chapter 39
SALT IN THE WOUND
RORIE
“Fuck my life.”
I’m lounging next to a tiki bar overlooking crystal-clear water, a paradise people pay thousands to escape to, and yet, there’s this storm brewing in my chest.
The breeze should be refreshing, but it only stokes the fire of my ever-growing stress. Instead of sipping cocktails and soaking up the view, I’m drowning in a mess of my own making.
The bar is coastal indulgence done right—honey-toned wood, hand-blown glass lanterns suspended from knotted rope, and tropical flowers tucked into every corner. It doesn’t scream for attention. It lures you in. The island knows exactly what you need before you do.
I take it all in. The textures. The mood. The way the space whispers instead of shouts. Every detail’s a seduction, and I’m already filing it away into mental notes, stacking them like cocktail napkins. This is what our pitch needs to be. Confident. Sexy. It belongs here. We belong here.
Jeremy’s parked on the other side of me, legs stretched out, sunglasses sliding down his nose as he sucks down a colorful drink served in a hollowed-out coconut. There’s a tiny umbrella. A pineapple wedge. A pretty tropical flower to be decorative.
“You look disgustingly relaxed.”
“You look like you’re one mental breakdown away from flipping this entire bar into the ocean,” he says as if that’s not a perfectly reasonable plan.
And the man responsible for said breakdown? Oh, he’s lounging twenty feet away in an island casual wet dream—slouchy tee, smug grin. He shows me forearm porn every time he reaches for his drink and his corded muscles flex.
“Where’s Maya?” I ask.
“Suspect claims it’s a headache, but I’m pretty sure she’s hiding so she doesn’t make eye contact with Asher and crumble like a waffle cone under a triple scoop.”
My eyes roam back to Nolan, who’s laughing at something one of his team members says. She’s curly-haired and currently rocking an eccentric neon bathing suit that I’m pretty sure was designed during a sugar rush.
He glances this way. He feels me watching.
My pulse flutters. I nibble my bottom lip. And despite the ocean breeze and frozen daiquiri in my hand, I’m sweating under the weight of something I swore I’d never want again.
Jeremy tips his sunglasses down further, gives me the you’re not slick look. “Alright, who pissed in your daiquiri? Or, more accurately—what six-foot-four, bicep-blessed chaos demon crawled up your ass and started doing laps?”
“We have connecting rooms,” I hiss, clutching the glass as if it’s the last shred of sanity left on this godforsaken island. “Connecting. Rooms. As in, one paper-thin door stands between me and the man who scrambled my brain.”
Jeremy doesn’t even flinch. His brow lifts as he stirs his drink with the world’s most judgmental pineapple wedge.
“Rorie, babe. I love you. Truly. But if I have to hear one more tortured diatribe about how the man who emotionally tenderized you had the audacity to push pause, I will personally walk into the ocean and let the crabs take me.”
I glare. “Rude.”
“Is it?” His head tilts. “Let’s recap: He’s too rival. Too enemy. Too smug. Too hot. Too into you. And now he’s—what? Too gone? Boo-hoo. The trauma.”
I scowl. “That’s not what I said.”
“Oh really?” He leans in, eyes sparkling with challenge. “Because for a month, I’ve been trapped in a rerun of Rorie Adams: The Overthinking Years. You didn’t even respond to the man’s ice-cold email and now you’re mad he respected your silence.”
I open my mouth.
“Save it,” he cuts in. “You two are clearly still into each other, the universe keeps shipping you harder than TikTok romance edits. And now you’re mad it stuck you in a shared cottage? Read the signs, friend.”
“Yeah, let’s talk about this shared situation,” I say, spinning to face him fully. “I was supposed to be next to Maya.”
He blinks, fake-innocent. “You trusted me to check in for everyone. That’s on you.”
My jaw drops. “You switched our rooms?”
“Like I did your airplane seats,” he says proudly. “You’re welcome.”
“I hate you.”
He grins. “And yet, somehow I’m still your voice of reason.”
I groan into my hands.
“Ror, be serious,” Jeremy says, setting his drink down. “This back-and-forth you’re doing? Exhausting. You keep calling him the enemy. But that doesn’t make what you two have any less… cosmic.”
I blink. “Cosmic?”
He points at me. “Yes. The man literally sent you a galaxy in a box.”
Heat rises in my cheeks.
“For the day you met. Not when you first kissed, or when you humped him in a bathroom or had your little emotional fire drill. It was the day you stepped into his life. Tell me that’s not some next-level shit.”
I go quiet.
Jeremy lowers his voice, serious now. “Rorie… you have this glass shard wedged inside you that people leave you when you become too much. And Nolan? He just did it earlier than most. Preemptive exit. But that doesn’t make him a monster—it makes him scared.
According to Rishi, someone left him too. Don’t forget that.”
Pain flares up in my chest. I shift in my seat and exhale, trying to joke, trying to rise above the sting. “Okay, now I hate you for being right.”
Jeremy just gives a small smile. “Yeah, well. Hate me all you want. But don’t ignore it. Stop punishing him for the way everyone else handled your heart. You want him? Fight. Forgive. Or, at the very least, fuck him and get it out of your damn system.”
I scoff, cross my arms. “The elevated alcohol content in these drinks is getting to you, Jer.”
“Not fast enough,” he replies, raising his drink in a toast then leaning back against the lounger.
“God chose me to be the little matchmaker this story needs. Now go. Open that damn door. And either fall in love or ruin his life with some throw-him-off-his-axis, detonate-his-soul, rearrange-his-outlook-on-life high level fucking. Preferably both.”
I burst out laughing—part horrified, part hysterical. “You’re actually insane. That’s not happening.”
Jeremy’s attention snaps back to me. “Then stop bitching about it.”
I blink. “Wow. Harsh love today.”
He shrugs. “Truth serum comes with the umbrella drink. Did you even hear a word I said?”
My brow furrows.
“Look, I get it. You’re playing it safe. Strategizing. Trying to be ten steps ahead. But not everything can be mapped out. Some things you just have to feel your way through.”
I go still.
He looks me dead in the eye. “Don’t let fear make the call.”
A tirade of emotions forms in my brain when my phone buzzes with a new message from Carl. Er, Nolan.
I know things ended kind of weird between us, and I want to respect your space. Just checking in. Hope you’re okay.
The words slam into me. I stare at his message longer than I should, thumb hovering over the screen. Answering would set something dangerous in motion.
And there’s this massive, suffocating secret lodged in my chest. It’s eating me alive. It’s not just the texts anymore. It’s him. Nolan. And the guilt has become a constant ache, insistent and impossible to ignore.
My eyes drift across the patio—automatically, stupidly—and land on him.
Nolan’s staring down at his phone, brows furrowed, expression grim. He’s waiting. He’s hoping.
And for a second, I wonder if he knows. If he feels it too, that secret between us, straining with the pressure of a thread pulled too tight, vibrating under every choice I’ve made since this whole thing started.
Responding would pull the thread loose. Once it unravels it won’t just be the secret that comes undone.
It’ll be me.
There are consequences to texting him back.
Always have been.
That ache in my chest I’ve been trying to smother with alcohol and avoidance consumes me. My fingers take over.
I’m fine.
There she is. I’ve missed you, you know. You’re the one bright spot that showed up when everything else went dark.
I was starting to think I scared you off.
Scared me off? Not a chance. I’m way too invested at this point.
Besides… you’ve kind of become my favorite notification and your emotional Jenga tower is way too entertaining to walk away from mid-collapse.
Good. Because losing you might actually ruin my already questionable faith in the universe.
God, why is it so easy with him?
Why does he have to be like this?
Stupid. Charming. Ridiculously addictive in a way that bypasses logic and scrapes at something much deeper—something I don’t want to acknowledge is even there.
And the worst part?
It’s not even about sex.
Except… it kind of is.
I know exactly how he kisses. I know the sound I make when he—
Nope. Nope. Nope. Not going there.
I shake the thought loose with the force of someone trying to dislodge a demon.
Here I am, half-tipsy on an island paradise, still texting the man I never should’ve let inside my ribcage. Still craving the way he listens. The way he gets me. Still wondering if he could be real.
He is real.
I toss back the rest of my drink in one go.
It burns going down. Rum. And rage.
And regret.
“You should see your face right now,” he muses, leaning over his coconut and sucking. Hard. His eyebrows bounce. “Who texted you, and how do I make them do it again?”
My fingers stop over the screen mid-response. “What?”
He gestures lazily at me with finger. “That.”
“That?”
Jeremy rolls his eyes. “The way you’re staring at your phone like it just solved world hunger and promised you a lifetime supply of orgasms.”
I scoff. “I am not—”
“You so are,” he interrupts, smirking. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you look genuinely happy while texting someone before. Not even me, and I’m a delight.”
I throw a piece of pineapple at him. He catches it, takes a dramatic bite, and continues as if I didn’t just try to pelt him with fruit.
“Rorie, just be honest with yourself for once. You’re into him. And I don’t mean just the sexual kind.”
“I don’t even know him.”