Chapter 21
Chapter Twenty One
Teresa
I am sprawled out on a chaise near the edge of the beach, pretending to read a book, although I haven’t actually processed a word in the last ten minutes.
The sun is high enough now to bleach everything bright—the sand, the water, the pale cushions beneath me, even the pages in my hands.
Heat presses against my skin in a steady, lazy wave, softened only by the salt breeze moving off the water. It should be relaxing. The whole scene should be relaxing.
Instead, I am tense in ways that have nothing to do with psychology.
Or maybe everything to do with it.
A couple of weeks.
That’s how long it has been since I demanded space and professional dignity, like both were things I could simply claim back by force of will and a straighter spine.
Since I told him we were done blurring lines.
Since I made it very clear that whatever had happened between us was not going to become the new operating system for life on the island.
And, to his credit or perhaps to my increasing misery, Vito listened.
He gave me space.
Too much space.
Enough that I am now lying on a beach chair in the middle of a tropical paradise with a book in my lap and a dry mouth every time I look up and see him in the water.
Again.
Of course he is swimming again.
What else is there to do here besides lie on the beach or go into the sea? There are only so many walks I can take, only so many notebooks I can fill, only so many hours I can spend thinking in circles before my own mind starts to feel like a cage.
So I am lying on the beach.
And Vito is in the water.
And I am doing a terrible job pretending I am not outright staring at him.
I know I’m doing a terrible job.
At one point, ten minutes ago maybe, he turned his head in the water and looked straight toward me with that unreadable expression of his, and I immediately looked back down at the book in my lap with all the subtlety of a teenager caught gawking.
The mortification had lasted approximately four seconds before I looked up again.
Because really, what is a girl supposed to do?
The man is impossible.
Not just handsome. Not just well-built. He moves through the water with the same easy competence he seems to bring to everything physical, and there is something deeply unfair about how natural he looks in his own body.
No strain. No awkwardness. Just strength and control and that quiet physical confidence that gets under my skin—and between my legs—even when I tell myself it shouldn’t.
Sex on legs, my brain supplies unhelpfully.
And that is exactly the problem.
I know what it is like to be with him now.
That is what has made these last couple of weeks so maddening.
Before, attraction had at least been speculative. A dangerous curiosity. A sharp, inconvenient awareness I could try to file under bad judgment and heightened circumstances, and leave there.
Now I know.
Now I know what his mouth feels like on mine. And in other places too.
What it is like when all that reserve breaks.
What it does to me to be looked at by him like I am not a puzzle or a doctor or a complication, but something wanted.
And because I know, distance has become its own special form of torture.
I shift on the chair, irritated with how restless and unsettled I feel.
This is absurd.
I am a grown woman. A psychologist. A person with a functioning frontal lobe and years of training and an actual career built on understanding desire, compulsion, projection, attachment, all of it.
I should be better at managing the situation.
Instead, I am hiding beneath a wide-brimmed hat, in one of the swimsuits the closet had to offer, hyperaware of the fact that my body has been restless for days.
Not because nothing has happened.
Because I know exactly what I am missing.
And because Vito, damn him, has not pushed.
He has not cornered me.
He has not used the island, or our history, or the charged silence between us as an excuse to make things easier for himself.
He has mostly behaved.
That should make me feel safer.
It does make me feel safer.
It also makes me want to scream.
Because when he looks at me now, which he still does, there is restraint in it. Deliberate restraint. As though he has drawn a line and is determined not to cross it unless I do first.
And I don’t know what to do with that.
The book slides another inch down my lap.
I watch him cut through the water again, sunlight flashing off his shoulders when he turns. He disappears beneath the surface for a moment and emerges farther out, slicking his hair back with one hand.
My stomach tightens.
I look away.
To the sand. To my book. To the ridiculously unreal sweep of blue sky above me.
Anywhere but him.
It lasts maybe thirty seconds.
Then my gaze drifts back again.
This is what the island has reduced me to: a woman with degrees and discipline and too much self-awareness, lying on a beach chair, losing an argument with my own eyes.
Worse, it is not only physical.
That would almost be easier.
If it were only chemistry, only proximity, only the sharpened unreality of being trapped in this suspended little world with someone dangerous and beautiful and intermittently infuriating, then I could probably dismiss it as situational.
But that is not all it is, and I know that too.
He is still not opening up the way I need him to.
That is the other frustration.
He is better than he was at first. Less sealed off. Less likely to stonewall me entirely. He answers more now. Offers more. Lets me get close enough to things I can actually work with.
But he still pulls up short.
Still withholds.
Still circles the truth instead of stepping directly into it, especially when the conversation gets too close to whatever sits at the center of that three-month deadline.
I still do not know what the deadline is for.
And that gnaws at me more the longer we stay here.
Because time is not abstract on this island. It is counted in meals and sessions and changes in the weather and the slow accumulation of familiarity.
It is counted in how often I have seen the supply boat in the distance. In how many pages of notes fill my notebook. In how many times I have thought, today maybe he’ll tell me.
Weeks have passed already.
Weeks.
The number startles me every time I really let myself think about it.
What had first felt surreal and suspended now has shape. Duration. Consequence.
And the deadline is approaching, whether he talks or not.
That should be the biggest thing on my mind.
Professionally, it is.
Personally, however—
I shut the book and drop it on the chair beside me.
Enough.
The sound makes him glance toward shore again.
Our eyes meet this time.
I know immediately that he caught me staring.
There is no plausible deniability left.
For one long second, neither of us looks away.
Then, annoyingly, his mouth shifts.
Not a full smile.
Just the suggestion of one.
As if he knows exactly what he is doing to me.
As if he has known for days.
I exhale sharply and push myself up on one elbow.
From here, I can see him more clearly as he turns and starts swimming back toward shore. Slow, unhurried strokes. No attempt to hide that he knows I am watching now. If anything, he seems almost relaxed under it.
That should irritate me.
It does irritate me.
It also sends a fresh pulse of heat streaking through me.
I lie back again and throw one forearm over my eyes.
This is impossible.
I am supposed to be maintaining distance.
Professional dignity.
Standards.
Whatever phrase I used that day in the kitchen, before my own body and better judgment started sabotaging me from the inside.
And yet here I am, counting the seconds it takes him to reach the shallows.
The sound of water gets closer. Then footsteps in wet sand.
I keep my forearm over my eyes, trying to decide whether I am composed enough to deal with him up close.
Probably not.
Too bad.
His shadow falls across me.
“You’re going to burn,” he says.
His voice is dry, deeper from disuse and the sea air.
I lower my arm just enough to look up at him.
The sun is behind him enough to make him hard to look at straight on, all broad shoulders and damp skin with dark swirling lines etched into that skin that make my mouth water with the desire to trace them with my tongue. Those dark eyes rest on me with far too much awareness.
“I’m wearing sunscreen.”
“Not enough.”
“You seem very certain.”
His eyes journey over me lazily. Over my face, the curve of my throat, the dip of my collarbones, the swell of my breasts in the swimsuit top, down over my legs. Then the same lazy trail back up to my face.
I feel it like a fire trailing under my skin.
My breath hitches.
He does not miss that.
His gaze lifts back to mine.
“I am.”
He says it with the ease of a man who knows exactly what he's doing to me.
“Arrogant, much?” I retort.
He grins, a real one this time, and it is unfair how much it transforms him.
“A little,” he admits. “But I’m right.”
Before I can argue further, he leans down and picks up the bottle of sunscreen that I left on the small table beside the chair.
"I can do it," I say quickly, desperately, and it is not lost on him. My desperation is a living thing in the space between us.
If he touches me right now, I'm going to go off like a rocket. I am already wound so tight, so ridiculously primed, that even the most casual, non-intimate brush of skin is going to feel like an invasion.
Or an invitation.
He looks at me, one eyebrow slightly raised in silent question.
I don’t want him to.
And God help me, I want him to.
My stomach is a tight knot of conflicting, warring impulses. My mind is screaming no, but my body is screaming yes, yes, yes.
It's been weeks.
Weeks of being in this contained space with him, of smelling his scent in the hallway, of hearing his movements in the house at night.
Weeks of wanting him.
And now he is standing here, offering to put sunscreen on me, and it is the most intimate, most dangerous, most tempting thing in the world.
"I've got it," I say again, my voice a little too high.
He just looks at me, and I can see the challenge in his eyes. He knows what he is doing. He knows what he is asking.
He is testing me.
And I am failing.
Because a small, reckless part of me wants to see what happens next. Wants to feel the cool, slick lotion on my skin and the heat of his hand following it.
Wants to see if I can handle it.
I can't.
I know I can't.
He knows it too.
He holds the bottle out to me. "You might miss a spot."
I take it from him, my fingers brushing against his, and the contact is so fleeting, so electric, that it makes my whole body jump.
He sees that too.
Of course he does.
He is a predator. He sees everything.
And right now, I am the prey.
And I want him to catch me so bad.
I grabbed the bottle of sunscreen from him.
"I've got it," I say, my voice high-pitched.
He watches me with those dark eyes for a moment longer, then he nods, a small, almost imperceptible movement.
Then he leans in close. So close that I can feel the heat radiating from his body.
So close that I can smell the salt on his skin.
So close that I can feel the tension thrumming between us, a current so strong, so powerful, that it threatens to sweep me away.
I freeze.
But all he does is grab a towel from the back of the empty chair next to me. A simple, normal, everyday gesture.
Then he turns and walks back toward the house.
I let out a breath that I didn't even realize I was holding.
And I am disappointed.
So, so disappointed.
I watch him walk away, my gaze tracing the lines of his back, the muscles in his legs, the way the sun glints off the water that is still clinging to his skin.
I bite my lip to hold back the moan.
You stupid, stupid woman.