Chapter 29
Isla
Cameron: Can we talk, Isla?
Cameron: Call me when you’re free. I’ll come over. It’s really important.
“At least give it a try,” Alistair said first thing Saturday morning, as though he could already hear the “Absolutely not” building on my lips.
Sand seeped into my sandals, making my getaway impossible. “You know, this wasn’t really what I had in mind when you suggested a day at the beach.”
When I’d texted him about Heather’s offer to take Teddy for the day, his reply had been instantaneous: Leave it with me, I have the perfect date in mind.
An intrigued eyebrow flicked over the rim of his sunglasses. “You’d prefer to sunbathe?”
“Yes, actually.” I folded my arms.
It was the perfect weather for it.
It was the first weekend of August, bringing with it what would likely be the only day of summer we’d get here on Skye.
Sunlight refracted off the water like tiny diamonds and not a single cloud marred the clear blue horizon. The warm breeze tossed stray curls from my braid and stuck my dress to my body. I’d noticed Alistair staring when he thought I wasn’t paying attention.
He wasn’t the only one struggling.
The way his navy running shorts sat high on his thick thighs was practically obscene.
I’d been making a conscious effort not to ogle them from the moment I stumbled out of the cottage door this morning, shoving a rarely used sunhat onto Teddy’s head, and found him leaning against the bonnet of Heather’s idling car.
My own thighs tightened as I stared at them now.
It shouldn’t be legal to parade around in public like that.
“You hate sunbathing,” he countered confidently, passing the paddle he wielded from one hand to the other. Like he knew exactly what I liked.
I couldn’t put my finger on it, but he seemed different today. More determined, maybe . . . and that was saying something for Alistair. “We’d both be bored out of our minds in ten minutes flat.”
“I guess we’ll never know,” I replied, hating that he was right.
At least sunbathing didn’t come with an almost guaranteed threat to life.
He laughed. “Tell you what, Lang. I’ll cut you a deal. Give me ten minutes out on the water, and if you’re having a bad time, we’ll do whatever you want for the rest of the day.”
“Whatever I want?” I considered the kayak resting on the pebbled shoreline. Could I do it?
“Anything.” He drew the word out just enough to make my cheeks burn, a very different scenario shooting through my mind.
I hadn’t yet mentioned the detail about Heather taking Teddy overnight, afraid he might think I was suggesting he spend the night. Afraid he wouldn’t think anything at all.
Alistair read my indecision for something else entirely. He dropped the paddle in the sand and stepped closer. “Tell me what you’re afraid of.”
“That I’ll drown and leave Teddy parentless.”
“That’s what the life jacket is for.”
“What if I get swept out to sea?”
He didn’t miss a beat. “I’ll follow you.
I’m not letting anything happen to you.” I didn’t think he meant it to sound romantic, but it did.
“We won’t even leave the bay; the current isn’t strong here.
” He bent his knees and pushed his sunglasses on his head, eyes encouraging. “Come on, Lang. Just ten minutes.”
I bit my lip, glancing at the kayak again. The red boat he’d rented from a tour company could seat two in very close quarters. I tried to imagine myself tucked between Alistair’s thighs, fingers tracing through the water as he manoeuvred us through the waves. It held a certain appeal.
“Bloody hell,” I muttered. “Okay.”
“Yes!” He clapped his hands together. The sight of him grinning like a schoolboy made me far too giddy. “First, you have to lose the dress.”
The good vibes screeched to a halt. “What? Why?”
“It’ll get soaked.”
“But I’m only wearing a bikini.” I felt my jaw unhinge. “You’ll see me.”
Of course he’s going to see you. I’d known as much when I’d dug out the red two-piece I’d worn only one other time, then given in to the urge to adhere to modern beauty standards and shaved and lotioned every inch of my body.
“I certainly hope so.” I don’t know whether it was his statement or the wink he sent me right before he tugged his T-shirt over his head that made my brain short-circuit more than usual.
It wasn’t my first time seeing Alistair shirtless, but it felt like it as my eyes tracked over every inch of smooth, pale skin.
“Isla.”
“Hmm?” He really was unfairly attractive.
“Lose the dress, honey.” There was no humour in his voice. It had me spinning on the spot, facing the grassy dunes.
“I need help with the zip.” A lie. But I needed another minute. Needed not to be facing him when his eyes dragged over my nearly bare body for the first time.
It was ridiculous given all we’d done.
It was just a body. A sack of flesh that carried around the heart of a person. That was the only bit that really mattered.
Would I be less attracted to Alistair if his belly was soft beneath my fingers instead of hard? If he had stretch marks like lightning strikes from bringing another human in the world?
I didn’t even need to think about it.
But a decade’s worth of insecurities couldn’t be healed overnight.
Alistair’s breath hit the back of my neck, his warm fingers finding the hidden zip easily. Even with a family setting up a beach blanket a hundred yards away, the whirr of metal felt intimate. I took a breath, then let the dress fall.
“I’m wearing the life jacket,” I declared, turning slowly, hands curling around my waist.
Not that Alistair looked. He kept his eyes determinedly on mine. Only breaking away to pull a tube of sun cream from his bag and hold it out to me.
“You aren’t going to offer to put it on for me? Give the villagers a show?” It was a half-joke. An attempt to fray this cord straining between us.
He shook his head. “I have you all to myself for another, what? Another five – six? – hours. I have too many plans to spend that time in a police cell.” And then he did look. My dimpled thighs, my soft belly with its stretch marks. His blue gaze searing with promise. “Red is your colour, Lang.”
My stomach flipped. Then flipped again as we stared at each other.
I got the sense he was waiting for me to contradict him. Blow him off. Remind him everything we were doing here was all for show.
I just poured sun cream into my palm. “Very well.”
Once I was all sun-creamed and strapped into my life jacket so tightly I resembled an extremely buxom woman in a period drama, Alistair held the kayak steady with his foot and helped me climb into the slippery seat.
I landed on my arse. Hard.
“You okay?” he asked without laughing.
“Yep.”
The corner of his lip curled just enough; I knew my bravado had failed me. His thumb swiped over my chin. “Ten minutes, remember.”
“Ten minutes.”
Truthfully, I shouldn’t have worried. Five minutes after pushing away from the shore, turning back was the last thing on my mind. “You can see the whole island from out here,” I said, shielding my eyes with the hand that wasn’t white-knuckling the side of the kayak.
We couldn’t have been more than two hundred yards out, but the people on the beach looked the size of Lego figurines.
The rolling hills were dappled in gold. Green pastures, dotted with wildflowers that burst in pinks and purples, spilled down to the rocky cliffs.
Kinleith looked sparse. Tiny. A handful of whitewashed cottages clinging to the coastline.
“Amazing, right? I can’t believe it took me this long to get back on the water.” Alistair’s voice rumbled against my back. “This is going to sound cheesy, but I forgot how small being out on the water makes me feel.”
“Like you’re the only person in the world.” I nodded, completely getting it. “Did you come out here a lot before moving to Glasgow?”
“When I was a kid, Dad would bring us on the rare weekend he took off.” His arms, encasing mine, flexed as he slid the paddle easily through the water. “Then we hit our teens and could do this without him. Heather and I spent nearly our entire summer out here once.”
I smiled at the image, Heather no doubt driving her older brother to distraction. “That sounds like a perfect childhood.” The complete opposite of mine.
“I guess it was.” He stopped paddling, setting the metal bar across my knees. “Do you think you’ll live in Kinleith for ever?”
I glanced over my shoulder at him. “Forever is a long time.”
“For the foreseeable future then?” he pushed. “Do you ever see yourself leaving?”
“No.” I answered honestly. “When Cameron and I first split, I wanted nothing more than to run away, even knowing it was cruel to move Teddy away from her dad.”
He heard the embarrassing truth I’d inadvertently dropped right into the middle of the sentence. “You felt lonely here?”
“Yes.” Why was that so shameful? “I didn’t know anyone. I knew a few school mums in passing, like Heather, but didn’t know any of them well. Cameron’s friends had become my friends by default. So when it ended, I had no one.”
“Friends like Annabelle?”
My cheeks burned, and I faced the front of the kayak again. “Cameron did a lot of awful shit, but that one’s my own fault.” My fingers played with the buckles on my life jacket. “I’ve only ever felt settled one time in my life—”
“With your gran,” he stated, running his thumb over the end of my braid, knuckles brushing the base of my spine.
“I think a part of me had grown so used to feeling lonely, even within my relationship, it never even occurred to me to try and get settled here for me. To find people of my own.”
I’d become so isolated without even realising it.
It was an odd feeling now, like pressing on a scar. The memory of pain I no longer felt.
“And now you have them,” he said simply, and I felt my chest expand. “You never have to be lonely again.”
“Neither do you,” I replied, because I knew he needed the reminder.
He said nothing. And we floated in companionable silence for a minute.