Chapter 23
Chapter Twenty-Three
Naomi
I wake up in the big, soft, unfamiliar bed and lay still for a long time, looking out at the view of the hills behind the house that are visible from the parted curtains in my room.
I guess this is home. For now, anyway.
I can hear movement in the house, wooden chair legs on tile floors, and voices drifting softly in the warm air.
Getting dressed in soft shorts and a cropped bathing suit top, with every intention of spending my day in the sun and water, I head out to face my new roommates.
Reina and I had a great time at dinner the night before. She’s an incredible person, genuinely kind and open. Thoughtful and observant.
How she ended up with dinosaur Dom I’ll never understand.
Big bro worked until long after I went to bed, pink wine lulling me to sleep after Reina and I got the kitchen cleaned up. It was a big day for a lot of reasons, my move being the least interesting of the lot.
Every time I close my eyes, and even sometimes when they’re open, my brain tortures me with flashing images of that kiss in my hotel room. The feeling of Sam’s hands on my body.
I can still smell the man on my skin.
I hear his words like the soundtrack to my life.
I see you, Naomi. And I know how amazing you are.
I spent the whole evening with Reina distracted and inconveniently turned on, the brush of my thighs together mixing with the memories of him sliding his hands over my stomach and hips, his strong fingers gripping me there. As much as I enjoyed my time getting to know my future sister-in-law, it was often a struggle to focus.
I would have loved to tell her. To tell anyone.
I bite my lip as tears swell in my eyes for the millionth time at the thought.
There’s no one left. Even my so-called best friend, the woman who I spent the last decade sharing everything with, turned out to be just as fair weather as the rest of them.
My phone, after years of being the melodic, disco-ball center of my universe, sits still and dark on my bedside table.
I shake it off as I reach the end of the short hallway that leads into the kitchen. I’m fine. This is going to be fine. It’s a tough period right now, but time will smooth things over.
Besides, I do have Fran. I just need to get to her.
I smile at the tiny rush of excitement that blooms in my chest at the thought of how thrilled she’s going to be by this new development.
Sam wants me as much as I want him. Even though the whole thing is complicated, seemingly impossible, he said the words.
“You’re looking awfully chipper this morning,” a gruff male voice says, wiping the smile from my lips.
“Morning, Dom.”
“I was just starting to wonder when you’d make an appearance.”
Anger flares in me hot and bright. “It’s not even eight o’clock. Are you seriously going to start this day by criticizing how late I slept?”
Dom holds up both hands in surrender, as if my defensive response was completely out of line.
“Good morning,” Reina’s singsong voice comes around the corner, and I look at her gratefully.
Maybe I can just ignore the guy. It’s worked fine for most of my adult life.
“Grab a cup of coffee and join us on the patio. We want to talk about a couple of things.”
I like the sound of that about as much as I’d like the idea of a trip to the gallows, but I don’t see any way around it.
I take my time stirring cream and sugar into my cup in the now silent kitchen before marching out to the patio like a woman on death row.
The two of them sit side-by-side in deck chairs facing me. Dom’s arms are crossed, his signature scowl in place. Reina’s hand rests on his forearm and she leans forward slightly, face kind and welcoming. I wonder for the millionth time what she’s doing with my brother.
“Is this some kind of intervention?” I joke as I settle into the chair one of them arranged directly across from where they sit.
Reina’s face softens and it looks like she’s about to speak, but Dom beats her to it.
“We just want to have a chat about what’s going on with you. What your plan is.”
This is more or less exactly what I expected, so I just sigh and shrug. “I’m just laying low for a bit and then I’m going to get my life back on track. I won’t be here forever.”
“That’s not what we’re worried about. ”
I open my mouth and close it. If they aren’t concerned that they just gained a permanent house guest, then what is this?
“I’m just confused about what your plan is for the rest of your life.”
My eyebrows shoot up, but I say nothing. There’s no point. He’s just getting started.
“You’re thirty-two years old, still three years away from the stable income the trust is going to provide you.”
I bristle at the mention of the trust, something that’s been the topic of discussion at many, many family meals in our household growing up.
My grandparents built a financial empire capable of supporting us all for the rest of our lives. Hell, it could have supported a small country for a decade. But they were concerned their children and grandchildren would turn into a bunch of lazy, do-nothing people, like so many of their friends watched happen. So, they added stipulations to the trusts. Thirty-five or graduated with a master’s degree before you could access any of the fortune set aside for you.
Dom did his MBA right after college, while he was still stringing our father along about joining him in the family firm. But the second his trust account was unlocked, he was gone, and he never looked back.
I remember those years vividly. I was a teenager, struggling to find myself and my place in the world, when Dom dropped the news that not only would he not be joining my father at work, he was headed to Europe to work in restaurants. He told me I could come with him, but I assumed he was joking.
To say that my father gave up on life would be a sorry understatement.
Dom was his plan. His legacy. There was no chance I was going to replace him, so my father didn’t even try. He allowed me to follow my passion of photography and art and pursue a degree in visual arts, even though Dom had to get his in finance or risk being cut off.
My father shrank into himself, spending more and more time at the office until it reached the point where he didn’t come home from the city for weeks at a time.
Our house became even more of a tomb than in my early years, when the family was in mourning over my dead mother.
And I learned just how unimportant I was to them. Invisible. Non-existent.
My junior year of high school, I would spend hours setting up artsy shots for social media, building my life into a rich, happy place like a diorama for people to scroll on their phones.
The internet became my family.
It was all so much simpler than my real family. Instead of having to show up and be someone these stick in the mud men thought I should be, I could show up exactly as myself, represented in whatever way suited me best, and everyone would follow right along.They would see me and like me.
I learned to curate my life for the tiny screen and found that I was really good at it. I ran a lifestyle blog through college when that was popular, followed by Tumblr, and finally Instagram.
No one could control me because I was completely in control of my image. They saw what I wanted them to see.
And people were always watching.
It’s addictive, that kind of attention. I watched myself transform from an artsy teen posing with flowers and graffiti art to a polished, confident authority on how life should be lived. When I spoke, people listened. When I did something, they all wanted to do it too.
I had no idea what a house of cards I had built for myself. Blinded by the little hearts into believing that I was important to those people.
“I got a call from our father last week.”
My attention shoots back to Dom as he drops this bomb. “What? He called you?”
He hasn’t called me. Not since I called to let him know that I was leaving the city for a while and why. I wouldn’t have bothered, but again, I'm not thirty-five, so I needed him to bolster my accounts more than usual for a while until I could get things back on track.
He refused.
“Apparently he wants to start taking part in his children’s affairs again and he’s decided to take his last few decades of failure out on you,” Dom says, and I almost feel a hint of camaraderie from him as I consider how similar our positions are right now.
I let out a sigh, having exactly nothing to say about our father. Turns out, Dom has plenty.
“I had no idea things were still so bad.”
I take a full moment to process the words while running my finger along the rim of my pale teal and cream porcelain mug before the possible meaning sinks into my mind.
I want to be angry at his intentional ignorance, but the wave of emotions is too exhausting.
“Yeah, well…” It’s not meant to be a statement, simply a filler.
“I thought you were doing well. I follow you, you know.”
I glance up at that, into his calm, curious eyes. The same dark eyes that I’ve been trying to get to see me for my whole life finally are. Or maybe I’m just now brave enough to look into them.
“You follow me on Instagram?”
“Yes. I have an account to follow The Sands and you.”
I catch movement out of the corner of my eye and find Reina there, nodding, signature smile in place.
I can’t help but smile as I shake my head, still processing this information. “What’s your username?”
He looks to Reina who just rolls her eyes. “It’s whatever they gave me. User 6537 or something. Reina wanted to help me upload a photo of our sunset as my profile picture, but we never got around to it.”
“You’re a bot,” I joke, even though I feel more like crying.
Dom shrugs. “I guess so.”
“Well, then you know more about what I’ve been up to than I do about you, I guess.”
He sits forward, elbows resting on knees and pins me with those intense eyes once more. But again, the longer I hold his gaze, the more welcoming and human it becomes. Is it possible I missed the real person in there for all these years?
“I thought you were doing pretty good. Your pictures and the things you type really make it seem like you’re on top of the world.”
My eyes fall down to rest on my hands where they cradle my mug. “Well, that’s the idea.”
“If things were going badly, you should have said something. Should have reached out.”
My defenses fly up to greet him. “Everything was going pretty well. Until it wasn’t. It happened so suddenly. I’ll get back on track.”
He sits back in his chair, arms crossed. “I thought a lot about what you said at the bar the other night. About how your job works and how everything went wrong. Then I compared that with the image of you I had from watching your Instagram for all these years. I can’t shake the feeling that it’s all fake, and I should be worried about you.”
I sit up straighter as anger rises from my belly to my lips. “You have not contacted me in years.” The last word comes out as a hiss.
Dom refuses to back down. “I told you already. I thought you were doing okay.”
The audacity. “And the only reason you would ever need to call your little sister would be if she was not living up to your standards? What about just to say hi?”
“The phone works both ways.”
I nod, holding back the tears that threaten to brim in my eyes as emotion overtakes me. “I suppose that’s true enough. I just chose to use mine to call people who support me. People who give a shit about my life enough to be there for me.”
“Oh, you mean your internet friends who won’t be associated with you now because it might hurt their follower count?”
I drop my head to stare directly into my lap as the first tear falls. Because yeah, I did mean those people. Those were the only people I had. And he’s right, I have no one now.
Even when this whole thing eventually blows over, I’ll never be able to go back to the way it was. I’ll never be able to trust that community or feel like I’m a valued friend.
It hits me right now for the first time. It’s really over.I have nothing.
Even if I get my channel back, it was always about way more than the channel. It was my life.
And now it’s over.
“Yeah. You’re right.” I nod, still not looking up to see whatever smug look is on his face at having so successfully taken me down a peg. “I put my trust in people, and they betrayed me. Sorry to be such a disappointment.”
“Naomi, what Dom’s trying to say is that he’s—we’re—concerned for you. We want to help in any way we can.”
I look up then, straight into the earnest, eager eyes of my brother’s twenty-something fiancé. What the hell does this woman know about me and what’s going on with my life? The only reason she’s sitting here right now, in a position to be offering comfort and advice is because she snagged herself a rich boyfriend.
Would they still be so worried about me if I was hooked up with a multimillionaire?
I sit up straighter as the thought hits me.
I am the fucking multimillionaire.
I don’t get to skewer her with my cutting new insight, however, because Dom jumps in first, doing the thing Dom always does.
“I wouldn’t be so worried if you were in some kind of a relationship. You’re thirty-two years old. Have you thought about trying to settle down? Get married?”
I knew it. My mouth drops open, all confidence sucked out of my chest, replaced with impulsive stupidity.
“Sam told me that you threatened all the men on this island to stay away from me or risk bodily harm.”
Definitely shouldn’t have said that…
Dom narrows his eyes at me but says nothing. I can almost see his mind working. I need to distract him, and quickly.
“Maybe I’ll go find myself a nice pool boy to hook up with. Would that make you happy?”
Dom’s face remains impassive. “Like Sam said,” the inflection he puts on Sam’s name sends a chill through me. “There isn’t a pool boy on this island who will touch you.”
I throw up my hands in exasperation. “Which is it, Dom? Do you want me to settle down or do you want no guy to ever touch me?”
Again, he refuses to allow me to rile him. “Don’t you want to find someone?” He glances sidelong at Reina, who’s smiling at him like he hung the damn moon. “It’s pretty great.”
My mouth drops open at the uncharacteristic display of affection, as subtle as it was, but I snap it shut.
I’m on my feet before I realize it’s happening. “Of course I do!”
My shout falls on two surprised faces.
“Of course I want to find someone. It’s just…not that easy. I’m not exactly the kind of person people want to date.”
The truth is far more complicated, but my words have already done their damage—on myself. I spin and escape into the house before anyone can try to comfort me with empty words.
I have to get out of here.
Collecting my few essentials into a canvas bag, I start the asinine journey down all one million steps to the sandy road below the house. I know they can see me from the porch, so I keep my pace quick but steady. I keep my face stern but calm.
I’m not used to making such public admissions of my own shortcomings—or admitting that things aren’t perfectly the way I want them. Everything I do in life is intentional. If it’s not, I find a way to make it look intentional for my channel. Or I hide it away.
I have no idea what to do now that one of my deep, dark secret feelings is out in the open like this.
I only make it about twenty feet down the sandy path before Reina catches up to me. I startle and glance back at the house, wondering if there’s some secret elevator they failed to mention.
Maybe the woman just has calves of steel after living in that house for so long.
“That got a little off track, Naomi.”
“Sorry to bum you guys out with my loser life.”
She easily keeps pace with me as I huff down the sandy road. “That’s not what I meant. Dom…well, he can be stubborn and overprotective, but he really does mean well.”
I stop short and turn to face her, planning to give her a piece of my mind about how that man thinks he can just say whatever he wants and then send his girlfriend down to smooth things over, but she just looks so…nice.
I grind my teeth and say nothing.
She must see the indecision on my face, because hers softens further. “He wants you to be happy.”
There’s no stopping the eyeroll that statement produces. I shake my head and keep walking.
“I’m serious. This whole situation really threw him. I’ve never seen anything like it. He worries about you, you know. Always has.”
“No, Reina. That may be what he told you, but it’s far from the truth. When you worry about a person, you check in on their wellbeing. You speak to them more than once every five years. He had my whole life to look out for me when I was living in that estate, being raised by nannies and trying my best to stay out of the way of my father who blamed me for all his problems. Instead, he ignored me completely when I was a kid, and continued to ignore me for my whole life. And now, he somehow thinks that he has a right to step in and tell me that how I choose to live isn’t good enough?”
I shake my head again, trying and failing to keep the emotion out of my voice. At least it’s just Reina who’s about to watch me cry. I’d rather throw myself off the bluff than break down in front of Dom.
Reina lays her hand on my shoulder, and I slow my pace until I’m stopped again, staring down the path in front of me.
“That is all valid and true,” she says in her soothing voice. I brace myself for the but. “But Dom lost his mother that day, too. He?—”
That’s the end for me. I shake her off and spin around on the sandy path, unconcerned about how I look or how emotional my voice is going to sound .
“Reina, that man has had my entire life to play siblings and commiserate over the loss of our mother. He never even tried. And now, now that he’s so worried about my future? You heard him. He’s only worried that I’m not married and popping out babies. He doesn’t care about who I am or what I want in life. You can go back and tell him to drop the fake worry act. I didn’t believe it before, and I don’t believe it now.”
I spin once more and head down the path as the tears break free and careen down my cheeks in rivers. Reina doesn’t follow.
I reach The Sands in record time, wiping my face and hoping people will assume I’m just flushed from the morning heat, which is already making me sweat. It was hot in Austin, but this hot is different. It surrounds you like a fog anytime you step away from the ocean breeze.
The front desk lady solemnly informs me that there isn’t a single room available, and won’t be for weeks, but lets me sweet talk her into handing over the keys to a golf cart.
I sit on the vinyl seat, grateful for the shade of the roof, wondering what on earth to do next. While it’s true that my father blew his top and refused to fund my little island getaway, I’m by no means broke. I could rent myself a room somewhere and move on with my recovery—alone.
I don’t even know why I chose to come to this stupid island. I could have gone anywhere in the world. There must be a thousand tiny islands just like Faraday I could have chosen. Probably much cheaper ones. Did I really think that Dom was going to be a different person all these years later? That he would welcome me with open arms and be excited to hear about what I’d been up to in the years he missed?
I snort at the thought, shaking my head.
No, that wasn’t it. Sure, heading to Faraday was a questionable choice, but when I needed somewhere safe to land, it was the first thing that came to mind. But the reason wasn’t Dom.
It was Sam.
I jam the keys into the ignition, decision made, but hesitate before clicking the cart on. I know where I want to go, who I want to be comforted by. But things between us have gotten more complicated over the last week. I’m no longer the blast from the past who he hooked up with one time on vacation. We’re teetering on the edge of stepping into ‘something more’ territory, even though neither of us understands how that could work.
Like Fran said, it’s not like you can have a secret relationship on this island. No one would be dumb enough to think that. The fact that we’ve gotten away with it for this long is amazing.
I grip the steering wheel hard as I consider my next move. I know what I want to do. I know that I don’t give a damn about furthering the damage to my already smoldering relationship with my brother. But I also know how Sam feels about it. He’s so sure that this thing between us will fracture his working relationship with his business partner, ruining a lifelong friendship. As a recent scandal survivor, I can certainly understand his hesitancy to burn his whole life to the ground. And, as a recent survivor of Dom’s wrath, I know that Sam’s probably right about how the whole thing will end up.
But there’s another side to this coin. There’s the side that becomes increasingly hard to ignore every time we’re together. It was lit up like a neon sign when he was in my hotel room yesterday.
“I get the feeling that you don’t always feel as strong and amazing as you portray yourself to be. As you are. But I see you, Naomi. And I know how amazing you are. So, if you forget, you can always come ask me. ”
And that settles that.