Chapter 19 Jade
JADE
The ocean doesn't have any answers.
I've been walking for over an hour, letting the waves lap at my ankles, trying to make sense of everything I read. The article about Nicholas and Olive. The anonymous check. The paradise destination. The fairy tale that Mom says was really a trap.
The pattern that Phoenix is repeating with me.
I keep telling myself there has to be an explanation. Coincidence. Fate. Something that doesn't mean I've walked straight into my worst nightmare.
But the parallels are too perfect to ignore.
I'm so lost in my thoughts that I don't hear him coming until he's right behind me.
"You left your laptop open."
I spin around. Phoenix stands a few feet away, hands in his pockets, face unreadable. The wind whips his dark hair across his forehead. He looks beautiful and dangerous and like a stranger all at once.
"You went through my things?" The accusation comes out sharper than I intended.
"I went to find you. You weren't there." He shrugs, utterly unapologetic. "The laptop was open. I looked."
No excuse. No justification. Just the bare truth, delivered like he has every right to invade my privacy.
"That's not okay," I say.
"Probably not." He takes a step closer. "But neither is running away without telling me what's wrong."
"I wasn't running away. I was taking a walk."
"For two hours. Without your phone. After barely looking at me all morning." His eyes narrow. "Something changed last night. What happened?"
I could lie. Could make up some excuse about bad dreams or missing home. But what's the point? He's already seen the searches. He knows exactly what I found.
"Your parents," I say flatly. "I read about how they met."
Something flickers across his face. Surprise? Confusion? It's gone too fast to read.
"What about how they met?"
"Don't play dumb, Phoenix. The article. 'Paradise Found: The Crawford Love Story.'" I laugh bitterly. "Your father sent your mother an anonymous check. Paid off all her debts. Flew her to his island paradise. Sound familiar?"
He stares at me. For a long moment, he doesn't say anything.
Then: "What article?"
"The one I found when I Googled your parents.
The one that describes exactly what you did to me.
" My voice is rising now, all the fear and confusion of the past twelve hours spilling out.
"Anonymous money. Beautiful estate. Man who takes care of everything.
It's the same, Phoenix. It's exactly the same. "
"I don't—" He stops. Runs a hand through his hair. "I've never read that article."
"Bullshit."
"I haven't." His voice is harder now, an edge creeping in. "My parents told me they met at a dinner party. Friends of friends. That's what they've always said."
"And you expect me to believe that?"
"I don't care what you believe." He closes the distance between us, and suddenly he's right there, close enough that I can see the flecks of gold in his dark eyes. "But I'm telling you the truth. I didn't know about any check. I didn't know about any of it."
I search his face for the lie. For the tell that will confirm everything Mom warned me about.
I can't find it.
He looks... shaken. Genuinely shaken. Like I've just pulled the ground out from under him.
"You really didn't know?" I ask quietly.
"No." The word is clipped. Angry. But not at me—at something else. Someone else. "I didn't know my father paid off my mother's debts. I didn't know he lured her to Hawaii with money. I didn't know any of that was how they started."
"Then how do you explain what you did to me?"
"I can't." He's not backing down, not softening. If anything, he seems more intense. "I saw you and I wanted you and I did what I had to do to get you here. I didn't think about where the instinct came from. I didn't analyze it. I just acted."
"You just acted," I repeat. "And it never occurred to you that paying off a stranger's debts and flying her across the country might be... unusual?"
"Nothing about wanting you has ever felt unusual to me." His hand comes up, fingers catching my chin, forcing me to look at him. "It's felt inevitable."
My heart is pounding. I should pull away. Should demand more answers, more explanations, more proof that he's not just his father wearing a different face.
But his touch sends electricity through me, same as it always does. My body doesn't care about patterns or warnings or magazine articles from twenty years ago. My body just wants him.
"I don't know if I can trust you," I whisper.
"Then don't trust me." His thumb traces my jawline, slow and deliberate. "Stay anyway."
"That doesn't make sense."
"None of this makes sense." He leans closer, his forehead almost touching mine. "But you're here. And I'm not letting you go."
It's not a request. It's not even a statement. It's a declaration—possessive and absolute and completely uninterested in my permission.
I should be frightened. Some part of me is.
But a larger part of me is something else entirely.
"The dinner," he says, pulling back just enough to look at me. "There's an investor dinner tomorrow night. It's important—crucial for a deal I've been working on for months. I want you there."
"Why?"
"Because I want you beside me." His eyes bore into mine. "I want them to see you. To know you're with me."
Part of me softens at that. The part that still wants to believe this is real.
"Like a date?" I ask.
"Like you're mine." He says it simply. Factually. Like it's not the most possessive thing anyone has ever said to me. "And I want everyone to know it."
The words should send me running. Should trigger every alarm Mom ever installed in me.
Instead, they make my stomach flip.
What is wrong with me?
"Fine," I hear myself say. "I'll go to your dinner."
Something shifts in his expression. Triumph, maybe. Or relief. It's hard to tell with him.
"But I have conditions," I add.
"Name them."
"No more secrets. No more lies. If I ask you something, you tell me the truth. Even if you think I won't like it."
He studies me for a long moment. "And if the truth makes you leave?"
"Then at least I'll be leaving for the right reasons."
A muscle ticks in his jaw. I can see him weighing it—the risk of honesty versus the risk of losing me. I wonder which one scares him more.
"Agreed," he says finally.
We stand there in the sand, the waves crashing behind us, the sun starting its descent toward the horizon. Something has shifted between us. Not resolution—we're nowhere near that. But a recalibration. A new understanding of the ground we're standing on.
He takes my hand. His grip is firm, possessive, like he's afraid I'll slip away if he doesn't hold on tight enough.
Maybe he's right to be afraid.
"Let's go back," he says. "I'll have dinner brought in. We can talk more."
I let him lead me up the beach toward the house. But as we walk, I'm aware of something changing in my own mind. A wall going up. A distance I'm creating without him knowing.
He thinks he's won something today. Thinks my agreement to the dinner means I'm falling back in line.
He doesn't realize I'm not the same girl who stepped off that plane.
I'm watching him now. Cataloging every word, every look, every half-truth and careful omission. Testing the bars of this beautiful cage to see which ones might bend.
He thinks he's the one in control.
He has no idea that I'm studying him just as carefully as he's been studying me.
The game has changed.
And he doesn't even know we're playing.