Chapter 34
CHAPTER
THIRTY-FOUR
Sleep won’t come. Not one wink.
Jake’s warmth is the only thing fighting back the shadows, but if I let myself hold on too tightly, I won’t be able to look at myself in the mirror when the sun rises. And the sun does rise, clear and pitiless, lighting up every decision I made in the dark.
Add them together and they issue an order: leave.
My restraint won’t survive staying in this bed until he wakes. He told me not to vanish, and I promised I wouldn’t. But a promise built on lies is just another lie waiting to happen.
So I go.
I ease out from under him, tug on my clothes, pack in silence, and shoulder my bag. At the door, my hand closes around the knob and stays there. No looking back. In another life, if the past hadn’t broken me into this shape, maybe I could deserve him.
But then we probably wouldn’t have met at all.
“I can’t believe you’re fucking leaving,” he says.
Cold floods my fingers, and I turn.
Jake’s propped against the headboard, eyes livid. “After everything I said.”
“I—”
“Regret it?”
“No.” The word comes too fast, too true, and I reach for the script I wrote last night. “I have a girlfriend.”
“Your editor.”
“Yeah.” I wince at peeling back the lie I’d shaped for merciful simplicity.
“So that’s it? You get what you want and then run?”
“I heard them,” I say, and my voice goes rough. “My father. Alistair. They’re both—”
“Your father? Marky, we could talk about that if you weren’t walking out. But you are, and that’s not fair.”
“If you hand me that kind of control, I’m going to use it, and… you might as well be asking me to hurt you.”
A crease forms between Jake’s brows. “No. I want it. Can’t you see that? I’m asking to be held, not hurt.” His voice goes precise on the word, like he’s correcting me. “Held.”
Heard. Hugged. Held. Hurt. The words slide over each other in my head until I’m back in the guidance counselor’s office, reaching for an accusation before he can get any closer.
“You’re staying with Alistair,” I spit out.
Jake laughs bitterly. “He’s the embodiment of the ends justifying the means, Marcus. You think I like groveling to billionaires? This is how it works, and I’m not ashamed. I’m trying to finish this game so I can build a company that saves lives.”
“And I’m trying not to become him,” I shoot back.
Evie’s lost everything, and Jake wants me to stay.
“Hell of a lot easier to judge me when you already earned your heart’s desire,” he says.
“I didn’t earn anything.”
“That’s right. I helped you.”
“You drugged me.”
“Oh. So this makes us even?” he asks. “And here I was falling for this mysterious man who wants the same things I do. Fuck me, I guess, right?”
I can’t fix it. Not without staying or admitting he’s right about what I want. Part of me at least.
“You want to go?” he asks. “Go. I never needed a savior.”
I take my go-bag and slip into the dawn toward the beach landing strip and the idling plane that might as well be a lifeboat. The lie I’m using to justify leaving loops while I wait for takeoff. By refusing to give in to whatever crawled out of that room, I can at least leave with my head high.
Evie told me the truth from the beginning. She warned me this job would break me. Alistair may have taken her paper and her life’s work, but I can’t let him watch me discard her by trading what she’s lost for my pleasure. She doesn’t deserve that.
I retrace the island days and try to work out when it all went to shit. If I’d refused that drink. If I’d refused Jake’s kiss. If I’d left him alone with his test.
The stale cabin air tastes like guilt. I’d been too focused on getting out quietly to even wash the night off my skin. It’s a cloud I stew in, drifting between dozing and waking until voices jolt me fully into the present.
Their laughter enters before they do. The guys file onto the plane, with Jake at the end. The second he sees me, he averts his gaze, seething, and slumps into the seat one row ahead of mine.
Behind him, Alistair watches, shaking his head like a disappointed teacher.
My phone sits in my pocket, heavy with the draft that’s still there.
If Alistair owns Cable Car Chronicles, he must have read my story. Or at least had someone read it. Why hasn’t he said anything? Why hasn’t he taken my phone and erased my last chance at justice?
The answer is yet another filthy realization.
Alistair must think proclaiming I’d passed the third test buys my silence the way it buys everyone else’s. Last night I looked like I could be bought. Felt like it too.
The thought turns my stomach. I push myself upright and scan the cramped luxury of the cabin’s chrome and crimson leather.
Evan is here, looking wrecked but here.
Brad isn’t.
And Dae’s no longer seated beside me. He’s sitting rigid in Brad’s chair a few rows up, jaw clenched, staring straight ahead with grim resolve, refusing to look back at the person he holds responsible: me.
Alistair promised he’d “deal with him later,” and now Brad’s being left off the plane, alone on the island.
I grip the armrest until my knuckles ache. Whatever Alistair thinks I’ve become—a winner, a convert, a pet—he’s wrong. I still have my story. Evie and I can still get him.