14. Xavier
FOURTEEN
XAVIER
Different was the only word.
I'd been searching my vocabulary for another one since the arm-wrestling match.
Ever since that one-second peck on my cheek that left me unable to sit still in my own chair, different was still the only word that fit the wreckage.
Andrew's phone had conveniently rung, pulling him away, and the second we were alone she'd stared me dead in the eye and confessed her body still remembered mine.
Then she'd kissed my cheek and walked off, leaving me at that table robbed of my own sanity.
I had no idea what to do with that.
I'd been obsessing over it ever since. When my head hit the pillow, the second I woke up, through every quiet stretch of daylight in between.
The problem wasn't that I couldn't understand the confession.
I understood it better than I was comfortable admitting.
The problem was that this whole trip was supposed to be harmless.
Our conversations were supposed to be routinary and normal.
We had explosive history, yes, but we'd agreed to lock it in a manageable box and survive one week on an island without a single incident.
That was what this trip was supposed to be.
But every time I stood in her gravity, every defensive blueprint I'd drafted went straight out the goddamn window.
I turned into someone else, a man who blurted out confessions I hadn't authorized, a man who kept ending up in isolated corridors, on rented boats, in terrace chairs I'd never planned to occupy.
The worst part wasn't the things I said.
The worst part was that I wasn't surprised by my own betrayal.
Some buried part of me had always known that whenever Sloane Ty was within a ten-mile radius, I couldn't manage my own impulses.
That reckless part of me had been starved and quiet for eight years, and now it had woken up and was demanding to be felt.
That lack of control scared me more than anything.
The guilt was specific.
Eliza had boarded a plane expecting to be my partner and deserved a partner's attention.
I lay rigid in the dark, staring at the suite ceiling, and decided I needed to force myself to sleep.
I shut my eyes and waited for sleep to take me. When I woke hours later, Eliza was already up and dressed.
"We should head down for dinner," she suggested.
"Give me a minute," I mumbled, rubbing my eyes.
I dragged myself out of bed, changed, and walked her down to the dining pavilion. I pulled out a chair and sat. Less than a minute later, Sloane slid into the empty seat beside me. I turned my head toward her.
"This is turning into a statistical anomaly," I murmured.
"What do you mean?" she asked.
"We keep sitting next to each other." I gestured at the table. "At every single meal since we landed."
She shot me a sideways glance. "Did I sit next to you at breakfast this morning?"
"You only didn't because you didn't get downstairs in time to claim the seat."
She smiled, a wicked curve of her lips, before turning her face away to hide it.
A second later, Eliza and Andrew strolled in and claimed the two seats across from us.
Eliza's eyes darted from Sloane to me, calculating the proximity, but she said nothing.
Then Andrew launched into a story, Eliza engaged with him, and the table fell into conversation.
I dropped my eyes to the white tablecloth.
Sloane and I kept ending up side by side without either of us coordinating it.
Hours later, after dinner wrapped, Eliza sat at the vanity mirror, removing her makeup and unfastening her jewelry. Without turning around, she said, "Sloane is an eccentric girl, isn't she."
I stared at her reflection in the glass. "Why are you bringing up Sloane?"
She turned a diamond earring over in her fingers. "I was watching her during dinner. There are a lot of fascinating layers to her." She locked eyes with my reflection. "You think the same?"
"I haven't really thought about it," I lied.
She held my gaze in the mirror. "Sure you haven't," she said, dry.
She finished organizing her jewelry, we went to bed, and she murmured goodnight. Her loaded sentence was still echoing in the room when I woke the next morning with a skull-splitting headache.
I couldn't make it down to breakfast. I lay paralyzed in the darkened suite with my forearm thrown over my eyes, listening to Eliza move around the room until the door finally clicked shut behind her. She came back an hour later and sat on the edge of the mattress.
"Violet just announced we're doing a jungle hike today," she said.
"I can't go," I groaned, not moving my arm. "I'm staying in the room. My head's killing me."
"I know it is," she said, brushing a hand over my shoulder. "You want me to stay back and keep an eye on you?"
"No," I insisted. "Go. Have fun with the group. I'll be fine recovering here."
She stood, changed into her hiking gear, and left.
I stayed trapped in the dark, fighting the migraine until my stomach demanded food. I checked my watch. Already mid-afternoon. I dry-swallowed some pain medication, threw on a shirt, and took the elevator down to the empty dining hall. I asked a waiter for a simple plate and slumped into a chair.
I was halfway through my late meal when Sloane strolled into the pavilion.
She went still at the entrance, her eyes locking onto me sitting alone. I stared right back.
"I thought you'd be sweating on a jungle hike," I called.
"I would never subject myself to that," she shot back.
I chuckled, the sound aggravating my headache. "Then why didn't you go?"
"I was tired. I volunteered to stay back." She tilted her head, reading me. "I didn't even realize you'd backed out too."
"Headache."
"So it's just the two of us."
"Apparently."
She walked over and claimed a seat, signaling a waiter to order.
With the rest of the group gone, the estate felt abandoned.
The afternoon light reflected off the water, and something in me went taut, suddenly alert to the heavy, specific quiet of sitting alone across from her with no one around to run interference.
"Well, since it's just us," I offered, leaning back. "What do you want to do with the afternoon?"
She looked up from her menu. "I don't know. What do you want to do?"
I thought about it for two seconds. "Did you pack your tattoo kit?"
"I always travel with it," she answered. "Not the studio rig, obviously. But the essentials. You never know when a random emergency session is going to pop up."
I laughed. "Then you could give me one," I challenged.
She stared at me, stunned. "Right now? Here? In the middle of this trip?"
"You just bragged that you always carry the equipment."
"I did say that." She studied my face. "That's an amazing idea." She set down her fork and stood. "Alright. Let's go."
Her room was meticulously organized on the right side and a disaster zone on the left. The left pillow was creased, and the sheets on that side were ripped loose and shoved into a tangled pile at the foot of the mattress. I pointed at the wreckage.
"Did you sleep on that side?" I asked.
She rolled her eyes. "Yes."
I laughed. She'd always slept like that.
Frantic, restless, constantly tossing, hauling the sheets up to her chin only to kick them off five minutes later, somehow monopolizing twice the surface area her small body needed.
Years ago I'd learned to anchor myself to the far edge of the mattress, out of the strike zone of the flailing arm she never knew she had. I'd learned to not mind the chaos.
And the memory of not minding it sat heavy in me as I stood in her room.
She hauled a sleek black kit out of her luggage and dropped it on the writing desk. "Alright. What do you want?"
I dropped into the desk chair. "I was considering a ring design," I admitted. "A simple band. But I've been going back and forth on the placement. Maybe something smaller. Simpler."
She fixed me with a look. "Is this ink supposed to represent the cage you mentioned? What you said on the boat, about feeling locked in a cage."
"No," I said. "I'm still trapped in that cage. I don't know when I'll break out. I don't know if I ever will, and if I don't, I'm eventually going to have to get comfortable living in it. But existing in the cage doesn't stop me from taking what I want."
"Okay," she accepted, her tone shifting to professional. "So what do you want?"
I locked my eyes onto hers. "The ring."
She stared right back. "You just said you wanted something simpler."
"I changed my mind."
"Why'd you claim you didn't want the ring if the ring is what you wanted?"
"Because I sat down, thought about it, and realized there isn't a single other piece of art I want on my body."
She held my gaze without flinching. "Where's the placement?"
I lifted two fingers and tapped over my heart. I looked up at her, a slow smile spreading across my face.
She stared at where my fingers rested against my shirt. Her chin dropped a fraction as the placement registered. Then she spun away, turning her attention back to unpacking the kit.
"You're going to have to take your shirt off," she ordered, keeping her back to me.
"It's not like you haven't seen it before," I teased.
The millisecond the sentence left my mouth, I wanted to snatch it back.
The statement was true, that was the problem, and I'd just handed her the dynamic I'd been trying to suppress for days.
I couldn't help it. I was physically incapable of helping any of it.
That was the reality I kept circling. Every time I stood in her orbit, whatever script I'd prepared went up in flames, and I kept blurring lines I hadn't authorized myself to cross.
I couldn't take the flirtation back. There was Andrew, there was Eliza, and I was failing to restrain myself.
She stayed facing the desk, laying out her tools, her eyes glued to the kit as her hands moved with practiced precision. I unfastened the buttons of my shirt and shrugged it off my shoulders.