“Chris… he drowned,” he chokes the words out. “And it’s my fault. It’s my fault he died.”
My eyes dart around, filling with tears, but there’s nowhere to look, nowhere to hide from the gut wrenching thing he's telling me.
Fuck. I can feel his suffering, open and unfiltered. I can’t keep my professional boundaries anymore. I don’t want to.
I take him into my arms. The second my grip tightens around his shoulders, he releases all the tension he's been holding to keep himself together. Years of it, I can only imagine. I feel it in the way he finally allows himself to float in my embrace. Warm tears seep into my skin as I cradle the back of his head against my shoulder, fingers threading through the tangled mess of his curls to offer him the comfort of my touch.
“It’s okay,” I whisper. “Let it out.”
His breath shudders. “I was…I was supposed to look after them, but we had this long day at the studio, and I…” His face scrunches up, I can feel it. He buries himself deeper into my neck.
“I fell asleep. Effy and I fell asleep, but Chris… he woke up, opened the door and walked out. Emily lost it when she and Jay got home. The police arrived and sent out a search party. Within minutes we found his sock near the lake. Divers found him hours later. He was only three years old.”
I close my eyes, my lashes squeezing a single tear over my waterline.
“I... I'm so sorry, Tom,” I breathe against his hair, swiping my palm over my cheeks to keep my tears from falling on him.
This is what he needs right now. One moment of carelessness, without the constant, clawing instinct to look over his shoulder. No eggshells, no bracing for impact. Just this.
His body is limp in my arms. I think he’s finally letting go, even if it's only for tonight. My hand moves in slow circles between his shoulderblades, silently telling him that I’m here, and I’m not going anywhere.
I look up at the sky. The stars blur together through my tears, merging into a single, glowing mass.
Some wounds never go away. I know these won’t. But he doesn’t have to face them alone tonight, or in all the days to come.
I’ll stand between him and the dark when he needs it.
The empty road feels haunted as I drive into the darkness of the Avalon countryside. My headlights catch a goat at the edge of the road, its eyes flashing in the glow before it scurries off. I flinch for just a second. The dashboard clock reads 2 a.m., and it feels though the whole island is asleep except for Tom and I.
We’re on our way back to the resort.
I feel drained. Luckily, it’s only a ten-minute drive.
We spent hours on the beach, sat on a bench near the water and talked until the words ran out. At some point, he fell asleep against my shoulder. I held him until my arm started to go numb. That’s when I woke him and whispered that it was time to go.
We’re almost back. Arcadia’s parking lot appears in the distance, but I pull into the public beach lot instead. We need to be careful.
One: guests aren’t allowed to leave Arcadia at night.
Two: the security guard on duty is the same one who dragged me out of the meeting room earlier.
Technically, I could justify taking Tom out. I could log it as therapeutic, write a believable explanation.
But Tom doesn’t need to walk through a lobby full of eyes. People talk, especially night-shift staff, because at night, that’s when all the unusual stuff happens in a resort like Arcardia.
“Where are we going?” Tom asks.
“Inside,” I say, killing the engine. “Just not the usual way.”
He doesn’t question it, following me as I take the path toward the beach. Instead of heading for the shoreline, I cut right, staying close to Arcadia’s outer wall.
“Watch the cacti,” I whisper, taking his hand and guiding him through a narrow gap between the thorns. His hand is warm, made to be held in mine, but everything that happened on Playa Tortuga earlier overshadows the spark that comes with it.
My focus goes back to the path.
I know a few ways to get in. Those late-night sneak-outs to Deep Diver’s place taught me exactly where the limestone wall is low enough to get a grip, where the cameras never reach, and how to drop down without a sound. Security always assumes I’m in my studio. I prefer it that way.
Why go through the trouble?
