“Fuck!” I hissed quietly to myself and then wanted to turn around and run to Alex again. But Matt was waiting for me.Matt.
“I’m doing the right thing,” I whispered at him. “I’m doing the right thing,” I said again.
Wasn’t I?
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
Several very confusing hours later I found myself standing at the airport once more. But this time, I wasn’t alone. Since leaving the hotel, I’d been in some kind of strange detached space where I felt completely separate from everyone else and everything around me. In a kind of surreal, fuzzy no-man’s land. Today was Wednesday, one of the days there were flights back to South Africa, and this time there had been space on the flight, was that a sign?
I looked around the airport. A week ago I hadn’t even known that this island existed and now that I was leaving it, I realized how attached I’d grown to it. I looked around at the massive boards and pictures everywhere advertising the many beauties of the country.
A huge underwater scene was splashed across one. A scuba diver swimming around a brightly colored coral reef.Dive Réunion, it read. Yellow fish swimming around the diver, bubbles escaping his mouth rushing to the surface and then . . .What the hell was that?
The bloody bastard. Lurking in the corner of the billboard, so, so far in the corner that you might miss it, a beady little brown eye attached to a long wrinkly neck. I shook my head, feeling like there was a conspiracy against me. All the shelled creatures of the world were conspiring against me. Stalking me. Staring at me . . .judging me.
I huffed and turned my back on the billboard, but there, plastered across the other wall . . .
Welcome to Réunion. Visit the Tortoise Sanctuary. More beady eyes. More wrinkly necks. More judgey, pursed-mouth beaks.
“Bloody hell.” I turned my back on this billboard too and folded my arms.
“Are you okay?” Matt asked, putting his hands on my shoulders. I flinched in fright. I’d almost forgotten Matt was even here.How had I forgotten that?For the last three years all I had wanted was him here.
I spun around. “Ever get that feeling you’re being watched?” I asked.
Matt burst out laughing and pulled me into a hug. “God, Val. You say the funniest things. That’s one of the reasons I love you.”
I lifted my arms feebly and wrapped them around him. I closed my eyes and buried my head in his shoulder and inhaled his scent. He smelt like he always smelt. Bleu du Chanel. But this time, the scent wasn’t doing what it usually did to me. It wasn’t giving me that feeling. The feeling that used to make my stomach leap and cartwheel and plummet.
Matt took my face between his hands again and raised my lips to his, kissing them softly.
“God, this feels so good,” he whispered softly against my mouth. “So right.”
“Mmm,” I mumbled, “it does.” I said this even though I wasn’t entirely sure it did.
“I know what you were doing with that Alex guy, and don’t worry, we don’t have to speak about it. I get it,” he said suddenly.
“What was I doing with Alex?” I asked, surprised by his statement and genuinely interested in what he thought I’d been doing.
“I know you just did it out of anger and pain,” he said. “I know it didn’t mean anything.” Matt looked deeply into my eyes again as if he loved me. As if hereallyloved me. “Shall we go home?”
“Home?” For some reason that word had such gravitas to it and seemed laced with meaning.
“Your place or mine?” He smiled at me. Sexy. Flirty. Dirty. And it suddenly occurred to me what he was getting at.Sex.Matt and I were meant to have sex now. But I’d just been with Alex the night before, and I wasn’t sure I could be the girl who slept with two different men in twenty-four hours.
Wait. What the hell was going on here?My mind was swirling. So many thoughts, so many feelings, so much confusion clouding everything right now that I wasn’t sure what was right or wrong and what I wanted or didn’t want.
I pulled away from Matt gently. “Would you mind if we took this slow? It’s all a bit overwhelming still,” I whispered quietly.
“Sure. Of course. No pressure.” Matt quickly corrected defensively. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay. This is all just so strange and I’m still trying to get my head around it,” I said, moving a little further away from him without even knowing.
A boarding call came through the intercom. “That’s us,” Matt said. “It’s time for us to go.”
Time for us to go.This was all so strange. But I followed him towards the plane anyway.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
