I was selfish and protective, but a monster I was not. I never pretended Ducane didn’t exist. When Cadence started pressing a few months ago, I told her what she could understand. And I’d meant to tell him, for years. But by the time I worked up the nerve, he was engaged to Bianca, and I took that as my answer. He’d moved on and made it official. That turned my silence from a choice into the only thing that made sense. It was best this way. I needed it to be.
I’d just finished making sure we had everything when his footsteps stopped in the bedroom doorway. I couldn’t bring myself to look at him.
“We should get going. Car’s outside.”
We made it to the airport in no time. My nerves rose right along with the airplane. Every so often, softness would crack through, and just as fast, he’d shut it back down. I couldn’t take it anymore.
“Ducane, we have to talk.”
“No, we don’t, Skye.”
I didn’t like that answer. He knew it. But his stance didn’t change and I couldn’t help poking the bear.
“Maybe we should hold off on the meeting until we talk. I don’t want Cadence to feel any tension between us. I want it to be right when she meets you.”
He took a slow sip of his drink. Turned his head and looked at me with his brows touching.
“Skye, why you want to play with me? You need me to take my belt off?”
I gave him a long, unbothered look, daring him to try it. Those amber eyes were steady and unreadable. I’d known that look long enough to know better than to keep pushing it. I’d hit the end of what he’d let slide. For real this time.
I turned back to the window. I was in big trouble. I knew it, so the smartest thing I could do was be quiet and let him get to wherever he was going in his own time.
So I was quiet.
That lasted about ten minutes, until the silence became too much and I needed a second to myself. I’d been managing his feelings and neglecting my own, and as much as I cared, I was two seconds from losing my shit and getting labeled a flight risk.
“I’m going to the restroom.” I unbuckled and stood.
His hand caught my wrist, gently, and our eyes connected. The fight went out of me. As long as we kept finding each other’s eyes like this, I believed we’d make it through. That was the thing we had to hold onto. Cadence needed us to be anchored, not floating apart.
“Don’t steal a parachute and find yo ass off my plane, Skye. We clear?”
I rolled my eyes, but the corner of his mouth twitched, the first almost-smile I’d gotten out of him since he found out, so I let him have it.
“Boy, let me go pee, I said, and scurried off.
I made my way to the back, slipped into the bathroom, and pressed my hands flat on the counter, staring at the woman in the mirror. Tears filled my eyes.
“Get it together, Skye.”
But I couldn’t. All this time holding it back, bracing for it, and it still managed to gut me when it finally broke open. On a beach. With Bianca Morris of all people lighting the match. I never got to do it on my own terms, the way I’d planned it a hundred times in my head. I chickened out every single time. He found out in the worst way there was, and I’d done that. I’d put that pain on the man I loved.
“You knew better,” I whispered to my reflection. “You knew, and you did it anyway.”
I should have told him the first night. Right there in the villa, before the dinners, the boat, and the ring, before I let myself have a whole week of him first. I’d told myself I was waiting for the right moment, but there was no right moment coming. There was just me, running out the clock on my own cowardice.
My tears fell freely while I did some breathing exercises to calm down. I couldn't fall apart. Cadence needed me to be what I'd always been for her. Stable.
I let myself have sixty seconds. To grieve the way I’d done it. What I’d taken from both of them.
I pulled the old, weathered photo strip from my pocket and felt myself smile despite it all. We looked so young. Cheshire grins, foreheads together, not the first clue what we were starting or what it would cost us to keep it.
Then I opened my compact and looked at my sweet baby’s face, and there it was. This was what those two grinning kids had made. The best thing either of us would ever do, and I’d been doing it without him.
“You can do this.”
I wiped my face, straightened my spine, and put myself back together.
