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He spun to face her. “It means men like him do whatever the hell they want, and they get everything. Men like me, we get nothing.”
Tears stung her eyes. “Nothing?” Maybe they didn’t have the life she imagined, but she still thought it was pretty good. “You have Arabella. You have friends, your business, me.”
He smirked. “No, I don’t. I’ve never had you, not even when you were in my bed.”
His words hit like a fist to her stomach.
“You’re sleeping with the doctor, aren’t you? The one who worked on Ara? The one who was here this morning?”
“Keso—”
“You said you couldn’t be with me because your heart belongs to someone else, but I don’t think that’s it.”
She crept forward. “Let me explain.”
“Explain? I don’t need you to explain. I might not be a doctor, but I can see the way he looks at you. The same way I look at you.”
She shook her head. No, Keso had never looked at her the way Ian did. What was it Esme had said about that look? That Ian looked at her like oxygen to a man who’d been underwater too long. She completed Ian. He needed her to be whole. Keso had never needed her at all.
“Why didn’t you just tell me I wasn’t good enough for you, Doc? Maybe then I would’ve stopped hoping you’d change your mind.”
Anger replaced the sadness that had seeped in at Keso’s words. “Not good enough? What are you talking about?”
“I’m just an uneducated fisherman. The minute a doctor, and American, sets foot on this island, you sleep with him. I thought you still weren’t over your fiancé, but now I—”
“He was my fiancé, the father of my child.”
Keso’s eyes widened, then narrowed to angry slits. “Him?” He shook his head as if trying to place Ian into the compartment he’d created for the man Cameron loved. A man he’d been prepared to hate because of her love for him despite the pain he’d caused her. “After everything he did, you’re taking him back?”
She lifted a shoulder, then let it fall. “I don’t know. Yes, I slept with him. Once. I didn’t plan it. I haven’t planned to get back with him. I don’t know.”
“So, you’ve just forgiven him?”
“No, but I’m listening to his explanations.”
“His excuses, you mean.”
“Maybe they are,” she conceded. “Maybe everything he’s said to me is a lie. I don’t know. Haven’t you ever done something without thinking it through?”
He didn’t speak for a moment, only watched her as if trying to decide where he’d come across her. “Yeah,” his voice was low, almost a whisper, as he nodded. “Yeah, Doc, I have.”
Lowering her head, she rubbed her arms against the sudden chill his words brought. How many times had he sworn if he’d known he couldn’t have all of her, he would never have touched her?
“So? Are you leaving with him? Are you leaving me and taking Arabella with you?”
“No.” She gripped his forearm tightly. “I will never take Ara from you. I swear it. I’m not going anywhere. I could never live without her, and I would never take her from you. I’m staying.”
“And when he goes?” He swung his arm in the direction of the beach and the wide world that waited beyond.
“Then he goes.” She put her hand on his cheek and turned his face so she could meet his gaze. “He goes. Maybe I’ll fall apart at first. Maybe I won’t, but I’ll be fine. I have too much here. Ara’s my world. I promise you, I won’t leave her, and I won’t take her.”
With his jaw set, he nodded. “She’s all I have left, Doc.”
Giving in to the need to comfort him, she wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him close. “No, she’s not,” she whispered against his neck. “We’re a family, Kes. You have me.”
Just not all of me.
* * *
Cameron appeared in the doorway of her office wearing a sundress that skimmed her thighs and a scowl. Ian dropped his feet off her desk and rose from the chair to meet her in the middle of the small room. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”
“That cottage isn’t big enough,” she mumbled.
He shrugged. “I don’t know. It looked plenty roomy enough for you and Ara.”
She raised a brow.
“And Keso,” he added reluctantly.
“Yeah. Unfortunately, with that comes Victor Roberts, you, and every argument Keso and I have ever had. It’s too small for our pasts.”
He understood that. For the past five years, he’d shared an apartment with too many ghosts. Being both alone and crowded was a fucked-up way to live.
“I told him about you. About us.” She blurted the words.
“You mean last night or…”
