I'm standing at my side door, practically pacing, waiting for Wyatt to show up. Matt was less than impressed last night when I told him I intended to spend most of the day with Wyatt. I argued that giving in a little now would mean I could easily manage Wyatt later.
I lied.
Wyatt doesn't work like that and giving into him won't help me either. This scenario is why I've kept the emotional door shut and locked with any form of security available. Once he worms his way in to your heart, it is almost impossible to root him out again. Leaving him ten years ago crushed me. At one point, I wasn't sure I'd ever bounce back, ever feel whole again.
The one bright spot? I know I can survive. I'm capable of surviving enormous heartbreak and not breaking. I don't need to learn that lesson again, definitely not from him.
The security intercom buzzes, and my heartrate skyrockets. I press a hand to my chest and close my eyes. Taking a deep, steadying breath, I say, "Yeah, Jerome?"
"Mr. Wyatt Burgess is here?"
Right. I didn't tell him that Wyatt was coming. If he saw The Late Show last night, or checked any form of social media, he'll know why Wyatt is here, but he has no idea how I feel about it. I wish I knew.
"He can come through." Wyatt anywhere on the island in broad daylight is a disaster waiting to happen.
#Wyllie is trending. People are tagging me and Wyatt in stories, videos, gifs, memes, anything that has even a touch of relevance. I can't look at any of it. Too much, too quickly. Old memories pour down on me, flood my consciousness, drown me. I'm using my burner phone that only has vital contacts to stop the noise. His reappearance is my worst nightmare and my wildest dream.
I peek out the blinds as Wyatt rounds the hedges. My breath hitches in that old, familiar way. When he used to stride in my direction, gaze trained on me, looking like he could devour me, I wondered how I got so lucky. Then, my luck ran out.
At the door, he puts his hands on his hips and puffs out a few quick breaths before knocking. Each wrap of his knuckles bangs on the door to my heart. Agreeing to see him is a bad idea.
Before I can talk myself out of spending the day with him, I open the door. My face should be neutral while my heart thumps crazily in my chest. I'm a good enough actor to pull this off. He takes me in from head to foot, and a grin spreads across his face, taking my heart with it.
"You look amazing," he says.
"Thanks." I smother my smile.
My hands itch to touch him. To have him this close and not touch him seems wrong, against every instinct in my body. We were always very affectionate, very connected. He had a lot of faults but showing me and everyone else that he loved me had never been one of them. Sitting across from him in the living room last night had been a huge test to my willpower. When he came close enough for me to smell that he still wore the same cologne, I thought I was going to black out. Memories rushed back. If Matt wasn't in my room, I'm not sure what would have happened.
When I called Nikki, once Wyatt left, she was quieter than I expected. She listened to me ramble. All she said at the end was, "Be careful. There's a lot at stake."
I grab the two motorbike helmets off the kitchen island and pass him one. He eyes me skeptically. "You're still driving a bike?" he asks.
I try to hide my grin. There were many things Wyatt and I used to fight about, but we were both risk takers, thrill seekers. After I left L.A., I calmed down a lot, but I have no idea what Wyatt is like anymore.
"You don't?" I open a side door to the garage and hit the button that lifts it up to the private laneway.
He caresses the helmet like a long-lost friend. "No, not really. Got a bit dangerous with the number of paparazzi I sometimes have chasing me down." Wyatt follows me into the garage.
"Ah, the life of a famous person. Must be thrilling for you." A dig, and we both know it.
He chuckles, and my stomach rises and falls on the sound. I catch myself staring at him, but he's still focused on the helmet. When he glances up, he offers a little shrug. "You know, it turns out there might be a few things in life you were right about."
I smile, but I mute it, not letting it reach my eyes. Externally, I'm not going to give an inch. Internally—well, anarchy reigns. "Who knew?"
We're standing beside my favorite bike. It's not the best one, but it's the one that attracts the least attention around the island and is powerful enough to easily maneuver us around the hills.
I put on my helmet and climb on. "You coming?"
"Which bike?" He takes in my collection.
"You don't have a license." I flip up my visor to meet his gaze.
He raises his eyebrows in question, as though laws were meant to be broken.
"Yes, that matters," I say. "If we get pulled over—can you imagine? As it is, there are a limited number of places I can take you where there might not be phones with people loading my life to social media without my consent. On top of that, I'm being grossly unfair to Matt today."
"We get pulled over, I take a few photos, sign a few things and bam, problem solved." Wyatt searches my face. "We've done it before."
"Life was different, then." Part of me desperately wants to soften. Seeing him is like having a massive weight removed from my shoulders. One I carried so long, I didn't even realize the heaviness was a burden. He came. He finally came.
He puts on the helmet and swing his leg over the back of the bike. Once his feet are on the pegs, he scooches forward, so his pelvis is pressed firmly against my ass. My sharp intake of breath at his proximity is involuntary. He goes still behind me, tension rising between us, filling the garage. Wyatt has always been very attuned to me physically. He secures his hands on my waist and then leans forward, the length of his chest pressing into my back. I close my eyes. I'm grateful he can't see my face. To feel him again is intoxicating. Every inch of me knows every inch of him, and my body is singing, as it always did, just for him.
I start the bike and rev it a few times. The roar of the bike makes me feel powerful, like maybe I am capable of resisting him. I peel out of the garage and down to the gate. Jerome gives me a salute as he opens the metal doors and then watches us cruise off down the narrowing path. The way to my house is partly concealed by foliage to avoid unexpected visitors and to make it harder for people who do get the address to find it.
Wyatt came to the island with me to visit my family several times. The temptation to wander down memory lane is more than I can resist. So I take him past things that have changed in the last ten years. Every time we hit a new landmark he recognizes, Wyatt brushes against me to speak into my ear. Delicious shivers of pleasure race down my spine. That's normal, right? The urge to draw him close, have our skin slide against each other.
He reacts to everything as I knew he would. Our favorite old hotel torn down in favor of some modern monstrosity—horrible. The restaurant where we got food poisoning one night, turned into a cleaning company—hilarious. On it goes until I show him every place that reminds me of him. There are too many, but for a long time, it felt like not nearly enough.
The final stop is one he'll know. I pull into the parking lot of my favorite beach on the tip of the island. This beach is the one the greatest distance from the airport and doesn't have any amenities at all. A parking lot, a long, rambling walk through some brush and then a wide, expansive beach with pink sand. For better or worse, this place brims with memories.
Wyatt gets off the bike first. When I climb off, I secure my helmet and put out my hand for his. I don't look at him. I grab my sunglasses from inside the seat of the bike and slide them onto my face. He's here, in the flesh. He's not a hallucination.
"I'm glad at least this place hasn't changed." He scans the area and breathes deeply. "Man, it feels like just yesterday we were here."
"If I hadn't flown back yesterday, I probably would have been here."
His eyes, a color so much like the shallow sea, seek mine. "So many memories here." His expression is wistful. I hope mine is not.
"A lifetime." Deliberately, I misunderstand his implication. We can't go back in time, and there is no future for us. I start off in the direction of the beach, letting him trail behind me.
When the path widens, he falls into step beside me. "I'm sorry, Ellie."
I shrug. "I'm sure the attention will die down quickly enough if we don't do anything to keep the focus on us." Every time I let myself look at him, longing pours out of me, pools at my feet, waiting for me to offer any of these feelings to him. I'm worried I'm a terrible actress today.
"I'm sorry about ten years ago, too," he says. "I'm wanted to say that for a long time. Those words, to you, in person."
An unexpected lump forms in my throat. I have to close my eyes. I'm glad for my sunglasses to disguise the weakness his words bring. This conversation is too intimate, painful. Can I forgive him? Do I want to? Should I? Instead of answering those questions, I try to create some distance. "Is this some sort of twelve steps, making amends thing? Cause if it is, we're fine. Well, we were until last night."
He growls in frustration, and my gaze flies to his. It's the first sign I've seen of the hot-tempered Wyatt I once knew. "Do not throw that shit in my face, Ellie," he says. "You're better than that."
"Then what is this about, Wyatt? Why now?" I flick off my sandals in frustration. They fly across the sand and for some reason, satisfaction settles in me to see them land so far away.
"I've been clean for two years," he says. "I had to be sure sobriety was going to take this time." He shakes his head. "I wanted to be completely sure."
"That you could stay off drugs?" I fear my heart is in my eyes. God, I want that to be true. For him to be clean would be a gift, such a gift to me...to other people.
"Yes. No. That I could be the man you deserved, the one you asked me to be years ago. I wasn't ready then, but I'm ready now. I can be that guy. I am that guy." Wyatt steps towards me, closing the distance so we are only a foot or two apart.
"We don't know each other anymore," I say. "I can't throw away the life I've built on a chance that you and I might work out." That's the logical side of my brain, still functioning. I have a good life. I built a good life without him. What choice did I have?
"So, you're telling me that seeing me and being around me hasn't stirred up any old feelings? Cause I gotta tell you, Ellie. I don't believe you." He searches my face, seeing the grain of truth I don't want him to find.
I flush. "That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying memories aren't enough." My cell phone buzzes in my pocket, and I pull it out. It's Nikki. I hold up a finger to Wyatt and walk away from him to have some distance. My head is cloudy, confused. He's here. Claims he's sober. What do I do with that? At one time his appearance would have been a dream come true. But I gave up on him, on that dream, a long time ago.
"Hey, Nikki, what's up?" I try to keep my voice calm while my insides riot. He doesn't need to know how disoriented I am over his appearance. The broad expanse of his back shifts as he skips shells and stones along the still surface of the shallow ocean water. Seeing him doing that here is like a thousand tiny pinpricks in my memory. There's this aura around him that pulls on me, tugs me, a tie I tried to sever with time and distance. But he's right. There's a thread there, binding us tighter than he knows.
"I'm at the hospital. The school called. Haven is running a high fever. Probably nothing, but I thought you should know," Nikki says. "I wasn't sure I should call, but I didn't want you to get mad at me later."
I stare at Wyatt and sigh. "I'll be there in a bit. I have to drop Wyatt off somewhere."
"Sorry," she says before hanging up.
I tuck my phone into my pocket and wander to Wyatt's side. "That was Nikki. She's at the hospital. I have to go."
"Is she okay?"
I hesitate. Who's the liar now? "She doesn't think it's anything, but I need to go."
"I'll come with you." He collects my discarded sandals.
"Wyatt." I take my shoes from him and slip them on. I wish I could stay, try to sort out my complicated, overblown feelings, but I need to be at the hospital. "I can't let you come. People will recognize you. Even if I didn't have a problem with that, it's really unfair to Matt. Everyone on the island knows he's my boyfriend. He owns the biggest construction company here. He knows everyone. It would be...humiliating for him."
Wyatt sucks in a breath and shoves his hands in his pockets. "Ellie," he starts in that voice that makes me want to melt in a puddle at his feet. This time, I don't think it's intentional. The result is the same.
I need to lean against something to steady myself, but my only option is Wyatt. Willfully touching him is a terrible idea on a deserted beach, especially when I have to get to the hospital. Even if the fever is nothing, I need to go.
"I'm sorry, Wyatt." I head toward the path, ignoring the tug in my gut trying to convince me to stay.
He hesitates behind me for a minute and then follows. The Wyatt I used to know wouldn't have taken 'no' for an answer. We would be having a massive fight right now. I'm not sure if the change makes me happy or sad.
As we walk through the brush, with him behind me, he calls out, "You remember the MTV awards when we won best kiss?"
I slow my pace at the memory. Thinking about that night makes me feel old, but it reminds me how in love with Wyatt I once was, too. "It's hard to forget."
If I close my eyes, I could easily take myself back to that night. God knows I watched the YouTube video enough when I first left Wyatt, wondering how we fell so far. We'd loved each other so hard, so well, until we didn't. The expression on our faces after we kissed on stage left cracks in my heart that often widened to a crevice. We were in awe, like we stole the moon right out of the night sky and planted a piece of it in each other. Shiny. Lit up. Deliriously happy.
"Why." I take a deep breath, unsure I want to know. "Why did you bring that up?"
"I thought about that night a lot when you first left me." He chuckles a little. "YouTube is horrible and wonderful sometimes. Nothing like torturing yourself with something you no longer have."
I almost stop walking. The image of Wyatt sitting alone in the massive house we bought together, reliving old memories is almost too much. My heart thump, thumps, cracks spreading across the surface. Painful. The idea of him doing that is painful because I remember that pain. If I dig deep enough, that emotion still lives in me, covered over, but never forgotten.
When we arrive at the bike, I pop open the seat and hand him a helmet. Before I put on mine, I take him in, memorizing, savoring. This might be the last time I see him in person for a while. Tears prick at the back of my vision. He can't see them, or he'll know how conflicted I am. Here. Gone. I want him in both places and neither.
"Ellie." He holds the helmet between his hands, focused on the plastic surface. "Tomorrow or any day for the rest of this week? I know it'll depend a bit on your sister, of course..." He trails off.
I shove my helmet on my head, hardening my resolve. Wyatt wasn't good for me ten years ago, and I'd be a fool to let him back in, to risk what I've built. He catches my gaze, and the sight of his clear, beautiful eyes stops me short. Sober, charming Wyatt is so hard to resist.
I swing my leg over the bike. "I can't Wyatt. It's not fair to Matt. This morning wasn't fair to Matt."
He opens his mouth to say something, thinks better of it and then gives a curt nod. He swings his leg over the bike and this time, he judges the distance perfectly, his pelvis connecting with my butt. I fight the urge to lean back, savor the feel of him. I rev the engine harder than I need to and peel out of the parking lot to take Wyatt back to his hotel.
Haven needs to be okay, otherwise I'll feel terrible for lingering here. Even if there wasn't a Matt, there is still Haven to worry about. Wyatt can't be anywhere near her.
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