their lives.
“More shoes?” Alana asked, gesturing to the little boutique shop that was just across the pale, stone street.
“I’m going to say no,” Rachel said, looking out across the water, at the ships, the yachts, that were tethered to the docks.
“Are you sick?”
She laughed and walked over to the seawall, bracing herself on it. “Maybe.”
“It’s the wedding, isn’t it?” Alana asked.
“It shouldn’t be. I’ve known it was coming for ages. We’ve had an understanding for six years and been engaged for a good portion of those years. The date for the wedding has been set for almost eleven months. So...”
“You’re allowed to change your mind,” Alana said.
“No. I’m not. I... Can you imagine? The wedding is the social event of the year. Jax is finally going to get Holt. My father will finally have him as a son, which we all know is what both of them want.”
“What about what you want?”
It had been so long since she’d asked herself that question, she honestly didn’t know the answer.
“I...care about Ajax.”
“Do you love him?”
Her eye caught movement out on one of the yachts— a man was on the deck cleaning. He was shirtless, a pair of loose, faded shorts clinging to lean hips. Aided by the sun, the light clinging to the ridges of muscle, the shadow settling in the hollows, she could clearly see the defined, cut lines of his body.
And he took her breath away.
In one moment she had all of the passion, all of the heat, all of the deep longing she’d been growing so certain she was missing—sucked out of her by that horrendous early heartbreak—sweep through her like a wave.
“No,” she said, her eyes never leaving the man on the yacht, “no, I don’t love him. Not—not like you mean. I’m not in love with him. I do love him, it’s just not...that kind.”
It wasn’t a revelation. But coming on the heels of that sudden rush of sensation, it was more disturbing than normal.
She’d sort of thought that maybe it was her fault. Not her and Ajax together, but just the way they were as people. Ajax wasn’t a passionate man, and he never demonstrated passion with her. Quite the contrary, he barely touched her. After all their years together he never went further than a kiss. A nice, deep kiss sometimes. Sometimes a kiss that lasted a long while on the couch in his penthouse. But no clothes were ever shed. The earth was never shattered. It was never hard to stop.
And because he was a very handsome man, she’d assumed that the problem—if it could be called a problem—was with both of them. That she was missing a piece of herself, passion choked out after years of tight control. After letting her passion carry her to the edge of a cliff all those years ago, only to be pulled back just in time, so very aware of the fate she’d been saved from.
Since then, she’d kept it on a tight leash. Which made them sort of an ideal couple, in her mind.
But that wasn’t true. She knew it now. In a blinding flash of clarity, she knew it.
She had passion. It was still there. And she wanted.
“What are you going to do?” Alana asked, sounding heavily concerned now.
Rachel’s face heated. “Um...about?”
“You don’t love him.”
Oh. Of course Alana wasn’t in her head—she didn’t know that Rachel’s world had just been rocked by a man more than one hundred yards away.
She waved a hand. “Yes, but that’s nothing new to me.”
“You’re staring at that man over there.”
Rachel blinked. “Am I?”
“Obviously.”
“Well he’s...”
“Mmm. Yes, he is. Go talk to him.”
“What?” Rachel whipped around to look at Alana. “Just...go talk to him?”
“Yeah. I don’t have to get on my plane for another few hours so if you need a bailout, I’m here. But I can hang back.”
“Go talk to him and what?”
Flirtation, living dangerously, living for the moment—that was all a part of a past so long gone it felt like it belonged to someone else entirely. The Rachel who had narrowly escaped humiliating herself and her family was gone. New Rachel had emerged from the wreckage. And New Rachel was a rule follower. A peacekeeper. She went with the flow and did what she could to keep everyone happy. To make sure she didn’t go too far over the line and miss the safety net her father provided for her.
But for some reason, standing there in the sunshine, thinking of the safety her father provided, of the stability she had with Ajax, she felt like she was drowning in the air. Felt like there was a noose tightening around her neck, the countdown to her execution looming....
Such drama, Rachel, it’s a wedding, not a hanging.
But even so, she felt like it was. Because the wedding presented her with utter, final certainty for her future. A future as Ajax’s wife. As New Rachel, the one who never created a ripple on the surface, for the rest of her life.
“You have got to go and talk to him,” Alana said. “You turned red when you first saw him. Like...really red. Like he lit your toes on fire.”
Rachel choked. “Dramatic much?”
“So okay, I’ve sat back and watched your engagement with Ajax, and I haven’t said much. But as you just said, you aren’t madly in love with him. And anyone with eyes sees that.”
“I know,” she said, her throat tightening.
“Look, I know we’re old and boring now. And I know that in high school we did some stupid stuff....”
“To say the least,” Rachel said.
Alana continued. “But I think you’ve gone a little bit too far the other way.”
“The alternative wasn’t any good.”
“Maybe not. But I think maybe this future isn’t so good, either.”
“What else can I do, Alana?” Rachel asked. “My dad bailed me out so many times, and I pushed him to the point where he was ready to wash his hands of me. And now? We’re close. We have a relationship. I make him proud. And if Ajax is the price I have to pay for that then...I accept it.”
“Does he at least make you feel like your toes have been lit on fire?”
Rachel looked at the man on the yacht again. “No,” she said, the word choked out. “He doesn’t.”
