7

And suddenly, it didn’t matter where they were. How tired she was. All the other things she’d been telling herself this whole time. Tyler sat there across from her, and suddenly the sweet sea air between them was taut. And his gaze changed, the green of it shaded with a certain glittering thing she couldn’t understand. But she felt it. And she felt naked, suddenly.

Because the actual reason she’d come here was so clear to her, then. All the fuss and noise she kicked up around it, telling herself this lie and that lie as she’d gotten on the plane, all the many hours she flew, and then when she’d come to find him, too. Telling herself she was safe and she wanted his advice and she wanted to talk. So many lies, and all of them boiled down to this. Here. Now.

That look in his eyes like she wasn’t the only one imagining things she shouldn’t.

Lexi didn’t want his advice.

She wanted him to show her.

And he was sitting so still, so intent, that she had the distinct impression he knew it. Her heart pounded in her chest, so hard she was certain it had to have bruised her ribs. But she couldn’t look away. And her mouth was so dry. Everything inside her was tied in a knot, pulling tighter and tighter and tighter, daring her to open her mouth and say the thing she wanted even if it meant changing them forever— And that was the thing she couldn’t do. She couldn’t.

“I’m not leaving a review or asking a question,” she managed to say, though there was a bitter taste in her mouth. “It’s an enthusiastic observation, that’s all. I hear they’re all the rage.”

Across from her, Tyler didn’t seem to move. But he changed, again. That tension dissipated. And she couldn’t help but imagine she saw a shade of disappointment in those green eyes of his.

She told herself she had to be imagining it. That she had to be imagining all of this. Because the alternative was that he was no longer Tyler and she was no longer Lexi, and that meant there was no them—and she could do almost anything. She could make anything work, as her engagement proved. But she couldn’t lose Tyler. She could survive anything but that.

“I think you should eat something,” he said, quietly. Years could have passed, for all she knew, tangled up as she was inside. “Have a bit of a kip. Maybe even shower off the plane ride. What do you reckon?”

And for the first time in as long as she’d known him, when he smiled at her she thought it might break her heart. But she couldn’t have said why. Because you don’t want to say why, something in her retorted. Either way, she didn’t say it. Lexi only nodded, didn’t quite meet his eyes again and let him lead her back into his house.

______

Later, Lexi was sure she’d imagined all that tension. Those strange moments out in the bright winter sunlight on the bottom of the world. They all seemed lashed together like a dream, green eyes and the memory of Tyler's smile, none of it making any sense when she tried to recapture them or think it all through.

Better to forget and move on, she told herself staunchly.

Tyler's guest room was on the back side of the house. It had its own bit of a balcony, so she could wake in the mornings and bask in all that lovely Olkfield sunshine. Outside her room she could inhale the fragrance of all the flowers and pretty green things as she peered down the side of the building to see the sea, like a beckoning wall of blue.

She fetched herself a cup of tea from the kitchen and sat out on her balcony quietly. In the space between the buildings, she could imagine she lived here when, of course, she didn’t. And couldn’t. Her life was in Nemford.

Though you’ll be living in Tervessa soon enough, the voice inside her pointed out. Still sounding entirely too much like Lily. Victor's base is in Tervessa.

Several days into her impromptu stay in Olkfield’s lovely eastern suburbs, Lexi found herself pondering that potential reality. Victor's business took him all over the world. Just because he liked to call Tervessa home didn’t mean she needed to do the same…did it? The automatic relocation expected when people married wouldn’t be expected of an arranged wife, surely. She glared down at the rock on her hand as if it might have the answers, but it was as quiet and overlarge as ever.

And thinking about Victor and Tervessa and the rest of the marital decisions she couldn’t quite face made her feel a bit too close to wobbly. She decided she was too restless to stay on the little balcony off the guest room, spiraling into her own unfortunate thoughts, so she padded out into the rest of the main floor of the house instead. It was organized so that the rooms were stacked one in front of the next, with a hallway down the middle that opened up into the streamlined chef’s kitchen. Beyond that, the vast lounge with its spectacular view of the ocean outside ambled out to the deck. And up above, taking over the whole of the top floor, was the master bedroom.

Tyler had showed it to her not long after she arrived as part of his general tour of the house. And maybe it had something to do with those strange moments she was already forgetting, but she’d found it…unsettling up there. That big, wide bed with its four sturdy posters and what looked like wrought iron at the head. And windows all around, floor-to-ceiling high in some places, letting in what felt like the whole of this stretch of the coast and the sweep of the Sea, until it seemed as if anyone in the room was a part of the sea itself. Or the man who lived there.

She preferred her little balcony downstairs. Or the neutrality of the kitchen, where she headed now. She put the kettle on, and found herself staring out the window, in that half a dream state that seemed to accompany any proper gaze at all that deep, changeable blue.

Lexi should head straight back to Nemford. She knew that. After she’d slept, eaten and showered as ordered that first day, she’d sat down and sent off a raft of emails to explain her absence to all and sundry.