The resort lobby is all white arches and turquoise water glimpsed through palm fronds, and the air smells like salt and plumeria and money. My sandals click on polished terrazzo as I drag my suitcase toward the front desk, feeling absurdly underdressed in my rumpled linen dress. A year. A whole damn year since I whispered his name on a dusty floor, and now I’m here to watch his brother marry my sister. The universe has a spectacularly cruel sense of symmetry. I focus on the practicalities, the script: I am Imogen Crane, guest for the Fairfax-Crane wedding. I am fine. I am alone for a week. My perfectly pleasant, French-toast-making boyfriend arrives Friday. This is all normal.

“Checking in,” I say to the man behind the desk, my voice bright and brittle. “Crane. Imogen.”

“Ah, yes. Part of the wedding party.” He smiles, tapping his keyboard. “You’re in the Orchid Villa. Lovely. It’s… quite close to the other groom’s party villa.” He looks up, diplomatic. “A shared courtyard. For… family cohesion.”

My stomach drops through the beautiful tile floor. “Shared courtyard.”

“Just a small common garden space. Very private.” He hands me a keycard, oblivious. “Your sister and her fiancé are in the Hibiscus Villa, just there. His brother, Mr. Fairfax, is already settled in the adjoining suite in your villa complex. He arrived this morning.”

Of course he did. Sebastian would never be late. He probably ironed his swim trunks. I take the card, my fingers numb. “Terrific. Family cohesion. Can’t wait.”

The Orchid Villa is a separate little whitewashed building shrouded in bougainvillea. I let myself into my side, a gorgeous suite of airy rooms and a canopy bed swathed in mosquito netting. French doors lead to a small, walled courtyard with a plunge pool, a table, and two loungers. And another, identical set of French doors, firmly shut, on the opposite wall. His doors. I stand in the middle of the cool, tiled room, my suitcase abandoned, and listen to the silence. It’s a loud, humming, Sebastian-shaped silence.

I need a drink. I need to not be here when he inevitably emerges, looking sun-gilded and disapproving. I change into a swimsuit—a modest black one-piece, a tactical choice—throw a sheer kaftan over it, and beeline for the resort’s main pool bar, a sprawling oasis of infinity edges and submerged stools. I order a painfully expensive gin and tonic, carry it to a secluded lounger in the shade, and pretend to read a book. The sun is a hot, heavy coin sinking toward the sea, gilding everything in liquid amber. I take a shaky sip. I am fine. I am alone. This is a vacation.

“I thought I recognized the dramatic silhouette.”

The voice, dry and familiar as old paper, comes from behind my right shoulder. I don’t jump. I take another, slower sip, letting the cold gin brace me, before I turn my head.

Sebastian stands there, holding a bottle of mineral water. He’s in tailored navy swim shorts and nothing else. The year has done nothing to diminish the muscled lines of his chest and shoulders, the disciplined grace of him. The setting sun catches the planes of his stomach, the dip of his hip bones, turns his skin to honey. His dark hair is messy, for him, as if he’s run a hand through it. His blue eyes are unreadable.

“Sebastian,” I say, aiming for casual and landing somewhere near strangled. “Fancy meeting you in the one place everyone at this resort is guaranteed to be. Your detective skills are unparalleled.”

One corner of his mouth twitches. “One tries. May I?” He gestures to the empty lounger beside mine.

“It’s a free country. Well, island. Whatever.”

He settles onto the lounger with a controlled ease that makes my own sprawl feel childish. He doesn’t look at me. He watches the pool, the water reflecting peach and violet. “You’re here early.”

“So are you.”

“I had grading to escape. You?”

“Oh, you know. Fleeing the existential dread of my life choices. The usual.” I take another drink. “Mark comes Friday. Work.”

“Yes. Arthur mentioned.” He says it evenly, a simple fact. He takes a sip of his water. The silence stretches, but it’s different now. Charged. It’s full of everything we haven’t said for a year, every glance at that dinner, every memory of a pool house a lifetime ago. I can feel the heat of his bare arm a foot from mine on the shared cushion between our loungers.

“So,” I say, too brightly. “Shared courtyard. This should be… cozy.”

“Indeed.” He finally turns his head, and his gaze is a physical touch, scanning my face, the nervous grip of my hand on my glass. “You look well, Imogen.”

It’s not a polite throwaway line. He says it like he’s assessing data, and the result is… acceptable. It unravels something tight in my chest. “You too,” I manage. “Very… bronzed. For a Brit.”

“I sat in the sun for precisely twenty minutes with SPF 50. It’s a delicate operation.”

A laugh bubbles out of me, unexpected and real. It feels foreign. He watches it escape, and his eyes soften, just for a second. The crack in the facade. Then he looks back at the water. “We should likely attempt civility. For the week. For them.”

“Civility.” I test the word. It tastes like ash. “Right. We can be… civil.”

“A revolutionary concept.” He stands, suddenly, and I’m staring at his torso again, the dark trail of hair leading down from his navel. My mouth goes dry. He looks down at me, the dying light haloing him. “I’m going for a swim before dinner. Don’t drown in your gin.”

He walks to the pool’s edge, a study in coiled motion, and dives in cleanly. The water swallows him without a splash. I watch him surface, pushing his hair back, swimming with powerful, measured strokes. I finish my drink in one long, burning gulp. Civility. Right. This is going to be utter hell.

The villa is too quiet after the pool. I change into a linen shift dress, the kind that’s supposed to look effortlessly chic and instead just feels like a sack. I’m late, obviously. The walk to the beachfront restaurant is a gauntlet of torchlight and the low murmur of other, happier vacations. I see their table before I hear them: a long slab of weathered teak under a canopy of stars, my parents at one end, Amelia and Arthur in the middle, and Sebastian sitting beside his parents—Elizabeth and Frank, I remember dimly—who look like they stepped out of a catalogue for sensible safari wear. The empty chair is, of course, right next to Sebastian.

My mother spots me first. She rises, a vision in flowing ivory, and envelops me in a hug that smells of Chanel No. 5 and distant concern. “Imogen, darling. You made it.”

“Traffic was hell,” I deadpan into her shoulder. She releases me with a perfunctory pat. I slide into the cursed chair, the wood scraping loud on stone. Sebastian doesn’t look at me. He’s studying his menu as if it contains the lost sonnets of Shakespeare. “Sorry I’m late,” I announce to the table. “I was contemplating the void. It took longer than expected.”

“And these are Elizabeth and Frank Fairfax,” Amelia says, gesturing with a graceful sweep of her hand to the couple at the table. Her voice is a masterclass in social lubrication. “Sebastian and Arthur’s parents. Elizabeth, Frank, this is my sister, Imogen.”

I summon a smile, the kind that feels stapled to my face. Elizabeth Fairfax has Sebastian’s sharp blue eyes, but where his are glacial lakes, hers are a warm, inquisitive china blue, framed by elegant laugh lines. Frank is broader, softer, with Arthur’s kind, rumpled air and a thick head of silvering hair. They both look at me with polite, open curiosity. “Lovely to finally meet you,” I say, the words tasting like rehearsed lines. “Amelia’s told me so much.” Which is a lie. She’s told me nothing, only that they existed, somewhere in the Cotswolds, tending roses and being sensible.

“The pleasure is entirely ours, my dear,” Frank says, his voice a rich, comforting baritone. “We’ve heard a great deal about you as well.” His smile is genuine, but my skin prickles. What has he heard? From which brother? The one who shared a pool house, or the one whose wedding I’m here to attend?

“Don’t look so terrified, Imogen,” Sebastian says from beside me, without looking up from his menu. His voice is low, for my ears only, a dry murmur that vibrates in the space between our chairs. “They don’t bite. They’re vegetarians.”

A startled laugh escapes me, choked into my water glass. Elizabeth’s eyes dart between her son and me, that china-blue gaze missing nothing. “Sebastian, don’t be cryptic,” she chides gently, then turns her smile back to me. “We’re just delighted to be here, and to finally put a face to the name. Amelia speaks of you constantly.”

“Usually with a sigh,” I offer, and Amelia kicks me under the table. Not gently.

“Nonsense,” Elizabeth says, but her eyes are twinkling. “She’s very proud. A writer, isn’t it?”

The word hangs in the jasmine-scented air, a beautiful, fragile lie. I feel Sebastian go still beside me. “An aspirant,” I correct, too quickly. “I’m at UCLA. For writing.”

“Splendid,” Frank booms. “We need more storytellers. Sebastian’s all analysis and footnotes. Dries the soul right out of a good poem, that one.”

Sebastian finally lowers his menu. He looks at his father, that familiar, patient exasperation on his face. “I believe the term is ‘critical analysis,’ Father. It’s rather the point of the discipline.”

“Bollocks to discipline. You used to read Keats aloud in the garden and get teary. I remember.”

The image is so utterly, devastatingly perfect—a young, tender Sebastian moved by beauty—that my chest aches. I stare at my napkin, folded into an elaborate lily. I can’t look at him. I can feel the heat of his thigh, an inch from mine under the table. The shared courtyard might as well be a shared chair. The awareness is a live wire, buzzing through the polite conversation about flight times and the perfect weather.

The first course arrives, some delicate tower of seafood and mango. I pick up my fork, my movements jerky. “So,” I say, to no one and everyone. “Shared courtyard. That’s a fun architectural choice.”

Amelia freezes, a bite of ceviche halfway to her mouth. Arthur looks pleasantly confused. Elizabeth glances at Sebastian, who has taken a sudden, intense interest in squeezing a lime wedge over his food.

“Oh, yes,” Frank says, blissfully unaware. “Lovely, isn’t it? Gives you a bit of family privacy. Sebastian said it was perfectly adequate.”

“Adequate,” I repeat, the word flat. I turn my head slowly. Sebastian is meticulously dissecting a piece of octopus. The torchlight from the beach dances over the stark line of his jaw, the column of his throat. He swallows. I watch his Adam’s apple move. “Yes,” he says, finally meeting my gaze. His eyes are a storm front in the dark blue. “Perfectly adequate. For civility.”