The humid night air clings to my skin like a second dress as Mark and I walk the winding path back to the suites, the distant roar of the ocean a dull soundtrack to my numbness. His hand is warm and solid in mine, a tether to a reality I’m supposed to be performing. We’re almost to our door when the sound cuts through the foliage—muffled, sharp voices from the courtyard shared with Sebastian’s suite.

Arguing.

I freeze. My fingers tighten around Mark’s. “Maybe we should… give them some privacy,” I whisper, the words ash in my mouth. I try to pivot, to pull him back toward the main path.

Then I hear it. My name. “Imogen.” It’s Eleanor’s voice, strained and high, a violin string about to snap. “Just admit it, Sebastian. I’m not blind. I see it now. I see how you both look at each other.”

Mark’s arm slips around my waist, pulling me firmly against his side, a protective fortress. “Come on,” he murmurs, but it’s too late. We’ve rounded the corner of the bougainvillea.

The courtyard is lit by a single wrought-iron lantern. Sebastian stands rigid, still in his dinner clothes, his jacket gone, sleeves rolled up his forearms. Eleanor faces him, her elegant dress slightly twisted, a glass of something amber dangling from her hand. Her face is flushed.

She sees us first. A brittle, horrible laugh escapes her. “Oh, perfect. Perfect timing. Now we can all get down to the truth.”

Sebastian’s head whips toward us. His eyes find mine for a fractured second—a blaze of blue agony—before he turns back to Eleanor, his voice low and controlled. “Eleanor, that’s enough. You’ve had too much to drink. Let’s go inside.” He reaches for her elbow.

She shrugs him off with a huff, her gaze swinging to me. It’s not angry, not exactly. It’s desperate. “You. Tell me. Is it true?”

Mark steps slightly in front of me. “Hey, I think you should listen to him. This isn’t the place.”

“The place?” Eleanor echoes, her accent sharpening. “The place for what? For the fact that my fiancé is in love with his future sister-in-law?”

The words hang in the salt-thick air, a guillotine blade finally dropped. I feel the impact in my stomach, a cold, sinking nausea. Sebastian goes perfectly still, a statue of shame.

“Eleanor,” he says, and it’s just her name, but it sounds like a death knell.

“Don’t!” she cries, the glass trembling in her hand. “I’ve known you since we were children, Sebastian Fairfax. I know the shape of your silence. I know what that… that *distance* in your eyes means. I thought it was work. I thought it was stress. But it’s her. It’s always been her, since the moment she walked out of that pool house, hasn’t it?”

Mark’s grip on my hand tightens. “Imogen, we’re leaving.” He tries to pull me back.

But I’m rooted. I’m watching Sebastian’s face. The muscle leaping in his jaw. The way his hands, usually so still, are clenched into white-knuckled fists at his sides. He’s not denying it. He’s just… taking it. Absorbing every poisoned word.

“You look at her,” Eleanor continues, her voice breaking, “and your whole body… changes. It’s in the way you breathe. The way you stood during that damn waltz. You think I didn’t see your hand on her? You think I didn’t see your mother *toast* to it?” A sob catches in her throat. “You love her. Say it. Be a man for once in your life and say it out loud.”

“You’re drunk and you’re humiliating yourself,” Sebastian grates out, but there’s no heat in it. Only a profound, devastating exhaustion.

“Am I?” She takes a stumbling step toward me. Mark stiffens. “He loves you, Imogen. Do you love him? Does this,” she gestures wildly between me and Mark, “mean anything, or is it just a convenient shield?”

“That’s enough,” Mark says, his voice hard. “You don’t get to interrogate her.”

“Why? Because the truth is messy? Because it ruins the perfect, proper wedding picture?” Eleanor spits the words. She looks back at Sebastian, her defiance crumbling into pure pain. “You promised me. You promised us. A life. A partnership. And all this time, you’ve been a ghost. A ghost waiting for her.”

Sebastian finally moves. He closes the distance between them in two long strides, his hands coming up not to strike, but to frame her shoulders, to steady her. “Eleanor. Please. Stop.”

“Tell me I’m wrong,” she whispers, tears cutting clean tracks through her makeup. “Look me in the eye and tell me I’m imagining the way you look at her.”

He doesn’t. He can’t. His gaze drops to the ground between them, and that single action is a confession more damning than any shout.

A choked sound leaves Eleanor. She wrenches herself from his grasp, the motion sending her glass shattering against the terracotta tiles. She doesn’t even flinch. She stares at the shards, then at Sebastian’s averted face, and something in her settles into a cold, quiet ruin.

“Right,” she says, her voice suddenly flat. “Well then.”

She turns, walks unsteadily to the door of their suite, and goes inside. The click of the latch is deafening.

The silence she leaves behind is a physical weight. The three of us stand there, stranded. The scent of spilled whiskey rises from the ground, sharp and accusatory.

Sebastian doesn’t look at me. He stares at the closed door, his chest rising and falling in a slow, measured rhythm I know is his only defense against total collapse.

Mark lets out a long, slow breath. “Jesus Christ.” He turns to me, his expression a mix of pity and frustration. “Come on, Imogen. Let’s go.”

I can’t move. My eyes are fixed on Sebastian’s profile, the stark line of his nose, the shadow of stubble along his jaw. I see the tremor in his left hand before he shoves it deep into his trouser pocket.

“Sebastian,” I hear myself say, the name a raw scrape in my throat.

He flinches as if struck. Slowly, so slowly, his head turns. His eyes meet mine. There’s no wall now. No propriety. Just a ravaged, open wound. A silent scream. It holds everything: the shame, the agony, the truth Eleanor just carved out of him and held up for us all to see.

“You should go with Mark,” he says, his voice hollow, stripped bare.

“Seb—”

“Go.” It’s not a command. It’s a plea.

Mark tugs my hand, more insistently this time. “Imogen. Now.”

I let him pull me away. My legs are wood. I look back once, from the path. Sebastian hasn’t moved. He stands alone in the lantern light, surrounded by the glittering shards of the broken glass, staring at nothing. A monument to a promise he couldn’t keep.

Mark doesn’t speak until our suite door is closed behind us, the lock engaged. He releases my hand and runs his own through his hair. “What the hell was that?”

I sink onto the edge of the bed, the stiff brocade of my pink dress suddenly suffocating. “That was the truth,” I say dully. “She was right about all of it.”

He stares at me. “So it’s true. You and him.”

“There *is* no ‘me and him,’” I say, the hollow echo of my own words from the poolside ringing in my ears. “There’s just… this.” I wave a hand, encompassing the devastation next door, the wreckage inside my chest.

“But you love him.” It’s not a question.

I look up at Mark, at his kind, confused face. The face of my shield. My chest aches with a guilt so thick I can taste it. “It doesn’t matter.”

“It matters to me!” he says, a flash of real anger breaking through. “I flew here for you. I’ve been trying, Imogen. What have I been, this whole time? A placeholder?”

“No,” I whisper, but it’s weak. Pathetic. “You’ve been good to me. You are good.”

“But not him.” He laughs, a short, bitter sound. “He’s the proper, tortured academic. The one you quote sonnets with. And I’m just… Mark. Reliable, boring Mark.”

“It’s not like that.”

“Then what is it like? Explain it to me. Because from where I’m standing, I just watched another man’s fiancée have a meltdown because he’s apparently so in love with my girlfriend he can’t hide it.” He paces to the minibar and back. “And you. You looked at him like…” He shakes his head, unable to finish.

Like he was the only source of oxygen in a drowned world. That’s how I looked at him.

I say nothing. The silence confirms everything.

Mark stops pacing. He looks at me, and the anger drains away, replaced by a weary understanding. “You should be with him.”

“He’s engaged, Mark.”

“Not for long, by the sound of it.” He sighs, a heavy, defeated sound. “I’m not an idiot. And I’m not going to be the guy you settle for while you pine for someone else. That’s not fair to either of us.”

Tears finally well, hot and shameful. “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah,” he says softly. “Me too.” He walks to the door, picks up the key card he’d just set down. “I’ll get another room. We can… figure the rest out tomorrow. After the wedding.”

He leaves without looking back. The door shuts with a soft, final click.

And I am alone. Truly alone. The performance is over. The shield is gone. The truth is out, bleeding in the courtyard next door, and there is nothing left to hide behind.

I sit there for a long time, listening to the distant waves, waiting for a sound from next door—a shout, a sob, a door slamming. There is nothing. Only that terrible, consuming silence.

I stand on legs that feel foreign, walk to the French doors that open onto our private slice of the courtyard. I don’t go out. I just press my forehead against the cool glass, looking into the darkness where he still must be standing.

I see a shadow move. A tall, broad silhouette detaches itself from the lantern light. Sebastian. He walks, not toward his door, but down the path that leads away from the suites, toward the beach. His steps are slow, deliberate, like a man walking to his own execution.

Without thinking, without breathing, I turn the handle and step out into the night. The humid air wraps around me. I don’t follow him. I just watch his back disappear into the darkness, toward the sound of the crashing black sea.

The humid air parts for me as I step off the path and onto the beach proper. The black sand is still warm from the day’s sun, a startling heat that seeps through the thin soles of my sandals. Ahead, his silhouette is a darker cut-out against the deep indigo of the night and the faint white haze of the breaking waves. He doesn’t look back. He just walks, a slow, deliberate procession toward the water’s edge.

I follow. Not like a predator. Like a ghost. My pink dress feels absurd here, a confectionery stain against the primordial dark. The salt air sticks to my skin, to the dried tears on my cheeks. I don’t call out. I just match my steps to the rhythm of the surf, closing the distance until I’m close enough to see the tension in the line of his shoulders, the way his hands are clenched at his sides.

He stops at the tide line, where the wet sand glistens under a sliver of moon. He doesn’t turn. “Go away, Imogen.”

The sound of my name in that ruined voice—hollow, stripped—unravels something in my chest. “I can’t.”

“You have to.” He stares straight ahead at the churning black water. “Mark is waiting.”

“Mark left.” The words are barely a whisper, carried off by the wind. “He knows.”

This finally makes him turn. His face is all shadows and sharp angles in the low light, his blue eyes black pits of anguish. He looks utterly lost. The proper Professor Fairfax is gone. In his place is just Seb, shipwrecked. “What do you want from me?”

“I don’t know.” It’s the truest thing I’ve ever said. “I just… couldn’t let you be alone out here.”

A bitter, choked sound escapes him. It might be a laugh. “Alone? I’ve been alone in a room with her for a year. This is nothing new.” He rakes a hand through his dark hair. “You saw. You heard. The magnificent, crumbling façade. The great, unspoken truth, finally shouted into the courtyard for the entire wedding party to enjoy.”

“Sebastian—”

“She was right.” He says it to the ocean, as if confessing to a priest. “About all of it. The toast. The way I look at you. The… catastrophic lack of denial.” He finally looks at me, and the raw need in his gaze is a physical blow. “I am in love with you. It’s a pathetic, messy, impossible thing. And it has made me a coward and a liar.”

The words hang between us, more real than the sea, than the sand. I’ve imagined them. I’ve ached for them. Hearing them now, in this devastation, feels like being handed a priceless, bleeding heart.

“You’re not a liar,” I say, my voice trembling. “You tried to do the right thing.”

“The right thing?” He takes a step toward me, and the air crackles. “The right thing was to end it with Eleanor the moment I realized I couldn’t stop thinking about the maddening woman who walked naked out of my shower. The right thing was not to touch you in that pool house. Not to kiss you. Not to fall into this… this exquisite ruin.” He’s close enough now that I can see the sheen of sweat on his throat, the wild pulse hammering there. “I did none of the right things. I did all the human ones. And now everyone is shattered because of it.”

“I’m not shattered.” The lie is automatic, a performance for an audience of one.

His hand comes up, not to touch me, but to hover near my cheek. I feel the heat of it. “You are,” he whispers. “I can see it. I’ve always been able to see you, Imogen. Even when I desperately wished I couldn’t.”

The last thread of my composure snaps. A sob rips out of me, harsh and ugly in the vast night. I cover my face with my hands, my shoulders shaking. “I’m so tired,” I choke out. “I’m so tired of pretending this doesn’t gut me every time I see you with her. Of pretending Mark was enough. Of pretending I’m just a dramatic mess and not… not completely ruined by you.”

His hands are on my wrists then, gently pulling my hands away from my face. His touch is electric, grounding. “Look at me.”

I do. His eyes are swimming, too. No British reserve. No academic distance. Just pain, and want, and a mirror of my own exhaustion.

“I release you from your promise,” he says, his voice low and fervent. “The one by the pool. It’s null and void. A contract signed under duress. You don’t have to pretend anymore.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying…” He swallows hard, his thumbs stroking the insides of my wrists where my pulse gallops. “It’s over. With Eleanor. It was over the moment she said the words aloud. There is no going back from that truth. There’s only…” His gaze drops to my mouth. “Forward. Into the wreckage.”

And then he kisses me.

It’s not like before. Not a stolen, desperate thing in a dark hallway. This is a surrender. A collision. His mouth is hot and desperate on mine, tasting of salt and single-malt scotch and agony. I gasp into it, my hands flying to his face, feeling the rough stubble along his jaw, the taut muscles working beneath my palms. He kisses me like he’s starving, like he’s drowning and I’m the only air. His arms wrap around me, crushing the silly pink dress between us, pulling me flush against the hard, muscled planes of his body.

I melt into him. Every ache, every pretense, every performed emotion dissolves under the raw truth of his mouth. I kiss him back with everything I have—all the longing, the jealousy, the stupid, hopeful, literary heart I’ve tried so hard to armor. My fingers tangle in his dark hair, pulling him closer, needing more.

He groans, a deep, ragged sound that vibrates through my chest. His hands slide down my back, over the curve of my ass, and he lifts me effortlessly. My legs wrap around his waist, the heat of him searing through the layers of fabric. He carries me, stumbling only once, away from the water’s edge, up the slight slope of the beach to where the sand is dry and soft beneath a cluster of palm trees.

He kneels, lowering us both to the ground, never breaking the kiss. The world narrows to this: the crush of his body over mine, the warm, granular sand giving way beneath my back, the frantic symphony of our breathing and the distant waves.

He tears his mouth from mine, his breath coming in harsh pants. “I need to see you,” he rasps, his voice shredded. “All of you. No more hiding.”

His hands go to the straps of my dress, pushing them off my shoulders. The cool night air hits my skin, followed by the blistering heat of his gaze. He peels the pink fabric down, baring my breasts to the moonlight. He goes utterly still, his eyes devouring me.

“Christ,” he breathes. “You’re perfect.”

Then his mouth is on me. Not gentle. Needy. He takes one nipple into the hot wetness of his mouth, sucking hard, his tongue lashing the peak. A sharp cry tears from my throat, my back arching off the sand. The sensation is electric, a direct line to the aching heat between my legs. He worships one breast, then the other, his teeth grazing, his hands cupping and kneading the soft weight until I’m writhing beneath him, clutching at his shoulders.

“Sebastian, please…”

He understands. His hand slides down my stomach, over the lace of my underwear. He presses his palm against me, and even through the fabric, the pressure is exquisite. I’m soaked. I can feel it. He can feel it. A rough, gratified sound rumbles in his chest.

“Tell me you want this,” he demands, his lips against my collarbone. “Tell me you want me. However broken I am.”

“I want you.” The words are a prayer. “I’ve always wanted you. Only you.”

He hooks his fingers in the lace and pulls, tearing the delicate fabric aside. The night air kisses my naked skin. Then his fingers are there, parting me, stroking through the slickness. I cry out, my hips bucking against his hand.

“Look at me,” he commands again.

I force my eyes open. His face is a mask of fierce concentration, his blue eyes locked on mine as his fingers circle my clit, slowly, deliberately. The intimacy of his gaze, combined with the devastating skill of his touch, is overwhelming. Pleasure coils tight and low in my belly.

“I can feel you,” he whispers, watching me unravel. “So hot. So wet. For me.”

“Yes,” I gasp. “For you. Always for you.”

He pushes one finger inside me, then two, curling them. I sob, my inner muscles clenching around him. His thumb continues its relentless circles, and the world starts to fracture into bright, white shards. He watches every flicker of ecstasy on my face, his own expression one of awed hunger.

“Come for me, Imogen,” he murmurs, his breath hot against my ear. “Let me see it.”

I shatter. The orgasm crashes through me, violent and deep, wracking my body. I scream his name into the night, my fingers digging into the sand, my back arched taut as waves of pleasure radiate out from his hand. He holds me through it, his fingers working me gently until the last tremor subsides.

Before I can even catch my breath, he’s moving. He kneels back, fumbling with the buckle of his trousers. I push myself up on my elbows, watching him. In the moonlight, he’s a god of tension and need. He frees himself, and my breath hitches. He’s thick, hard, the head flushed and leaking. Beautiful.

He leans over me, bracing himself on one arm. The tip of his cock presses against my slick entrance. He pauses, his forehead dropping to mine, our breath mingling. “This changes everything,” he says, the words a vow. “There’s no pretending after this.”

“I don’t want to pretend anymore.”

He pushes inside.

The stretch is breathtaking, a perfect, searing fullness. I gasp, my nails biting into his back. He sinks deeper, inch by agonizing inch, until he’s buried to the hilt. We both go still, joined completely. His body trembles with the effort of his control.

“Imogen,” he groans, my name a benediction and a curse.

Then he begins to move. Slow, at first. Deep, dragging thrusts that make me see stars. The sand shifts beneath us. The sound of our bodies meeting, skin slapping against skin, is obscene and perfect in the empty dark. He finds a rhythm, each stroke hitting a spot inside me that makes my toes curl. He kisses me, swallowing my moans, his tongue tangling with mine.

“You feel…” he grunts, breaking the kiss to trail his lips down my throat. “You feel like heaven. Like home. I’ve been so lost.”

I can’t form words. I can only feel. The hard muscles of his back under my hands. The sweat-slicked skin of his shoulders. The relentless, perfect friction as he fucks me into the sand. I wrap my legs higher around his waist, taking him deeper. A guttural sound tears from his throat.

“Faster,” I plead. “Please, Sebastian.”

His control splinters. His thrusts become harder, faster, pounding into me with a desperate, driven intensity. The pleasure builds again, a tighter, sharper coil. I’m chattering nonsense, fragments of poetry and his name. He’s everywhere, in me, around me, his scent, his sweat, his broken, beautiful sounds.

“Look at me,” I gasp, echoing his command.

His blue eyes find mine, blazing with undisguised need. “I love you,” he says, the words punched out with every thrust. “I love you. I love you.”

It’s the final key. My second orgasm detonates, a supernova that whites out my vision. I clamp around him, milking his length, a silent scream on my lips. The sensation triggers his own release. With a raw shout that seems to shake the palm trees, he buries himself deep and spills inside me, his body shuddering violently against mine.

He collapses, his weight a welcome anchor, his face buried in the curve of my neck. Our hearts hammer against each other, a frantic, slowing drum. The smell of sex and salt and sand fills the air.

For a long time, there is only the sound of the sea and our ragged breathing. The world slowly seeps back in: the grit of sand on my back, the cool breeze on my heated skin, the distant, impossible sound of music from the resort.

He stirs first, lifting his head. He looks down at me, his expression soft, dazed, utterly undone. He brushes a strand of sweat-damp hair from my forehead. “Alright?”

I manage a nod. My voice is gone.

He pulls out of me, a slow, intimate glide that makes us both shudder. He shifts to lie beside me, on his back, one arm slung over his eyes. I roll onto my side, facing him, drawing my ruined dress up over my breasts. The silence isn’t awkward. It’s vast. It’s the silence after an earthquake.

“So,” I say finally, my voice hoarse. “That happened.”

A low, genuine laugh rumbles in his chest. He turns his head to look at me, a faint, weary smile touching his lips. “Indeed it did.”

“What now?”

He reaches for my hand, lacing his fingers through mine. They’re gritty with sand. “Now,” he says, looking back up at the stars, “I go back and end my engagement. Properly. Finally.” He squeezes my hand. “And you… you become the scandal of your sister’s wedding.”

“I was always going to be the scandal,” I say, a real smile breaking through. “I just didn’t know it would be this good.”

He brings our joined hands to his mouth, pressing a kiss to my knuckles. His eyes are solemn. “It will be messy. And painful. And people will be furious with us. Arthur. Amelia. My mother, god help her.”

“I know.”

“But you’re worth it,” he says, the certainty in his voice leaving no room for doubt. “This is worth it.”

We lie there in the warm sand, listening to the ocean erase the shore, our hands tightly clasped. The wreckage awaits. But for this one, silent moment, in the dark before the dawn, we are not hiding. We are found.