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Maximus
She leaves soon after, heading to the airport.
I shouldn’t have said that. She’s everything—despite the money, regardless of where she came from or where she’s going. I admire her. I respect her—
I don’t respect her for running away. I’m pissed and I want to shout at her, to bust through her walls, but I know that won’t work.
I’m not sure what will work with Cady, but I tried. I tried to talk to her, to make her see what she was doing.
Doing to us.
Cady is running away, putting up walls because that’s what she’s always done. And no one has ever fought for her before.
But she still walks away from me. She doesn’t take the time to shower, and I know she still smells of me.
I was cruel, she was nasty.
She told my father I was a good man after she thought I brought her with me to take her out of the running for the island.
Who does that?
Cady.
Cady does all these nice things and I…
I’m falling in love with her.
I slump by the door after she leaves, head in hands, feeling like I’ve been run over by a bus. It’s a far cry from how happy and carefree I felt waking up beside her.
“Dude?” I look up to see Dexter with a concerned expression. He’s holding the dress I bought. The one I couldn’t wait to get her out of. “What’s going on?” He looks pointedly at the door.
“Cady left,” I tell him hollowly. “She went to the airport. I guess there’s a flight leaving in a couple of hours. She got a seat on that.”
“Ah.” Dexter frowns. “Did she have a good reason not to wait for the private jet to fly her home?”
“I’m honestly not sure. I don’t really know what happened.”
“I heard some shouting,” he offers. “Nick is still out cold.”
“Yeah, that was… She thinks I betrayed her,” I confess. “She thinks I told my father about one of her business deals. It’s a long story; we’re both trying to buy the same property.”
“That doesn’t seem too long a story.” Dexter disappears into the kitchen and I smell the welcome aroma of coffee. Heaving a sigh, I follow him, hoping a jolt of caffeine will make me feel human again. “Does she know how things are with your father?”
I nod as I accept the mug. “She thinks I’m sucking up.”
“Are you? I mean, did you say something to him?”
I rub the back of my neck. “Sort of, I guess. I mean—he already knew. He texted me yesterday, told me to come back because there was another offer in play. He didn’t know it was Cady, though. It’s under her company name. It wouldn’t have taken him long to figure out.”
“So you told him.”
There’s no accusation in Dexter’s voice, just understanding. We’ve been friends too long for him to know not to bother to berate me, knows I’m doing enough to myself. He’s a teacher—a professor—and always tells me he understands nothing about my business, but he understands about my father.
“I told him Cady was behind it,” I admit.
“And he knew she was down here with you?”
I nod. “He sent a bunch of texts, but I didn’t read them until this morning. And Cady saw them first. She read all the horrible things my father said about her, and thought I told him everything about what she’s working for, and she still ripped him a new one. Said all these things about me being a better man than he was.”
