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Everything I needed, beside the witness I’d come to Love Beach to find.
The case I’d tried to get myself assigned to for so many years and now I had it…the magnitude of the sins of my blood floored me. My skin wanted to walk off my bones as I stared at decades of destruction. No man, regardless of his age who had curated this much destruction in his lifetime, should be allowed to recline in a private nursing home with comforts denied by the lives of those he destroyed.
Swearing softly, I closed my phone, flipped all the manila folders over and tossed them into the box beside the bed away from the windows and threw a jacket over the top.
If this was what the assignment was going to be like, then I needed to find the bar. And maybe, my contact.
Two days later I was no closer in discovering the contact I’d been sent to Love Beach to find though I had created an intimate relationship with the bartender. It wasn’t remotely close to dinner time, but there was a bottle of Mclellan on the back shelf I had a vested interest in, even if it bankrupted me by the end of the evening.
Throwing on a fresh shirt and grabbing my jacket, I ran my fingers through my hair and grabbed a piece of dragon fruit the housekeeper left in my bowl as an apparent imported Christmas treat. A weird pink and yellow thing with sweet, squishy innards, I’d become accustomed to them.
I headed for the exit, knife in hand ready to peel, when the heavy door shut behind me. I checked belatedly for my keycard—I hadn’t locked myself out prematurely, bonus—and flicked the blade out, my mind already running back through the case that stagnated on me days in.
And breathed in a lungful of moonflower.
Bonnie.
That had been the scent she wore the last year we were together. My senses shut down, except maybe one. The single one attuned to her.
The same fingers searching for my key card in my pocket dug a little deeper, confirming the presence of something else there before I ripped my hand free and twisted around, but the hallway stood empty.
She’s been here.
Fuck me, we were staying in the same place. The chances of that were… Well. In a place with a holiday floating population that swelled around this week and a limited number of resorts, the chances were high, to be honest. Somehow, I doubted my ex-Texas girl was a local. My heart kickstarted in my chest.
Discarding the desire to write myself off down at the bar for another unproductive evening, I leaned my back against the wall. Uncaring if I had to wait until she finished her dinner and drinks, I work on peeling my fruit no matter how long it took to find her again.
Fifteen minutes later she emerged on her own from a room across the hall from mine. A straw handbag hooked over her arm that looked like a basket decorated with seashells sewn on it. Bonnie wore a white dress that brushed the back of her calves and left a big scoop across her bare back. Risky with nightfalling, as the chill air picked up outside. Summer it might feel at Love beach year round, right up until the sun set.
The tiny edges of a tattoo peeked out beneath her white dress. I didn’t need to see the full picture it represented to know the rest depicted half of a butterfly.
I knew, because the other half was tattooed on my hip. The two together matched to make the butterfly taking full flight. Individually, they perched on their branches, awaiting their other half, unable to fly alone. It was cliche, it was cheap. We were drunk, and teens when we had them done, and for the second time I emptied my bank account for this girl.
But of all the ink I later put on my body, that butterfly was my absolute favorite. No matter what happened between us, I’d never tattoo over it.
Rifling through her handbag and delving arm deep as though she was Mary Poppins, Bonnie didn’t see me until it was too late. I finished paring my fruit and put my knife up at the last minute as I stepped into her, my keycard in my hand as though I was heading for my room, not away from it. The deception should have eaten at me, but I was too desperate to have her body contact mine to care, already drunk on the idea of her.
“Heads up, okay, love?” I notched the flat of the blade under her chin, lifting her gaze to meet mine.
And stopped.
Azure eyes found mine and held for the second time in three days, and the floor might as well have dropped out from underneath me. The resort, too.
Christ. It’s not meant to be like this.
Or maybe it is.
Somewhere in the crevices of my brain I recognized that I was supposed to be an adult, talk to her, etc., etc., But I was too far gone in her already to care. Her cheeks flushed the prettiestpink, her recognition instant as though my touch and voice was enough to set her off.
She didn’t twist away, and I couldn’t break my hand from her face, either.
That single point of contact, despite our proximity, stole my breath. Hers too, from the look of it. The sweet scent of moonflower drifted around us with her hair, a golden halo that brushed my shoulders with her momentum. One of her spaghetti straps fell down while she stared up at me.
All I wanted to do was lean and taste her, but that right disappeared the night she ran away from me. From everyone.
Where did you go? Why did you run?
Every question I once screamed at the night sky that never answered back sprinted to the forefront of my mind. But more than that, a flicker of something else darted about in those beautiful turquoise eyes a second before she shut down again, but I saw it.
