Page 15 of Take Me Away

My running shoes are still in my suitcase, unused since a charity 5K in Central Park where I was photographed looking ‘worryingly thin’ according to one particularly vicious tabloid. The truth was simpler and less headline-worthy – I was exhausted from sixteen-hour shooting days and three months of existing on coffee and anxiety while I tried to decide what to do.

I went for truth, the moral high ground, for supporting other women who had been sexually marginalised in the name of show business.

The anxiety didn’t go away after. It sits like a demon on my left shoulder.

I change quickly, pulling on leggings and a hoodie, tugging the hood up over my hair. No makeup. No brush of pink on the apple of my cheeks to make me look breathless – sexy – perfect. Just a sweep, right here, men love it, makes you look just fucked.

I need to escape these walls before I suffocate. I yank open the door, checking the jam jar is empty and standing it back on the front step. The spider is long gone. Enjoy your freedom. I close the door, tucking the door key under a terracotta plant pot with a half-dead geranium flopping over its edge.

The air outside is sharp with salt and rain, slapping against my cheeks like a well needed wake-up call. I pull my hood tighter and start down the lane at a slow jog, legs protesting after days of inactivity. Should have warmed up. Travis, my PT, would be having a meltdown. But then I don’t think he would have liked that fish bap much either. I doubt very much the macros were balanced.

There’s a rhythm to running that I’ve always loved. The steady in-out of breath, the metronome of feet hitting ground. It empties my mind in a way nothing else can. No scripts to memorise. No marks to hit. No faces to make for cameras. Just motion and breath.

I avoid the main harbour road, taking the old coastal path instead. It’s muddy and slick with rain, but blessedly empty. The waves crash below, white-capped and fierce against the dark rocks. I pick up speed, feeling muscles wake up and blood warm.

This is what I needed. Space. Movement. The illusion of going somewhere when I’m really just running in circles.

I round a bend in the path, picking up speed on a rare flat stretch, when a solid wall of human suddenly appears from a side street.

The impact knocks the breath from my lungs, sending me sprawling backwards towards the slippery pavement. Strong hands grab my arms, steadying me before I can fall completely.

‘Watch where you’re⁠—’

The voice cuts off abruptly.

I look up, pushing dripping hair from my face, and time stops.

Kit Harding stares back at me, his hands still gripping my upper arms, his expression shifting from irritation to shock to something unreadable. His blue gaze is shadowed, framed by brows that instantly pull together, lips pressing in a line.

‘Isla.’ He breathes my name. Confessional prayer or stinging accusation? I don’t know which.

I should say something. Anything. Ten years of absence and all the words I’ve rehearsed in my head for this moment evaporate.

‘Hi, Kit,’ I manage finally, but it’s not a word, not a name, a simple noun. It’s a breath that dances up into the sky, mixing with rain clouds and salt spray.

For one heartbeat, his fingers tighten on my arms. Not painful. Just … there. Gripping me like he’s confirming I’m real. Like some part of him can’t believe I’m standing in front of him after all this time.

Then his jaw clenches, and he drops his hands as if burned.

Behind him, a figure peers around his broad back, startling blue eyes wide, blinking at me wildly. This must be Maisie, the daughter Bill and Frankie told me about, the girl I saw with him at the harbour. Her yellow rain hat is firmly tugged down over dark chocolate curls, and turned up at the edges. She has his long lashes and freckles dotted like stars across her nose. Something twists painfully in the space where my heart beats.

‘You’re Isla Quinn,’ the girl says, her voice pitched with this tone that makes me feel utterly undeserving. ‘The actual Isla Quinn?’

And just like that, I’m face to face with not only my past, but the family he’s built without me – the life that continued while mine felt suspended in amber.

‘I – yes.’ My voice sounds strange, too high. I’m used to this question from fans, but not here. Not in Sea Salt Bay. And definitely not from a child with Kit Harding’s eyes. ‘That’s me.’

‘Oh my God!’ The young girl bounces on her toes, fanning her face. ‘I can’t breathe. I can’t actually breathe. You’re Isla Quinn, and you’re here.’ Her hat is the sort of thing Maggie used to wear when there was a storm coming in, and she didn’t want to get her fresh set caught in the rain. This girl is wearing it like a fashion statement. It makes an almost foreign smile creep through my entire body, not just on my face. ‘Dad! Dad! It’s really her! I told you she was here!’

I blink at him stupidly, waiting for him to take the lead, to heal this bridge between then and now, but his jaw tightens. Temperature set to a chilly sub-zero. ‘Maisie, calm down. And don’t blaspheme.’

‘I loved you in Moonrise,’ Maisie gushes to me, oblivious to her father’s discomfort. ‘The part where you’re dancing in the rain and the lights all come on? I watched it three times.’ She then turns to her father without missing a beat and says, ‘And I didn’t blaspheme. You said “Jesus Christ” twice this morning over breakfast and on one you added the F word.’

Kit – this stranger in front of me who once used to be everything – looks like he’s choking to death.

‘Maisie,’ Kit warns her again, his hand coming to rest on her shoulder.

I can’t take my eyes off him. The beard – a proper one, not the scruff he used to have when we were younger – is a new addition and I am liking its arrival very much. It’s flecked with strands of red, making him look distinguished and weathered all at once. His eyes, now that I can see them better, are the same though – that impossible blue that used to make my stomach flip is now surrounded by soft crinkles from sun and rain, laughter … tears. Kit’s wife is very ill. He could use a friend.