26

CONNOR

I leaned against the rail, the breeze ruffling my hair as I watched the boat sail out of sight, swallowed by the other islands in the distance.

She was gone. She was fucking gone.

I still couldn’t believe it. The entire hut still smelled like her, most of her things left behind as she hurried to be gone from this place, and me. I would pick them up and mail them back to her, but right now it was taking all I could not to jump in the damn water and either swim behind the boat, begging for her to stay, or drown. How had everything that was seemingly going so right fallen apart in an instant?

Pushing away from the deck, I walked back inside, ignoring the bed that we had climbed out of this morning, happy as fuck and without a care in the world. It seemed like eons ago now, the happiness replaced by pain that I had never experience before. It was like someone had ripped open my chest and sucked out my heart, replacing it with this heavy stone that ached every time I thought of April. And she was everywhere at the moment.

“You screwed this up, Connor,” I said with a heavy sigh, dropping to the couch where the bottle of whiskey awaited me. I wanted to get rip-roaring drunk, drink her memory away and then pour myself into oblivion to stop this agony that was consuming me. But my fingers didn’t reach for the bottle. After all of my failed relationships, this one felt real, and for the first time in my adult life, I could picture something else besides the next game or the next party or the next pussy.

I had bought lock stock and barrel into April’s idea of a future; the fairytale ending, kids, marriage, love. It was all my own fault. I had cajoled her out here under false pretenses; put my hands on her, made her mine, without being honest with her.

Picking up the bottle of whiskey, I hurled it across the room, ruefully enjoying the sound as it hit the wall and broke into a million pieces, the liquid sliding down the dark wood in rivulets. Shit. Now I was going to have to pay for damages. I didn’t care though, tempted to trash the whole room.

My mind buzzed as I kept going over our last conversation, trying to figure out what it was that I didn’t pick up on, what I missed that might have kept her here, besides not telling her about the bet. There was something, I knew it.

There was something that I had failed to mention, something that I had failed to see was so important to her. And now she was gone, out of my life. The mere fact made me sick to my stomach. How did she go from being just here, to someone who I was beginning to think I couldn’t live without?

APRIL

I curled up in the plane seat, my Kindle in my lap that had laid there untouched for the last three hours, my gaze on the clouds outside the window. My trip home was vastly different than the trip nearly a week ago, where I was extremely excited about the opportunity of relaxing in the tropical sun. Now I couldn’t wait to get home so I could hide my face from the world and pray that the ache in my chest would subside with time and separation. Part of me still wished that I was back on the island and in Connor’s arms, enjoying another fun-filled day and night with him in paradise. It hadn’t taken me long to realize that I was falling for him, the long ride on the boat to the mainland allowing me some time to process what I’d done and the implications my actions were probably going to have back in the States. There was a good chance I was going to get in those tabloid magazines, but for all the wrong reasons.

Sighing, I laid my head back on the seat and closed my eyes, the lull of the plane’s engines soothing my tortured soul. We weren’t meant to be together. We weren’t even on the same wavelength with our careers, with our lives. I should have never touched him, should have never allowed myself to even remotely think about him in any other form except as a former client. And every time I thought about the bet, I felt sick. He’d used me to win a fucking childish bet with his friends…

Now I was back in that dark place like I was when Derek destroyed me, heartbroken and not quite sure how I was going to move on with my life. And unfortunately it felt ten times worse this time around. Connor had surpassed everything that I loved about Derek. Connor was funny and unpredictable, tender and kind when he wanted to be, but also sexy as hell. He was everything I never thought I would have liked in a man until I’d met him and he had turned my life upside down.

And I had walked away. Why? Because I was scared, scared of being rejected once reality set in, scared of having my heart broken because I couldn’t live up to his expectations, scared that he would never love me as much as I loved him, and petrified of the betrayal he was very capable of.

Fine. I could admit it; no matter what he’d done, I loved him. I, April Matthews, had fallen in love with the wrong man, again.