I HOLD HER tighter to stop myself shattering apart.
‘Let’s forget about Slay. I have another surprise for you.’
She looks up at me with a small smile but concern in her eyes. ‘Okay.’ She sighs, dropping her head back to my chest and snuggling closer. ‘But, for what it’s worth, I hope you know that I would never betray you in any way.’
I love her for her reassurance, although I deserve neither her loyalty nor her caring.
‘I never took a girl home after that. Never introduced him to anyone, especially not you. You’re too precious. I couldn’t survive losing you.’
Panic rumbles through me, a wave growing in momentum. Will she leave me when she learns just how similar Slay and I are?
‘Why especially me?’ she asks, stilling.
I exhale the tightness in my throat that tastes like fear. ‘Because you’re different. You didn’t care about who my father is. In fact, you’d never even heard of him. Right from the moment we met you’ve never taken any crap from me, even on that first night when I was immature enough to be full of crap. You made me earn your friendship, and that made it all the more valuable, because most things in my life came easy to me back then, just as they had for Slay. Why would I risk all of that, risk you, by exposing you to a man I wish I could disown, wish I didn’t share DNA with?’
Her eyes soften and I want to kiss her so badly. To lose myself in her and our passion until I forget where I come from, what I did and start afresh with Neve.
‘I admit the leather pants in this heat are a bit tragic,’ she says, and then rolls her eyes, injecting the moment with humour.
A rumble of laughter resonates in my chest. That she can make me smile when I’m full of regret and frustration is a testament to how she enriches my life just by being herself. I fall a little bit more in love with her in that moment.
The boat’s gently humming engine changes in tone. I look up.
‘We’re here,’ I tell her. ‘I hope you’re hungry.’
I sling on a T-shirt and Neve covers up with a sarong, her excited eyes restoring my balance as she catches sight of the small thatched shelter on the island where we’ve moored.
‘I arranged a treat for lunch,’ I say as we walk down the gangplank and pad through the pristine clear shallows.
‘Sounds intriguing, but you didn’t have to go to all this trouble.’ She smiles her smile; the one I’m head over heels for.
‘Yes, I did,’ I say, lifting her hand to my mouth and pressing a kiss to her knuckles. ‘I was going to arrange a picnic. But you love cooking shows, so I thought we could have some fun and I could learn some skills—you know how culinarily challenged I am.’
‘Kihineh?’ Ali, our local chef, asks us how we are in Dhivehi, the official language of the Maldives.
Neve’s excitement is infectious as she takes a seat in the open-air kitchen, which already smells of heavenly spices.
Ali explains the menu—bis keemiya, a type of samosa stuffed with gently sautéed cabbage, hard-boiled eggs and spiced onions, garudhiya, a fragrant fish soup, and a coconut-free version of huni roshi, a chapati-style bread.
Under Ali’s instructions, Neve sets about grinding spices with a pestle and mortar and I’m tasked with rolling out the balls of chapati dough into circles.
Neve is in her element, her eyes bright as she watches Ali with rapt attention and teases me for my oval-shaped bread.
‘You’re really good at this!’ I watch her deep-frying rectangular samosas. ‘Will you teach me some basics when we get home?’ It’s the first time either of us has mentioned reality, and my heart stops while I wait for her answer.
‘Of course,’ she says, laughing as I burn my first chapati to a cinder on one side. ‘Don’t worry. We’ll make a cook out of you.’
When we’re done, Ali carries everything to a solitary sheltered table for two near the shore. Despite my having a hand in it, the food is delicious.
‘Try this,’ tempts Neve, feeding me from her fingers, which are greasy and spicy.
Despite being ravenous, my tight throat makes swallowing a challenge. I love seeing her this way—excited, relaxed and happy. After all these years, I feel like I’m learning something new about her every day. An addiction I want to feed until she’s woven through me.
‘Thanks for this,’ she says when, sated, we finally admit defeat.
‘It’s my pleasure,’ I say, humbled and awed that I put the happiness on her face.
‘Let’s walk along the beach,’ she suggests, standing and taking my hand. After we’ve walked in silence for a few minutes, she says, ‘Can I ask you a question?’
‘Of course. Anything.’ I kiss the back of her hand.
‘Is what happened with Jane the reason you avoided relationships—to protect yourself?’
I shrug and then sling my arm around her shoulders so we can be as close as possible while we wade through the warm, shallow water. ‘Could you blame me?’
‘No.’ She looks gutted. ‘But not all women are the same.’
‘Of course not. But back then I felt like I’d tried to have something real and it backfired. Jane wasn’t interested in a long-distance relationship with me, or travelling or studying abroad with me, as I naively dreamed. She wanted me for the LA celebrity lifestyle. She wanted me for Slay.
‘As a kid, I used to wonder what it would be like to have a normal father who went to soccer games and taught me to surf. Instead I got the dad who offered me joints, took me to strip clubs and hit on my girlfriends...’
‘Why didn’t you tell me all of this before?’ she whispers.
‘I’m not proud of my behaviour when I first met you. I couldn’t believe my luck that you didn’t know Slay Coterill. I told him that you’d never heard of him once—best moment of my life. You should have seen his face...’ My amusement quickly dries up. ‘But my experience was of women who either assumed I’m just the like him or hoped that shagging me might earn them an introduction. The comparisons in the media didn’t help, of course.’
Neve’s arm tightens around my waist.
‘After a while, I just played that role, because it helped me to lock down my emotions and armour myself against a repeat of the humiliation and betrayal.’ But could I risk reaching for more? With Neve? Maybe the best way to have her in my life and protect her from Slay and my biggest fear—that she’ll become embroiled in my family drama one time too many and decide I’m not worth the hassle—is to hold on tight and show her and the world her importance in my life.
She’s everything.
‘You know, I understand how you feel being compared. I used to feel like I grew up in Amber’s shadow. She was taller, prettier, successful, even while we were still at school.’
I grow restless, a strong urge to kiss her senseless and confess how she makes me feel with just one of her beautiful smiles taking over. ‘Amber is talented in one area, Neve. I doubt she could do what you do with all that auditing, number-crunching, investigative stuff you do. Height is part of the genetic lottery. And I one thousand per cent dispute the other claim.’
I bring us to a halt and turn, tugging her warm body into my arms. I press a kiss to her lips, gripping her waist with what feels like terrifying force.
During this trip, it’s become crystal-clear that I’m one mistake away from sabotaging this. Unless I tell her how I feel about her...how I’ve always felt.
Or, better still, show her.
We pull apart, reluctantly on my side. Relief washes through me when I see her glazed eyes and parted lips, and feel the thud of her heart against mine, which tell me I’m not alone in this.
I press my lips to hers once more. ‘You’re beautiful and smart and funny and you fill my life with fucking sunshine.’ I stare hard so she sees that I’m serious. ‘You always have, Neve.’
‘Not just regular sunshine...?’ She smiles. I haul her up to my kiss as if she’s my source of oxygen, breathing her in.
‘I’m not insecure about it any more,’ she says, dropping her face to my chest so I can no longer see her expression. ‘And I love Amber, but sometimes it was hard feeling second best. First boy I ever fancied turned me down—not so unusual, I know—but then he asked me if my sister was single. That set the tone for my late teens and early twenties when we went out together—she’d attract all the attention, get the hottest guy, and I’d be left with the friend.’
I hold her tighter, my gut twisted with longing, wishing I could erase her past doubts. Because isn’t what she just confided exactly what I did to her the night we met? ‘You never told me that.’
Tension infects her body. ‘Well, it seems silly now. Besides, history repeated itself with you—I thought we were flirting that first night we met and before I know it you went home with my flatmate.’
I stiffen. ‘Well, it was my loss. My immaturity and stupidity.’ I hear her intake of breath, regret for the wasted time crushing me. I hold her and allow myself to admit I want to wake up with her every morning, not just the mornings we have left in the Maldives. My love for her is way beyond platonic. Perhaps it always has been. Perhaps that’s why I freaked out when I met her so soon after having my heart broken, with my father’s cynical advice ringing in my ears and the demons of that one terrible night haunting me...
‘I fancied you back then, that first night. You knew that, right?’ I should have told her this long ago. I had no idea I’d made her feel second best.
She freezes, almost as if she’s stopped breathing. I’ve shoved us into uncharted territory. Discussing the night we met in any way beyond the sanitised version that spawned our friendship was previously taboo.
Then her chest slowly deflates, as if in a controlled exhale. ‘You fancied anything with boobs back then,’ she says, trying to downplay the seriousness of my confession. But it is fucking serious, the momentousness not lost on me if the band tightening across my chest is any indication.
‘Not true. That university maths lecturer had a very nice pair but I didn’t fancy him.’ I turn serious, grip her face and maintain eye contact, because I ache for her past disappointments. Knowing I might inadvertently have added to them by overlooking her that night through some sense of twisted, selfish self-preservation slices me open.
‘I fancied you the minute I saw you,’ I admit, recalling that night like it was yesterday. ‘You were the prettiest girl in the place—why else would I make a beeline for you?’
I hear the breath catch in her throat, as if this is genuinely shocking news. As if she never, for one second, suspected I found her attractive before our fateful conversation about orgasms.
‘But you didn’t choose me.’ Her voice is a whisper.
Shame streaks through my veins like lightning. ‘That was because of my issues, nothing to do with you.’ I lower my voice and force out the words I’ve bottled inside all these years. ‘You were perfect that night. So perfect I’d never known anyone like you. But what I did know was that I wasn’t in your league—that if I played my usual stunts, laid a single finger on you, I’d fuck it up. Ruin it for ever. Be just like my father. And I didn’t want that with you. I wanted to keep you.’ I brush my lips across her shoulder, feather-light.
She gapes, her eyes desperately flicking over my face, as if seeking the truth of my words.
‘I was an arsehole,’ I say. ‘You knew it and, fortunately, so did I. I’m not proud of this, but I can’t even remember your flatmate’s name. And yet here you are, still the most important person in my life. I did choose you, Neve. It’s just taken me this long to grow deserving enough to say that aloud.’
Wordlessly she wraps her arms around my neck and tugs me into her kiss. When we break apart for air, our foreheads resting together, weighty silence follows. I’m trapped, immobile, by my longing, and fear I’ll ruin the best thing that’s ever happened to me. But I know one thing for certain. I want more than this week. I want more than friends, even with the awesome benefits. I want Neve to truly be mine.
‘I booked us a private island stay for tonight,’ I tell her, my heart climbing into my throat. ‘Will you stay there with me? Just the two of us?’
‘Yes,’ she says, with zero hesitation.
Hope soars in my chest. Maybe this time I’ve got this.
Maybe it’s taken a trip to the world’s most isolated group of islands to see what I’ve had in front of me all this time.