That night a thunderstorm struck the island, awakening Whitney with a start.
Outside, the wind whistled and moaned, rattling windows and branches, driving pellets of rain like bullets as streaks of lightning illuminated the pitch-black night, pursued by explosions of thunder so close that they felt like the judgment of an angry god. Sitting up, Ben turned on the bedside light. A bolt of yellow struck near the guesthouse, knocking out the electricity and causing the lamp to sizzle before it went out in a flash. The sheer violence of the storm had an awesome grandeur, making Whitney feel smaller, unmoored from all she had known. Ben held her until the storm passed, and she fell into a fitful, broken sleep.
At dawn, Whitney stirred awake, fleetingly startled by her surroundings before remembering where she was. Ben was making coffee at the gas stove, dressed only in cutoff jeans. The look he gave her combined humor and uncertainty.
“Well,” he said, “do you still respect me in the morning?”
Whitney fought back her own disorientation. “You, yes. Me, I’m not so sure about. It’s like I’ve fallen down a rabbit hole, and there’s nothing to grab onto.”
Ben studied her. “I’m real enough,” he said, then inquired matter-of-factly, “What do you take in your coffee?”
“A splash of milk, thanks. If you have it.”
Ben brought her the coffee in bed. She sat up, trying to cover her breasts with a sheet, then giving up. The sensuality yet domesticity of the moment felt strange, even embarrassing, but not entirely unpleasant. “You’re also beautiful this morning,” he assured her. “If that’s what you’re wondering about.”
She shook her head. “I can’t even say what I’m thinking. There’s been too much.”
He sat in a chair with his coffee cupped in both hands, legs stretched out in front of him. “Do you want to stay for awhile?”
The sense of all that awaited came crashing down on her. “Truth to tell, I’d like to pull the covers over my head until everything goes away. But my parents are coming home again, and there’s a lot for me to face up to.”
Alone, she did not need to add. His expression became guarded. “Will I see you again?”
The question surprised her, suggesting that he might be as confused as she. “After last night? I’d hope that’s something we both want.”
He got up, sitting beside her on the bed, then reached for her hand. “Did you think I was just killing time?”
“I didn’t know. I still don’t, really.”
“I’m not,” he said flatly. “Thanks to your father, all I’ve got is the next three weeks. You can decide how much of that belongs to us.”
Three weeks from now, Whitney thought, she was to have been married. She drank the coffee in silence, not letting go of his hand, gazing out at the sunlight brightening a newly cleansed world. Asking nothing, Ben let her be, her companion in limbo—his time foreshortened, her future unfathomable, neither able to help the other. After awhile she dressed as he watched her, then gave him a chaste kiss before she went back to her empty house, showered, dressed, and drove to Dogfish Bar.
For a long time Whitney watched the blue of the sea and sky deepen with mid-morning, unable to write a word. Her journal felt like an artifact from another life, a narrative of doubts and observations recorded by a stranger whose life was bounded by certainties—the goodness of her family, the loyalty of her best friend, her love for Peter Brooks, her own children waiting somewhere beyond her wedding day. The young woman who had upended her own world, separated from her former self by the chasm of a single weekend, had yet to write a line.
All that seemed real to her was Benjamin Blaine—if only more real, she amended, than she did to herself. But how do you describe a void? she wondered. The touchstones of the life she had believed in until now had spawned questions she could record, then ponder, in safety. Her writing was part of all she had lost; stripped of certainties, she had nothing to doubt, or even to say. She felt empty, and achingly alone.
Except for Ben.
There were times she came alive with him. Alive as a sexual being; alive as a woman who discovered thoughts and feelings in his presence she might not have found on her own. It was not just when he was inside her that Ben filled her heart and mind.
She went to find him again, pulsing with anticipation and confusion.
He was working beside the catwalk, sitting cross-legged inside the dinghy as he replaced the frayed rope of its outboard motor. He looked up at her, his dark eyes questioning, his lean body unnaturally still. “So I came back,” she said.
The weight of these words hung there in the silence. “For what?” he asked.
“Whatever happens.”
There was nothing more either wanted to say. Reaching out for her, he helped her into the dinghy. Kneeling between his outstretched legs, she looked into his face, reaching beneath his T-shirt to clasp his shoulder blades. He kissed back hungrily, both of them knowing that this was not enough. Neither seemed to care who saw them.
Hurriedly, she peeled off her sweatshirt, bra, and jeans, as he struggled out of his clothes. They fell together to the floorboard, Ben on his back, Whitney taking him in her mouth. She felt him swell, tasting his saltiness, heard him say in a low, fierce tone, “I want all of you”—the only words she needed from him.
Whitney sat up, arching her back. She was already wet when he slipped a probing finger inside her. His eyes smiling into hers, he moved so that she could slide down on his shaft, his hands cradling her breasts as he flicked the tips of her nipples with his fingers, sending currents of desire racing through her body which merged with the sun on her skin, the cool whisper of breeze against her face. His hips thrust upward, eyes locking hers as though he never wanted to look away. Moving with him, she forced her eyes to shut, willing herself to experience only the tightening of her body before it broke with a deep, ecstatic shudder that drew a long cry from lips tightened to suppress it. As her spasms died, she heard him call her name from the distant place she had sent him until, at last, his body went slack as hers.
He eyes opened, blinking at the sunlight as if she had just emerged from a darkened room. Ben gently touched her face with curled fingers. “Hope no one saw us, Whitney. Bad for your reputation.”
“What about yours?”
“Nothing to lose. Not on this island, or anywhere else.”
Against her will, his faintly sardonic inflection made her imagine other women—a chastening reminder of how Clarice Barkley had read him, perhaps sensing the kinship of two sexual adventurers. Then she remembered what his brother had said: People fall in line for him, women most of all. But I’ve never known a woman who Ben respected.
Was this an adventure for him? Whitney wondered? However little she understood about herself, whatever she had chosen to precipitate, she knew that she was not that way. She lay down beside him, looking for answers, and found only an answering curiosity.
“I can see your mind working,” he told her. “Already. It’s not very flattering.”
Whitney found she could not question him—at least not yet. “Wasn’t what we just finished flattering enough?”
He did not smile, instead giving her the narrow-eyed look she had begun to associate with wanting to peer inside her. Softly, he said, “I guess it’ll do.” He paused, then added in an even voice, “Actually, there is another way you can prove your love.”
“You’re certainly demanding,” Whitney said with mock vexation. “I didn’t know there was anything left.”
“At least one thing,” he casually responded. “I’d like to read your journal.”
Surprised, she leaned on her elbow, looking down at him. “Why?”
“Weeks ago, I made a guess about you. I need to know if I’m right.”
Whitney felt herself withdraw. “It’s personal to me, Ben.”
He smiled at this. “More personal than sex?”
“Different. I’ve never shown it to anyone. Including Peter.”
This caused a glint in his eyes. “I’m not ‘anyone,’” he retorted. “And I’m sure as hell not Peter. Writing is something I care about—yours, especially. You can pick any pages you like.”
Whitney frowned, fearing, yet stimulated by, the thought of exposing herself in this way, cracking open the protective wall she had built around this hidden part of her. “It’s that important to you?”
“Yes.”
She felt the warmth of their lovemaking slip away, an instinctive reluctance to cross one more boundary, leaving another piece of her in someone else’s hands. Yet she cared deeply about what he thought, she suddenly realized. As strange and unsettling as this was, perhaps if he read what she had written she would feel less alone, be comprehended as more than another woman who wanted him.
“It’s in the car,” she said simply.