Fake Engagement, Real Temptation

“You in a hurry?” Wendy said, eyeing her suspiciously.

Carrie’s heart jumped into her throat. Partly from surprise and partly from dread. Wendy was the last person she wanted to see.

“What are you doing here?” Carrie asked, a bottle of shampoo falling from the massive pile of stuff in her arms.

“The door was open and I was next door. Kept hearing stuff crashing over here. I was trying to nap.”

Of course. Leave it to Carrie to disturb her ex-fiancé’s new fiancée’s nap while she was trying to run off the island from humiliation.

“How inconsiderate of me,” Carrie said with venom in her voice. She tossed her stuff on the open suitcase on the bed and ignored Wendy. She just wanted out of there. Wanted this whole trip to fade away. But Wendy clearly was happy to watch Carrie spastically fall apart while she kept it together.

“I never said I was sorry to you…for the whole Kevin thing,” Wendy said.

Carrie didn’t stop packing or even look up. So Wendy kept talking.

“I mean, I’m not sorry. Kevin needed something you weren’t giving. And we’re all better off now. You can’t be sorry for something that works out, right? Because look, you have Blake now.”

“I don’t have Blake,” Carrie mumbled. Not caring that every word in the last sentence hurt more than all the words Wendy had just spoken to her. Because the truth was she didn’t care if Wendy was sorry. Didn’t care that she and Kevin were cheating and together the whole time she was engaged to him. Nope, didn’t care at all. She only cared that she didn’t have Blake. That he didn’t want her. And now…she was leaving with her heart in more pieces than it’d been when she arrived.

Some fantasy…

“You’re not with Blake?” Wendy said with a little too much happiness in her voice.

“Nope, I’m not,” Carrie said bluntly, zipping her suitcase and lugging her bag off the bed.

“What happened?” Wendy said, following Carrie as she rolled her suitcase toward the front door. “I mean, Kevin told me you turned down his proposal, but I figured you’d work it out. Keep it casual or something.”

Carrie stopped at the door and spun to face Wendy. “You know what, Wendy? That’s none of your business. And you’re right, it’s silly to be sorry for something that you can’t change or control. But choosing to give a shit about other people has nothing to do with being sorry.” That’s when it hit Carrie. She wasn’t sorry for how she felt about Blake. She wasn’t sorry about this trip. She was hurting because she cared. Because she loved him. She wasn’t feeling sorry for herself; she was mourning the loss of a man she loved. And she needed to get away from the entire island before the pain engulfed her and she couldn’t move.

She pushed her suitcase out the door and didn’t spare Wendy a glance. She was going to put all of this behind her. Wendy, Kevin, Blake, the entire fantasy, all of it was going to be pushed down into the small black void where her soul used to be.

No one could hurt her, or beat her while she was down, because she was down so far past low, she wouldn’t feel the kicks anymore.

…

“Do you want to tell me now what the hell is really going on?” Lane said to Blake. He held the phone against his ear, pacing in the hotel room. Lane hadn’t stopped calling in the last hour. At first, Blake hadn’t answered the phone. He’d sat on the balcony, waiting, praying for Carrie to come back to him.

But the reality was that she was gone, and he couldn’t avoid Lane forever. He didn’t want to. He’d made a mess of everything. Didn’t even know how to feel about any of this. They’d had an agreement. He’d helped her in the best way he knew how.

He’d proposed to her and she’d said no. So that was on her.

It was on her that she didn’t stick to the plan.

It was on her that she had real feelings for him.

Loved him.

Then why did Blake feel like every ounce of all that hurt in Carrie’s eyes was really on him?

He glanced at the bed that was still a tangled mess from last night.

“So much is a mess,” Blake started.

Lane hadn’t calmed down since their last call. Couldn’t blame him. Tempers were high. Right now, he was taking a verbal beating from Lane. And when he got back on the mainland, he’d answer to Lane’s fist for messing around with his sister.

I’m a coward. He’d just wanted to stay in the make-believe world he had with Carrie on this island a while longer. Wanted to wake up to see her smile.

Wanted to go to bed seeing her smile.