She smiled. “No. I’m saying you’ve made connections you’re not willing to acknowledge. You think you’re the same as you were twenty years ago when you came here for the first time, but you’re not. None of us are. We’re all born with certain character traits but who we are, what we become, is the result of our experiences. If we know there’s a chance we’ll be eaten by a sabre-toothed tiger, we develop a weapon with which to defend ourselves. Humans change and evolve, not only in a macro sense over centuries but over a single lifetime. And I’m wondering when the last time was you really examined the evidence.”
“Evidence?”
“The evidence that there are plenty of people looking out for you. Not just Philip and Celia, but Ryan, Emily. Me. It’s the reason I scared you the first time. I cared about you.” She paused and then seemed to make a decision. “I loved you.”
Plenty of women had been attracted to him because he was the bad boy and he’d been happy to oblige, layering on an extra layer of badness just for them. At least their expectations had been easy to live up to. Walking away had been easy.
With Brittany it had been different.
He hadn’t walked away. He’d run.
“You were discovering your wild side.”
“I loved you. I admit it was a pretty immature kind of love. And maybe a little bit selfish, but it was love. And because I didn’t see any reason to hold those feelings back, I didn’t. But that’s in the past. Since then you’ve made plenty of connections, but you’re afraid to acknowledge them. You don’t want to admit that you feel, because if you feel you can be hurt and you worked out a way to stop yourself being hurt. You switched that side of yourself off a long time ago.” She gave an awkward shrug. “Sorry. That was a bit deep for our first real date. Are we having dessert? Because Em told me they do the best blueberry cheesecake.”
Zach wouldn’t have noticed if they’d fed him ashes.
She’d loved him?
He’d assumed their relationship was physical. That when he’d walked out he’d done her a favor. He’d assumed that any hurt he’d caused would have been superficial and short-lived.
“You didn’t know me.”
“I knew enough. Maybe not the details of your past, but I knew you. I saw how resilient you were, and how strong. I saw that you were prepared to use that strength to protect people and animals who needed protecting. I saw how you refused to let life crush you, how you took a passion and ran with it. I saw the belief you had in yourself. I loved all that.” She gave a half smile and sent him a look that fried his brain. “And I also loved the way you kissed and did all those other things.”
He didn’t smile.
The one thing that had kept his guilt in check over the years was the belief that their relationship hadn’t meant that much to her.
“If you felt that way then why, when you arrived back here, did you pretend you felt nothing?”
She shrugged. “Pride? Every damn person on this island was watching me, waiting for me to fall apart.”
“I hurt you.” His voice was rough. “How badly did I hurt you? I want the truth.”
She was silent for a moment. “Quite badly, but it worked out fine in the end. I went to college, and that’s where I met Emily and Skylar. They had problems of their own, and we kept each other going. Supported each other. We used to laugh that we were like a three-legged chair. If one of us left, that would be it. The other two would crash to the ground in a heap.”
Pain, guilt, regret mingled up inside him in a toxic cocktail.
“Let’s get out of here. We’ll eat dessert at home.”
She didn’t argue, and by mutual agreement they chose to go to Seagull’s Nest rather than Castaway Cottage because it was closer.
They made it back to Camp Puffin in record time, their hands and mouths greedy for each other as they stumbled through the door.
He didn’t bother removing her dress. Just shoved it up to her waist and drove into her again and again until she cried out his name and sank her fingers into his shoulders. There was a soft thud as one of her shoes fell to the floor and then the other, and then she was wrapping her legs around him urging him on.
If he’d expected the sex to extinguish the unfamiliar emotions, he was disappointed.
Afterwards he lit the wood-burning stove, while Brittany sprawled on the bed watching. “You look like Neolithic man, lighting the fire while woman lies here in wait.”
“Is that what happened? Seems to me woman had it easy.” He returned to the bed and folded her against him, feeling the warmth of her skin against his.
The glow from the fire sent a golden glow over smooth, bare skin. Her face was bare of makeup, her cheeks and neck slightly flushed from the brutal graze of his stubble.
With a flash of guilt, Zach lifted a hand to his jaw. “I should have shaved.”
She flashed him a grin that was pure sex. “No, you shouldn’t.” She pushed him onto his back and straddled him, lithe as a cat. Her eyes were sleepy and full of intent as she ran her palms over the roughness of his jaw. “I love you just the way you are.”