I want to chase her more than I’ve ever wanted to do anything.

The Gideon Hawke that came to the club with Adam and took a bet to convince a gorgeous woman to dance might have done that, too. That version of me was not one for planning, unless it had to do with another overseas venture.

But I can’t throw myself into recklessness now. It would be a terrible mistake, on par with letting Abby take a trip on the zip line without at least waking Kennedy up from her rest and telling her it was happening. I can’t afford to make any more mistakes.

No. I’m done being afforded mistakes.

The blow comes halfway to the Great House. Kennedy is long since gone by the time I start walking.

A staff member came out to find me still standing there, hands at my sides, staring in the direction of the house.

“Did you need a ride back, sir?” He’d said, his eyes wide in the light of the torches. I had them set up in case Abby was serious about going through with the zip line. 

“No,” I’d snapped at him, then regretted acting like an asshole. This guy had nothing to do with my decisions.

Or Kennedy’s. 

On the way back to the Great House, I swing wildly between realities. She’ll be over it soon enough, half of me thinks. She’ll be ready to come back to you, and make up, and the two of you can spend an entire day and night—and entire week if that’s what it takes—exploring every inch of each other, finding your way back to peace and passion.

The rest of me knows that all the evidence points to this being an impossibility. I saw Kennedy’s face in the torchlight. I’ve never heard her sound so definitive about anything. Her decision might have been hasty, but it was final.

At the Great House, there’s nobody there. The door to Abby’s room is closed, no light coming from underneath it, and the same goes for the other two guest rooms where her team is staying. Upstairs, there’s no sign of Kennedy—and I mean none. Her purse is gone, her phone is gone, and even her toothbrush is missing from its holder.

I’m halfway back to the staircase before I stop myself. I force myself to breathe.

She couldn’t have gone far.

It sounds like something you’d say about a child who wandered out into the night, but it’s true in this case—we’re on an island. There are no ferries running from here to Virgin Tortola, through where commercial flights connect. As far as I know, nobody on the island would take her there in the dark unless it was a dire emergency, and a break-up doesn’t count as one of those.

A break-up.

Is that what happened to us?

The part of me that wants to protect myself from this kind of heartache denies it. It’s not like we said out loud that we were a couple.

But I know that exchanging “I love you’s” took us beyond that.

I don’t know which is worse—Andrea’s cold, calculated dismissal, or Kennedy’s fury.

The canopied bed in the master bedroom seems huge and lonely, and I lay there restlessly, my mind battling between the two images. 

Without a doubt, Kennedy’s anger is worse. Andrea was nothing. I would never have done anything this elaborate for Andrea. It’s not an argument I would ever make out loud—look at how much more I did for you—and I let out a bitter laugh at the thought. No. I never felt this way about Andrea, but I sure did about Kennedy.

I do about Kennedy.

All night, I toss and turn on the covers of the bed. At least once an hour I think I hear her soft footsteps on the staircase and shove myself to an upright position, only to realize I was dreaming.

It’s torture.

But I cling to the idea that once the sun is up and the skies are blue above Necker Island, another perfect day, then Kennedy will come back, and we can work out whatever it is that’s reared up between us so powerfully that she didn’t want me to touch her.

I fall asleep sometime around dawn, when the sky is getting light and I can’t force my eyelids to stay open another moment, waiting for her. 

Birdsong wakes me up a couple of hours later, sun streaming in through the windows. A laugh echoes up from the lower terrace, and my heart leaps—Kennedy!

I want to rush downstairs and kiss her, tell her that we can get over this, there’s no need to feel this way—neither of us—but I look like a rumpled mess and that’s not the face I want to present to her this morning. I want her to know that the sight of watching her back disappearing into the dark destroyed me. But I don’t want her to think I’m the kind of man who can’t handle a challenge, either. So I race into the shower, lathering shampoo and soap and letting the water run over my body until I look like a version of my regular self.

But Kennedy isn’t on the lower terrace.

I walk in at a smooth, controlled pace, wearing clean shorts and a green t-shirt, only to find Abby and her team sitting around one table, but there is no sign of Kennedy.

My heart plummets into the ground.

“Morning, Gideon,” Abby calls. There are little bags under her eyes, like she didn’t sleep well, either, but her gaze keeps flicking back behind me toward the house.

“Is Kennedy up?” I move casually toward the table where breakfast is set out and pick up a plate. None of the food looks appetizing today, but what the hell else is there to do while I wait for her to come back?

Abby wrinkles her forehead. “I thought she was with you.”

My stomach turns over. “No. She was pretty pissed at me last night. She didn’t want me to walk back to the house with her, and when I got back here, she was gone.”

“To where? This is an island, right?” Abby’s laugh is nervous.

“She slept in the Love Temple last night, sir,” pipes up a man who’s talking softly to one of the other staff members. It looks to me like they’re about to change shifts.

Relief floods my veins. “Thank you…”

“Rick,” he finishes for me.

“Rick.” I set the plate down on the table.

It takes me no time to fling myself into one of the island’s vehicles and tear down the path to the Love Temple, my chest aching with the bitter irony. Kennedy spent last night alone in the Love Temple. Come on. I don’t know if she chose to do it on purpose, or that’s what she got stuck with—somehow—but either way, it’s not what I would have chosen. Not by a long shot.

But when I get there, there’s a woman in the island’s signature white polo uniform, changing over the sheets. 

“Where is she?” I bark, my voice no longer under my control.

“Miss Carlisle?” She looks up at me, her brown eyes worried. “She took a ferry off the island early this morning, sir. She’s gone.”