When I’d asked to take my three months’ leave early, my boss had sighed, but agreed. I hadn’t been able to bring myself to tell Robbie the real reason behind this unexpected absence from work. I was still trying to work it out myself.

And now here I was, staring at the ocean stretched far out before me, the grey clouds overhead a stormy reflection of my turbulent insides. How the hell did I get in so deep?

The baby in the pram beside me let loose a long cry, and I pulled out the pacifier from my pocket, placing it in her mouth. Her whole body relaxed as she sucked.

“She takes a pacifier when she cries. Feed her formula from the tin on the bench. She naps twice a day, and if her crying gets too much, walk her in the pram,” Rita had said, shoving the child into my arms. She’d taken care of the just gone nine-month-old while Giselle had started her sentence.

I’d nodded, a million questions running through my mind, unable to give voice to any of them.

Because in my arms was this … baby.

She smelled like citrus and milk, a bittersweet combination. She wriggled in my grasp, and I didn’t know where to put my hands, how to keep her safe, but I wanted to try.

I had to try.

“Rita …” I’d said as she’d turned to leave Giselle’s mess of a house.

“Hmm?”

“Aren’t you going to stay? Make sure I’m doing this right?”

“Ha!” she’d barked out a laugh. “You’re on your own.”

On my own.

I was used to that.

Giselle’s house had been a mess. Rubbish was everywhere. A bottle of lube and a pack of condoms sat on her bedside table. Her sheets were stained, and when I went to change them, I found a gun on the bottom shelf of her linen cupboard. Why the hell did she have a gun? Was it registered? And who’d keep that there with a child?

I’d called Mack straight away, eager to take him up on his offer. Eager to get out of that shithole.

“We’re going to make this work, kid.” Now, I rested one hand on the pram handle, looking down at the child inside.

Two big blue eyes looked up at me. Her cheeks were round, full in the way that most baby cheeks seemed to be, all red and balloon-like. Her nose turned up at the end, and her hair was a mass of golden curls. She doesn’t look like me. Not the photos I’d seen from when I was a child. The only resemblance was in those eyes.

I—

BOOM.

Oh, God. My chest tightened. I slammed my body against the ground. Waves of white and grey clouded my eyes until they were everywhere, all I could see. Oxygen bled from my lungs.

Breathe.

Breathe in.

But the air was thick, full of dust, full of rubble. The scent of smoke and burning rubber lingered. Screams, long and piercing, rent the still air. They tore my insides to shreds. Bella. I have to get to Bella.

“Are you … okay?”

I blinked. Opened my eyes.

Dirt. Under my nails, in my nose. A black wheel, right in front of my face.

A thin wail pierced my heart. Piper.

I jumped to my feet. Shit. Was she okay?

“Hey,” I murmured to the baby, unclipping the straps and taking her out. “I’m sorry I scared you. I …” Hadn’t had one of those panic attacks in weeks—months, even. Those flashbacks, when the terror seemed so real …

“It was a car backfiring. Doesn’t usually happen around here.”

Who said that? I turned my head.

There she was.

The woman from the bottle shop.

It had been two weeks, but I remembered her. Something about those stormy eyes stuck in my mind.

“Probably just tourists,” she continued, her voice a little shaken. Does she recognise me?

“Thanks,” I muttered. I steeled myself, placing Piper back in the pram and pocketing her pacifier from where it had fallen to the ground. I had to get out of there before this woman started with the pity.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” she continued, as if we were in conversation.

I clipped up the buckles and turned to give the woman one last glance before I got the hell out of there. Before she tried to fix me, like every woman seemed to want to do.

But not this one.

She faced the ocean. Long brown hair whipped in the afternoon breeze. Her arms wrapped around her body, a shield against the wind or the world, I wasn’t sure. Her eyes—so much turmoil was in those blue eyes, as if the sea raged not just against the shore out front but inside them as well.

And somehow, I knew her.

I knew that look. That look of loneliness and anger and hate.

I knew it because I’d seen it in myself.

And for the first time in almost two years, I did something new.

I reached out.

Connected.

“Y …” I cleared my throat. “Yes. It is.”

She looked at me, really looked at me, and the pity—it wasn’t there. No trace of sympathy, of recognition. Nothing about her said she knew me from the news reports, the ones still blasted all over the country every few months, the ones that made me the object of women’s fix-er-upper fantasies nationwide.

“You know, too many people think the ocean is all pretty and poetic. But it can be a monster. Just last year, three people drowned. Here. On this very beach.”

I stared out at the waves that stole lives, and I didn’t doubt her for a second. “It’s not all holidays and sandcastles, huh?”

“Not at all.” Her mouth pursed, the hint of a smile teasing her lips. That smile … She was beautiful. “Hi. I’m Everly. Everly Jenkins. Reciter of grim facts and sandcastle murderer.”

“Hi.” I pressed my lips together, waiting for her to say it. Recognise me. Offer your condolences. “I’m Cameron Lewis.”

“Cameron,” Everly repeated, slipping her slim hand into mine to shake.

Soft. Her hand was soft, like silk. I wanted to hold it for the longest time.

What the hell? I wrenched my hand away, as if she were fire and I’d scorched my fingers with the flames.

“Do you live around here?” she continued, as if she hadn’t noticed.

“I’m just—we’re just staying here for a while. Down the road.” I jerked my head in the direction of the holiday house. “You?”

“Me too.” She shook her head. “Not just staying here. Yes. I live here.”

“Do you, uh …” I looked down at the dirt beneath my feet. “You don’t have kids by any chance, do you?”

“Unfortunately not.” Something passed over her face, and I regretted asking. Damn it. You never knew what was in a person’s past. Of all people, I should have known that. “But I do love them. I’ve worked with children all my life. Babies, and now older ones.”

“Really?” I took a deep breath. She lived around here. She was good with kids. Maybe I could turn to her for advice when it came to Piper.

I studied her again, that hair, those eyes … she was beautiful.

Exactly the sort of person I didn’t need in my life.

“Cammo!”

I looked up. Mack strolled across the parking lot toward us, his hands stuffed in his pockets, his khaki shirt billowing in the wind. “Hey.”

“I should go,” Everly excused herself, scuffing one sneaker-clad foot in the dirt below. “But perhaps I’ll see you around.”

I pressed my lips together. For a moment, for just one moment, I imagined that things were different. That my past wasn’t my escape. That my future wasn’t my prison.

I imagined what life would be like if I could ask a woman like Everly on a date. I’d pick her up and take her out. The restaurant would seat us in a corner at the back. We’d talk and laugh, and when the waiter came to get our order, we wouldn’t have had a chance to look at the menu because we’d been so lost in conversation, in our own company.

Later, I’d walk her to her door. Desire would fire through me, and I wouldn’t want to wait to get her alone.

I’d kiss her. I’d kiss her, and tangle my fingers in her hair, and lose myself in this beautiful woman who for one moment, calmed the storm inside me.

But that wasn’t a choice I could make.

When you’d pledged your heart to one woman, you couldn’t get involved with another.

I took a deep breath, running through the memories on autopilot. Long red hair. The scent of honeysuckle. A white dress, billowing around her legs.

And I remembered. For one glorious moment, I remembered.

“Goodbye,” I muttered, but the word was lost in the wind. Everly had already walked away.

And as Mack arrived by my side, keys in hand and a big smile on his face, I knew I’d done the right thing. The right thing by Bella.

I ignored the tiny twinge in my chest, the wind whipping against my face and leaving a bite against my cheeks, my nose. Somehow, in the space of a few weeks, everything about my life had changed yet again. Standing here, with the ocean before me—it was like I’d never known how small I was compared to the ferocity of the elements that faced me until now.

Like I’d never known how alone I felt until we connected.