With the tears clouding my eyes I can hardly see him, but I don’t need to see Charlie to feel exactly what he’s doing to me. When he cradles me in his arms, it heals a piece of my broken heart, his tenderness filling the void. This is not something I expected to find with Charlie Cash, not in a million years, but I give into it all the same.

He sweeps me back into the suite and over to the bed. The covers are pristine and bounce back when he lays me down. I don’t bother to brush the tears away.

The pain is the sea, the pain is the waves on the shore. There’s seeing Rolly in the hallway with his assistant. There’s the shock of my parents finally resorting to tough love. There’s Beatrice, her twelve-year-old face pinched and pale in the hospital bed. One after the other, they rush over me, relentless as the ocean.

But for every wave of pain, there’s Charlie, and Charlie’s hands. He’s so gentle at removing my dress that it brings more tears to my eyes. He unhooks my bra and slides off my panties like I’m royalty, someone precious, someone he treasures.

When all my clothing is gone, tossed off the side of the bed and out of sight, he worships me like a goddess.

No part of me goes unkissed, unstroked, unattended. He starts at the line of my jaw and works his way down like we have all the time in the world.

We don’t, I want to scream at him, but the thought is buried by an avalanche of pleasure that dulls the edges of the pain, subsumes it, and turns it into something else entirely. 

This time is different.

This time, we’re not battling with each other, the two of us racing for every orgasm.

It occurs to me when he swirls his tongue so slowly around each nipple that it draws a low moan from my throat: this must be what real love feels like. It never felt this way with Rolly. It never felt this way with Greg Roberts, who only wanted to fuck me on my hands and knees in the back of his father’s Range Rover. For the first time in my existence, I’m not running away from the pain. I’m letting myself fall into it. 

Charlie is making magic out of heartbreak.

He treats every inch of me like it’s a new discovery. He lingers in the spaces I never thought I’d love to have touched. The hollow of my neck and between my breasts. The hard ridge of my hipbone. The crease between the top of my thigh and my hip.

When he lowers his head between my legs and licks me there for the second time today, another flood of tears overtakes me. This time, I’m crying because it feels so damn good, and it adds to the surreal quality of all of this.

I’ve spent years fucking and being fucked. This is something else entirely. I can’t believe it’s Charlie Cash who’s giving it to me. 

I don’t know how much time has passed when he finally lifts his head, wipes his mouth on his sleeve, and starts working his way back up my body. Hundreds of kisses. Thousands. I’m melting into the comforter, losing my grip on reality as my hands slip from the fabric, but then I’m finding it again all at the same time.

He positions himself over me and covers my mouth with his, his tongue delving into its depths, and God, I want him. More of him. All of him. I never want to leave this island. I never want to go back to my life. I never want to come to grips with anything more than what I’m living with right in this moment, which is all the pain I’ve kept locked away in my heart, crashing together with the pleasure that only a real man has to offer. 

He enters me and I break the kiss, a cry and a moan escaping me. I don’t want to let go of him, so I keep my arms locked tight as he rocks his hips in the sweetest rhythm. He’s making love to me in time with my heartbeat, and I am shattered and put back together with every shift of his body.

I’m so lost in it that I can’t stop myself from saying the words that have been building for years. Long before I decided to have this last-ditch vacation. Long before I knew who Charlie Cash was. A fresh sob erupts from my insides. “It’s never going to be all right again.” The words are more of a gasp, and they’re so raw that they hurt my throat. “Never, Charlie. Never.”

I expect him to say that it will be all right. Powerful men always want to tell you that things will be fine. Men want to be the ones to dash away your fears with the right words. It’s either that or they adopt a stony, determined silence.

But Charlie doesn’t do any of that.

He kisses me again, deeply, gently, still moving with me, rocking us both along the rises and falls of desire. Too much time is slipping away. He’s never going to answer me now, and those words will be hanging in the air between us for the rest of time. He’s always going to—

His hand slides around the back of my head, tugging slightly on my hair, holding me like he was meant to do this, like he knows exactly what I want. He’s inside me, he’s inside my mind, he’s inside my soul. He lowers his lips to brush against my ear. “I know, sweetheart. I know.”

The acknowledgement flares up as a bright explosion in my chest, rocking me back onto the bed, and the rhythm of Charlie’s cock bucking in and out pushes me up and up, steadily, so steadily, until I come underneath him.

He doesn’t stop.

I come again.

He keeps going.

By the time we’re finished, by the time I’m panting breathlessly on the comforter, my eyes lidded, on the verge of sleep, I’ve lost count.

But for the first time in a long time, maybe ever, I feel whole.