Josephine doesn’t believe me.

She lets me kiss her, scoop her up into my arms, and run back down the hill with her until she laughs, but as we’re walking back to the resort, I steal a glance at her. Her face is totally unguarded—she must not think I’m going to look—and the look in her eyes is still wretched.

“You need to have some fun.” I say it without thinking. 

Josie laughs out loud. “I never thought I’d hear you say that.”

“I never thought I would.”

She picks her way over a rough section of the trail. “I don’t know.”

I slow the pace and move beside her. There’s still a humming tension in the way she moves. I have no idea why. Because we’re about to leave the island? Could be. “I meant what I said.”

Josie glances over at me. “About having fun?”

“Well, that. But...before.” I take a deep breath. “You don’t have anything to worry about. We both live in the city—” I don’t know where she’ll be living, in light of the breakup, but I’m assuming…. “You’ll be living in the city,” I tell her firmly. “If you’re worried about the apartment still, you can come to my place when we land. I have more than enough bedrooms if private space is an issue.”

“I don’t think private space is much of a problem between us, but you’re sweet, Charlie Cash.” Josie’s voice carries a teasing tone, but there’s something underneath that and it makes me nervous.

“You’re not turning me down, are you?”

She turns her dark eyes on me, searching my face. “Are we still playing around?”

I slide my arm around her waist, stopping us in the middle of the trail. “Tell me, Josie. Were we ever really playing around?”

* * *

In the middle of the night, she slips out from underneath the covers. Josie keeps her movements small, moving an inch at a time. It’s so fucking weird that I’m instantly and fully awake.

She never does this. She’s a woman of leaps and bounds, straddling me with one energetic push. Sneaking around isn’t her thing.

Until it is.

Whatever’s on her mind must be making her feel ashamed.

Either that, or she’s so concerned for my beauty sleep that she’s doing all she can not to wake me up.

I keep breathing evenly, because it’s outrageous to even think that she’d be worried about waking me up. I stifle a laugh and cover it by rolling over underneath the covers, shifting around a bit to sell it. At the first hint of movement, Josie freezes. When I’m all settled back in, she creeps over to her rolling suitcase and unzips it.

I start to drift off, because it’s boring as hell trying to listen to someone walk around a suite, but my heart beats faster when a light shines on the wall from behind me. It’s dim—not like a flashlight. Like a screen.

Then comes the sound of gentle typing. Careful typing. She’s clearly trying not to let her fingernails make much noise against the keys.

God, this is fucking bizarre. 

Should I get up? Should I…pretend to wake up at this point and ask her what she’s doing? I haven’t seen her once with a laptop, or a tablet with a keyboard…whatever it is. And what, the second to last day she’s going to pull it out and start working? The paranoid part of me tries to categorize this as suspicious. I breathe in and breathe out, and because I have nothing else to do, because I’m pretending to be asleep like that’s a solution, I wrack my brain for any hint that this could have something to do with me.

No. It couldn’t. More likely, it has something to do with the fact that we’re flying back to the city the day after tomorrow. There are probably arrangements to be made, even if she does take me up on the offer to stay with me.

It would be the smart thing to do. If she needs more time to recover, it’s the perfect place to take it.

I replay our conversation from the hike in my mind, listening to the ebb and flow of her fingers on the keys. I lied to you. 

“Did you?” I ask, and Josie turns, laughing.

“Lie to you? I would never.”

I laugh along with her. “My mistake.”

She purses her lips. “It wasn’t a lie.”

“I thought you said—”

“Charlie, look!” Josie points behind me, and I wheel around to discover that we’re back by the waterfall I saw her by on the first day here. There’s a woman in a kayak at the top of the falls, trying desperately to steer herself backward with the paddle. Oh, shit—it’s not a crystalline pool at the bottom, either. The falls tumble over the cliff onto an outcropping of rock. If she falls, she’s going to be badly, badly hurt. 

I try to run toward her, but Josie catches me by the elbow. “Stop.”

“She’s going to fall!” I whip my head around to the woman. The kayak is out over the falls now, and she’s wedged her paddle into a rock, trying to pull it back. “Get out of the boat!” I yell, knowing even as I say the words that the rush of the water is going to drown them out. She looks at me from across the distance, her eyes wild, and shouts something back that I can’t understand. “Get out! Stand up!”

“Charlie, it’s a lost cause,” Josie says, and tugs harder on my elbow. “Let’s go back. I want to go back. We’re supposed to be having a good time. What kind of drink are you going to have?”

I wrench my arm out of her grasp and sprint toward the falls. I can get there on time. I can climb up, pull the kayak onto solid ground, and help her get out.

“Charlie!” Josie shouts the word from behind me and I turn my head.

I only look at her for a split second, but it’s a split second too long. The woman in the kayak—red and shining and brand-new—lets out a blood-curdling scream, and she’s falling, falling—

“Charlie—” Josie says, fear in her voice. “Wake up.”

She shakes me again, her hand on my elbow. It’s dark in the suite. 

Did I dream the entire thing?”

“You were talking,” she says nervously. “Are you okay?”

“I was dreaming,” I mumble, the details already fading into a heavy exhaustion that I can’t seem to overcome. I roll over, my head in the center of the pillow, and a few moments later the bed shifts under Josie’s weight. She settles in next to me, pressing her body against mine, and I wrap my arm around her, burying my face in her hair.  

“She just had to stand up,” I tell her.

“What?”

Sleep is taking me over. “Nothing,” I say. “I hope it’s nothing.”