I’d avoided talking about Trent since the moment I’d lost him. At first it was because I couldn’t bear to say his name. The hurt had broken something inside of me. The pain of it almost crippling. Then as time moved on, I didn’t want to talk about him because to bring him up felt like raising a ghost. A ghost I didn’t want to haunt me. Then finding out he hadn’t died gave me all sorts of other reasons why I avoided talking about him.

But mostly it was anger.

I was angry he’d left me to live a solitary life without him before we’d even had the chance to live. When Trent had finally admitted how he felt about me, it had been one of the happiest days of my life. And it hadn’t been a grand gesture he made. It had been raw and real. He’d been agitated I’d snuck in under his defenses, but he’d let me in regardless. And he’d loved me. Really loved me. Or at least I thought he had.

Once I’d broken through the wall he’d built around himself, he’d decided that we should leave the tightly monitored rules of Cole Enterprise and start a new life together.

We’d built our future out of words. And with one swift moment, it was all over. Gone before it could start. His cover had been blown, but he’d managed to get away only to die, supposedly, in the hospital.

After that, I didn’t care what I did or where I was. The structure that I’d fought was the same one that kept me together.

“You can talk to me about him, you know. I don’t mind,” Josh said, touching my shoulder with a feathered caress.

 I nodded. Breathed deeply and pushed Trent back into the recesses of my mind where I’d kept his memory since the day I was told he’d died. “You might not mind, but I do.”

He jerked back as if I’d slapped him.

“I didn’t mean it like that, Josh. It’s not that I don’t want to talk to you about him. I just don’t want to talk about him at all,” I explained as I opened the door to our room.

He hung back a little as I led us down the hallway. Guilt ate at me, and I found myself getting angry because of it.

I didn’t owe Josh any explanations. My past relationship with Trent was personal. Had Josh and I been in a real relationship, I might have tried to talk to him about Trent, but even then, I might not have. Time hadn’t healed me. If anything, time had only put a bandage over the gaping wound of my broken heart. 

Worse though was thinking about Trent when there was no reason to think about him. He’d left me as surely as if he’d died. Everything we’d shared couldn’t have meant anything to him at all if he could just forget it and continue living his life as if we hadn’t promised to love one another until death.

Once on the mainland, we gave the taxi driver the address to the hotel Allyson had thoughtfully called ahead to, making reservations for a block of rooms for all the guests on the boat.

Once the weather picked up and the rain began to fall, there wasn’t much we could do but hang out in the bar of the hotel or the dining area. The pool had closed in the event there was lightning, which was expected to be heavy during the storm.

I wasn’t in the mood to sit around and make ideal chitchat and, thankfully, Allyson and Alex weren’t either.

Josh and I waited until they’d been whisked off to their room, and then we headed for our own.

I curled up on the bed, one pillow tucked under my head, the other pulled against my chest as I watched the night sky light up as if it were daylight and then go pitch dark.

The bed dipped behind me, and then Josh’s hand was on my shoulder. “I’m sorry if I upset you, Ella. I’d like to think that you know I wouldn’t pry or try to make you feel uncomfortable. I just want you to know that no matter what happens with us, I’ll always be your friend.”

He pulled in another breath. “And for what it’s worth, I have no regrets. If this is,” his arm tightened before he continued, “all we are.”

The first tear slipped past the corner of my eye, catching me off guard. I wasn’t a crier, so it surprised me to feel the hot burn for the briefest of seconds before it was gone, soaking into the pillow, leaving me wondering why I was crying. Was it his words? The kindness he’d always shown me? Or was it all the resurrected memories of Trent? I had a feeling it was everything. And no matter how much I didn’t want to feel anything at all, I did feel it, and it was staggering.

Josh’s arm went under my pillow while the other one draped over my side and he pulled me close, holding me against his chest. The steady beat of his heart bumped against my back.

“We were going to leave Cole Enterprise and start our life together,” I said, wondering where the words came from, because I hadn’t thought about it at all. They just bubbled up and out, shocking me.

“Any particular place you had in mind?” he asked, chin bumping against my head as he spoke.

I nodded. “There’s an island just off the coast of South America. Chiloe Island. We’d planned to go there and spend the rest of our days living our lives diving and fishing. Soaking up the sun. It would have been peaceful there. No missions. No drug cartels or child traffic rings. Just the two of us ignoring the world while someone else took it on their shoulders to clean it up.”

“Sounds nice,” he said, thumb gliding against my arm in slow, sweeping motions.

“It would have been. But reality is a fickle bitch and just when you think you’re about to make your dreams come true, they disappear before you can blink. Everything changes before you can wrap your mind around what was and what no longer is.” I closed my eyes, feeling more tired than I’d ever felt before.

“Rest, Ella. There’s nowhere we need to be right now,” he whispered, shifting to let go of me.

I caught his arm and pulled it against my chest. “Stay. Please?”

“For as long as you want me to,” he answered as my eyes fluttered closed.