Cheyenne tried to respond, but her voice came out in a
squeak. She couldn’t believe she’d been so insecure about her-
self that she’d lost faith in Scot. He’d never done anything but show her the purest love. She loathed herself for doubting him,
and it was a full minute before she could find her words.
“I am so sorry for thinking…” Cheyenne’s words were lost
under her sobs. She wrapped her arms around his neck and bur-
ied her face into his chest.
Scot pulled her into a tight embrace. “I love you, Cheyenne.
Nothing will ever change that.”
Cheyenne pulled back and looked up at him. Her heart felt
like it would burst from her chest. “I love you, too.”
As Scot brought his lips down on hers, the crowd around
them erupted into whistles and cheers.
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Enrique looked extremely unhappy about taking Stephanie
back to Maravilha in her current state. Her black dress clung to her like a second skin, and wet sand coated her back from her
head to her boots. Her beautiful red cowboy boats that she’d had since college were forever ruined. This made her sad, but that it happened while she was with Phillip seemed strangely appropriate. Evidently this wasn’t the first such occurrence for Noronha guests, since Enrique opened the trunk of the Land Rover and
pulled out a tarp to cover the backseat. Finally tired of all her antics, she’d been banished to the back seat. Even Enrique had
his breaking point. Steph felt tired from her Phillip-induced
adrenaline spike on the beach and curled up in a ball on the back seat in an attempted to keep herself from dying of hypothermia.
Replaying her moments with Phillip raised her temperature,
though it didn’t stop her from shivering. She looked out at the
tropical blackness and obsessed about the weight of him as he
pinned her in the sand, his sultry breath against her neck, his
large calloused hand up her skirt…
She’d never wanted to be with anyone like she had with
Phillip on the beach. It was so insane it was almost laughable
that she wanted him to nail her while they hammered the final
nail into the coffin of their romance. The fact was, she was more attracted to Phillip while in the death throes of their relationship than she’d ever been with anyone else in the honeymoon phase.
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She tried to focus on the physical, assuring herself that it
was understandable, rational even, that their strong physical
chemistry would lead them down that path. She was absolutely
certain she needed to stay an arm’s length away from him from
here on out. If he touched her again, she knew she couldn’t guarantee she’d have the strength to push him away, and she’d feel
even worse afterwards.
Phillip may very well have been the love of her life, but he
was her past. There was way too much water under that bridge.
Even thinking of the bridge cliché made Steph think of the aged
bridge outside the front door of their cottage, and a choked sob escaped her. Enrique shot her a concerned look in the rearview
mirror, and she buried her face in her hands. She hated herself in that moment more than she ever had. Where did she get off even
feeling like a damsel in distress? She had absolutely no right to play that role. She had caused the chain of events that led her to this particular moment in time. Here, sitting all alone in the back seat of an overpriced SUV on some remote island getting sympathetic looks from a would-be Latin lover while she caught pneu-
monia.
If it had been anyone else, Steph would have wanted to
open hand slap her and tell her to quit acting like an ingénue in some romantic comedy and cowgirl up. Fade to black on the after-school special, for the love of baby Jesus. But it was her. And no matter how she tried to mentally pull herself up by the pro-verbial bootstraps, she kept flailing. She felt like she was wandering the woods without a map. She needed to find her com-
pass. She needed Christopher.
Christopher was her present and (if he hadn’t abandoned all
hope—like the sensible man he was) possibly her future.
Phillip was in her past. It felt like a mantra.
“I loved you, Stephanie.”
Loved. Past tense.
She trudged up the stairs, her wrecked boots making putrid
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sloshing sounds, and she was so lost in he own thoughts that she tried to unlock the wrong room door. When she heard the
thumping sound of techno bleeding through the crack under the
door, she remembered that she now was across the hall in her
own room. It sounded like at least one of the bridesmaids had
skipped the luau and was having a hell of a party.
Immediately after Steph entered her room, she pulled off
her boots and peeled off her dress, dropping them directly where she stood. She jumped into a piping hot shower and practically
scrubbed her flesh raw. Part of her wished she had brought
Christopher instead of Cedric. Phillip would have remained
blissfully ignorant of their lost child, and she wouldn’t have had to talk to him and experience the sensation of losing him all over again. Her “together” façade would have remained firmly in
place, and she and Christopher would have taken their relation-
ship to that all important next level. She just kept making bad
choice after bad choice.
She toweled off and wrapped her stinging pink flesh in her
fluffy white robe. She reached for her camera case and cele-
brated the fact that she had made one good choice—buying a
waterproof one. If only she were as fastidious about protecting
her heart as she was about her camera, life might have been a bit less complicated. She pulled out her phone and tried Christopher again. Straight to voicemail. She redialed and frowned as she
heard a loud banging in hall. She peeked through the peephole
and saw Phillip beating on what used to be her hotel door. Her
eyes flew wide as she heard Christopher’s voicemail pick up
again as she leaned her forehead on the door.
“Please go away…please go away.” She whispered and then
realized that she was being recorded on Christopher’s voice mail,
“Shit!”
She hung up. The door across the hall swung open and the
“fat” bridesmaid answered the door. She heard several voices cry out once the occupants spotted Phillip.
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“Phillip! Want a drink?” someone cried. It sounded like
Bret.
“Uhh…” Phillip seemed disturbed and alarmed, “Where’s
Stephanie?”
As Steph wished she had telepathy and could mentally beg
them not to tell, the bridesmaid pointed to her door. Phillip
turned in her direction, and Steph realized she was holding her
breath.
He was at the door before she could even back away from
the peephole. He knocked right next to her head.
“Stephanie?” The way his accent caressed her name brought
back too many conflicting memories. She knew she couldn’t
pretend to be asleep with that racket across the hall, and she
knew they both needed some sort of closure to this train wreck
they called a relationship. Cedric’s voice rang in her ears.
“It’s time to face your demons.”
She unloc
ked the door and turned the knob.
Phillip leaned against the doorframe, looking as if he’d
jumped fully clothed into a swimming pool full of ice water and
then rolled around in a box of kitty litter. His luscious lips were turning blue.
“Can we please just talk?”
Steph nodded and backed away from the door so he could
enter the room. He crossed the threshold, and she shut the door, immediately grabbing a robe from the closet.
“Here. You have to change. I’ll give you privacy.” She
tossed him the robe and went into the bathroom. She was glad
the bathroom door didn’t have a peephole. As she leaned against
the door, she heard the all too familiar sound of wet clothes hitting the floor. Steph couldn’t stop herself from imagining Phillip standing naked in her room, and she knew she couldn’t be trust-ed. She reached down to the doorknob and locked it.
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Phillip brushed sand from his hair as he heard her lock the
bathroom door. He tried to pull the terrycloth robe around him-
self as best he could. He glanced in the mirror and thought he
looked like he belonged in a gay porno set in a seedy bathhouse.
He snorted. “One size fits most, indeed.”
After ten minutes of waiting for Stephanie to reappear, he
meandered over to the bathroom door and tapped on it with his
knuckles.
“Steph?” he called out, noticing that the sound of water
running was conspicuously absent.
“Ummm…I think I should stay in here.” Her quiet voice
sounded like a small child afraid of punishment.
“You can’t be serious,” he laughed. She said nothing.
“Stephanie. I promise to keep my hands to myself.”
“Yeah. Our track record says otherwise.” She laughed a
humorless laugh. He smirked naughtily. She was in no way
wrong about that. “We can’t behave ourselves fully dressed in
public. I think half dressed in my hotel room is a recipe for disaster.”
He sighed and slid down the door, resting his back against
it. “Fine. Have it your way. Let me just start by saying if I had known you were pregnant, I would have never left your side.”
He heard her sigh and could tell that she was sitting directly
behind him. He imagined her with her back to his, the thin piece of wood all that stood between the two of them. “I know that. I
think that’s the main reason I didn’t tell you. I didn’t want you to feel like you had to be with me. Especially if you wanted kids
and there was a strong chance I couldn’t give them to you.”
He considered her snap decision and imagined how afraid
she’d been in her weak and medicated state. Her laser sharp, ever strategic brain hadn’t failed her even then. He had to admit, her 166
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choice made a lot of sense.
“What are the other reasons?” He nervously picked at the
sand wedged under his fingernails. Phillip felt reluctant to hear her response, but this conversation was long overdue.
“Things between us were…fine…more than fine. We were
really happy—at least I was. Why screw up a good thing with
bullshit vows and expectations? Quite honestly, we barely knew
each other. We definitely didn’t know each other well enough
for that kind of commitment. But I was ready to take things to the next level, Phillip. In my mind that meant moving in together. I wanted to feel like I was connected to you on some emo-
tional level. Every time we got together, it was so physical.
Don’t get me wrong—the sex was always amazing, but I hoped
if we saw each other more frequently, it might turn into some-
thing…deeper. As it was, every time a conversation turned seri-
ous, one of us usually cracked a joke.”
He opened his mouth to object and realized he had no ar-
gument. He’d wanted all the same things. “Or one of us picked a
fight. You’re not wrong. I suppose I thought if we got married,
all of those things would just fall into place.”
She paused, and he heard her blow her nose.
“I was going to tell you. That’s why I kept calling you.
Where were you?” Her voice sounded shaky, as if she were
afraid of how he’d respond. Phillip bit the inside of his lip.
“I went away. I hid out. I drank and smoked and hung out
with an Irish setter. I realize it’s not nearly as glamorous or exotic as the stories the tabloids made up, but there it is. I couldn’t be around anyone or anything that made me think of you.” He
heaved an exasperated sigh as he remembered the heartache.
“Which was everyone and everything. Then a very wise man
told me to stop being a twat and go find you and fight for you.
And I set out to do just that. Then Clive told me he’d shagged
you, and he seemed to have photographic evidence of it.”
“That bastard,” Steph muttered under her breath. Phillip
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smiled to himself, but frowned immediately when he realized
how much he’d missed her casual cursing.
“I miss this,” he blurted. “Just…talking to you.”
She responded with silence. That hurt more than he cared to
admit. He quietly cursed himself for his faux pas. He didn’t want to admit any weaknesses to Steph, but it was far too late to worry about such nonsense. He blundered on.
“Maybe we should have tried this a long time ago.”
“What?” she croaked.
He exhaled in a huff. “Talking through a barricade.”
He heard a thump against the door behind him. It sounded
like her throwing her head back.
“Stephanie…I love you. I can’t explain it. I can’t quantify
why, so don’t bother asking. I wish to God it weren’t true, but it is.”
Her voice cracked as she spoke. “But you were with that
girl from the video.”
He felt nauseated at the mention of it. “It was once. I wish it
had never happened. The whole thing was ridiculous. I was
drunk and lonely. I can’t change that it happened.”
Steph said nothing, and he found himself curious. He fought
with himself about it for a moment, but found he couldn’t con-
tain the question. “Was there anyone else? I mean, besides
Christopher.”
The thought of Christopher in her bed touching her made
him want to wretch.
“I was with Pace. Once. After Cheyenne showed me…the
video.” He buried his head in his hands. Pace Turner. That stung.
He’d always been threatened by this one name from her past,
mostly due to her calculated choice not to rave about him like she always did Kevin. “Phillip, it’s none of my business who you were with. You moved on. I’ve moved on. I’m with Christopher
now. We both just need to…keep moving on.”
“Nothing you’ve said changes how I feel about you. Not
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even a little. I wish to God it did, to be blunt. If I could turn it off, believe me I would have a long time ago. I can’t. You’re the only woman I’ve ever loved. You’re the only person I’ve ever let inside my armor. I have absolutely no bloody defense against
you.”
He heard her sniffling. “Stop. Just stop.”
“Why? Because you love me, too and fighting it hurts?”
“Please—I just need
a normal life.”
“You’ve never had a normal life, Steph.” He closed his
eyes, knowing she was pushing him away hard and knowing he
was fighting a losing battle.
“I can’t, baby.” She hadn’t called him that since the cottage,
and her doing so now felt as if she’d sliced him with surgical
steal. “I can’t deal with the constant fighting. I don’t want the paparazzi trailing me in the dairy aisle. I’m tired of psychos cornering me in public restrooms and mauling me because you
shaved your beard. And they do this when we are not together. ”
His heart seemed to dissolve and trickle to the floor. He
heard her crying through the door, and it was the most awful
sound he’d ever experienced. He turned and placed his palm
against the door. He inhaled twice, wanting to be sure to steady his voice and his resolve.
“Alright, love. I’m so sorry for everything. The last thing I
want is to cause you any more pain.”
Her breath hitched loudly, and he swore he could feel her
trembling through the thin door. When she spoke, her voice
sounded woeful, but committed. “I just want to stop hurting.”
He flinched at her words and ran his hands through his hair.
“If you want me to go, I will.”
Silence. That was all the answer he needed. She was done.
It was over.
It took him a minute to gather his strength. Finally, he
pushed himself up to standing. “Alright, Stephanie. I’m going.”
He squared his shoulders and took three steps toward the exit
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when he heard the bathroom door open. He whirled in surprise.
Steph stood in the doorway, her chest heaving and eyes rimmed
red. She rushed to him and buried her face in his chest.
Phillip froze, his emotions colliding inside him like bumper
cars. Steph was the most maddening person he’d ever met, and
part of him wanted to shake her like a rag doll. The other wanted to peel off her robe and tie her spread eagle to the bed. He knew he was morally obligated to split the difference, so he cradled her against him, feeling her tears spill onto his bare chest. The minty scent of her damp hair drew his lips down to the top of her head.
“Phillip…please.” She looked up, her raw eyes devastating
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