by Wicks, Becky
It breaks my heart.
I want to reach out, of course I do, but he needs to see for himself that what he's doing isn't right. Running away doesn't help you heal; it only makes the isolation drive you crazy. I keep hoping he'll miss me, and us; the way I know we could be if he lets me in.
I sigh, look across the water as I pass the pizza restaurant and the small resorts and guesthouses, all with their own restaurants on the beach. The blue of the ocean has switched to a rolling amber sheet in the low light and the clouds are like fuzzy pink sheep sitting obstinately on the hills of Lombok in the distance. It's so pretty here.
'Coconut for you!' my friend Ketut calls out as I pass. He's holding up a giant green one at his stall.
'I'll come back tomorrow!' I call back behind me and he grins his toothless grin and waves from under his palm tree.
I chose a basic hut at the far end of the small island, where it's quiet and the tide retracts to reveal rocks so sharp you can't even swim. I like it best this way. I feel like I've made some sort of agreement with my surroundings. I'll write my book and teach the local kids their colors, and the three little islands in the chain - being surrounded at all sides by Bali, Sumatra and Lombok - will protect me from tsunamis. I had to write this by the ocean, I think. I had to look at it to keep on forgiving, to describe the way it still makes me feel. I have to take a boat most days.
I park up my bike and make my way through the sand to my hut. The humidity is hanging in the air with the tangerine light and for a second I think I'm imagining it when I see someone sitting on my wooden porch.
What the...
He stands up when he sees me. I almost drop my bag as he runs down the stairs towards me. He's wearing his black board shorts, the black shirt that shows off his ridiculous muscles, and a look of total relief.
Oh my God.
'I was starting to think you weren't coming back,' he says, stopping just in front of me. The sunlight falls on his face, across his clean-shaven jaw, through his curls as he scrapes them back.
'How did you...'
'Amy told me.' He puts his hands to my shoulders. 'She told me about Colin, I can't believe you didn't tell me he cheated on you, Izzy! Why didn't you tell me?'
'What?' I'm blinking, like at any second this mirage will disappear again.
He leans in closer. 'Izzy, I didn't mean to make you think for one second that you don't deserve any better.' He looks so anxious, so desperate for me to believe him. 'You're amazing, you have to know that. I mean, I had to tell you, God, baby I fucked up...'
'It's OK,' I stammer, pulling away, walking past him to my hut. I climb the stairs, unlock my door with fumbling hands. I feel like my legs are about to give way.
'It's not OK, I was a total asshole,' he says, following me inside. 'You were right, I was pushing you away like I push everyone away and I pushed you to him! You're better than that, Izzy, don't ever settle.'
'I didn't!' I say, dumping my bag on my bed and folding my arms across myself. 'I'm here, aren't I?'
'I mean with anyone else.'
'I don't want anyone else.' As I say it, I can feel and hear my voice breaking. I turn to him again as the disbelief turns to relief and then tears. 'I just want you. You know that. When did you get here?'
He walks up to me across the plain tiled floor and I uncross my arms, letting him take my hands in front of the cheap, stand-up fan. I'm crying now and still shaking. He's here. Ben's really here. 'You came all this way?'
'It's really far,' he blurts, laughing now, kissing my forehead, then my nose. 'I had to come. I didn't want to hurt you, but I hurt you anyway, Izzy, I'm so sorry.'
'Ben, please. We hurt each other.' I reach my arms up around his neck impulsively and he pulls me in close.
'Maybe, look, I know I don't deserve it,' he says into my hair, 'but I want to carry on falling in love with you, British Izzy.'
Wow.
I can't even speak. My hands reach out on their own. I draw him backwards and onto the bed with me and as our limbs entwine on the mattress it's almost as though someone else, something else has taken over my body. 'Will you let me?' he asks. 'Will you let me love you?'
'I'll think about it,' I respond between kisses and he groans against my mouth, arching over me. His hair tickles my face.
'I wouldn't blame you if you didn't, not after what I did.'
I spread my fingers across his cheeks, trail them down his arms, over his tattoo. I love him so much already. 'We've been through worse than a stupid argument, Ben.'
He falls to my side now, pulls me close, puts his hand to my face, making me look at him. 'Izzy, I talked to my mom, I went to London.'
'Really?' His eyes are so bright, boring into me. I've missed touching him so much. I've missed every little bit of him. Reality is really sinking in now, bit by bit. He came back to me.
'She said she never blamed me, that it was all in my head,' he tells me, taking my hand and kissing my fingers. I get a sudden flashback to the night I got drunk; when he looked after me. 'She said I created the distance on purpose because I blamed myself. Izzy, she was reaching out to me this whole time but it was my guilt stopping me responding, and we just built a wall, I guess... a massive fucking wall, the both of us. I don't want to do that with you.'
'OK.' It's all I can say because my words are all choked up in each other now. I'm way too hot to be in clothes. I start lifting my dress over my head and Ben helps me, taking his shirt off, too. He crashes his lips to mine and kisses me again and my hands run along his chest, his arms, the waist of his shorts. I'm just as desperate to feel his skin on mine. All of it. I want to go back to where we were before it all went wrong and I can feel he does, too; in the rock solid weight of him pressing against me.
We don't say another word, but Ben makes very sure I don't need to as he pulls off the rest of his clothes, then the rest of mine and makes love to me. We reach that place again within minutes; the place where it's just our souls spilling into each other's, regardless of what we're physically doing. It's home.
'I've missed you so much,' he whispers into my neck, tracing two fingers over my nipple, making me suck in a breath.
'I've missed you too. I thought you didn't have exes.'
'Well, then you'll have to be my girlfriend.' He smiles right into my eyes, kisses my nose as I throw him a look of surprise. His breath is hot and heavy for me and I wrap my legs around him, pulling him even closer.
Home.
By the time we're both exhausted and breathless, the sun has set completely and it's pitch black outside. My head is still whirling but my stomach is growling. Ben grins, trailing a finger around my belly button.
'I like you in Bali,' he tells me, sweeping my damp hair back from my face.
'Technically we're in Lombok,' I correct him, climbing off the bed now, pulling him with me. I notice the Body Shop bath salts all out of alignment on the stand. We must have knocked them. I stop myself reaching for them by clenching my hands around his shoulders, but he does it for me anyway, lining them up perfectly; the pink jar, the purple jar, the baby blue jar.
I don't know how I thought I could get over Ben. I never want to have to even try to do that again.
'Let's get some food. How long are you staying?' The question comes out of my mouth before I've really prepared for the answer. I pull him into the shower and we soap each other up under the cold water, stopping to kiss again till we have no choice but to head back to the bed and pick up where we left off. In a haze of hands of limbs and lips crashing it hits me how I didn't just squirt the shower gel three times. I don't think I squirted it at all. I let Ben do it.
'In answer to your previous questions,' he says, nudging my shoulder as he finally pulls on his shorts and flattens down his crazy hair. 'I have nowhere in particular to be. I think I could get to like it here. They have diving.'
'Yes they do. It doesn't rain here for a while, either.'
He smiles. 'I kind of like the rain. It reminds me of y
ou.'
Ben holds my hand as we walk down the pathway towards the beach. We take our seats on the floor cushions in front of a low table and he studies me in the candlelight. We're the only ones here. The moon is almost full and a thousand stars are literally twinkling overhead, lighting up the flat, black blanket of ocean right ahead. I can just make out the shadows of the hills on the mainland and some of Gili Trawangan, the party island. Its lights always flicker there long after the ones on Gili Air go out.
'So, you've been writing?' he says, taking the menus we're handed by the waiter.
I lean back on the cushions, stretch out my bare legs and feet, rest my head against him. 'I have an agent,' I say on an exhale. I'm so blissed out.
Ben drops his menu on the table, eyes wide and impressed. 'Seriously? Already?'
'She's helping me, she thinks she can get me a book deal. I write every day over on the next island. I made friends with an Irish waitress called Pip. She knows how I like my coffee... which as you know is in copious amounts.'
Ben nuzzles my shoulder with his nose and kisses my arm, up my scars to my neck, then my cheek, then my mouth again. He sends tingles to every inch of me. 'I'm so proud of you, Izzy. I want to see this place, and Pip. I want to read your book. Does it have a happy ending?'
'It might have a happier one, now,' I say, nudging him and my heart fills up with love as I reach out and brush his hair from his eyes. The anchors. I don't know what comes next but I don't even care. I'm living my life in the now.
'I almost forgot,' he says, getting to his knees on the cushions and digging his hand into his pocket.
'Forgot what?' My minds flashes back to Colin pulling that ring out. He wouldn't, would he?
Ben hands me a box. It's bigger than a ring box, I think. I look at him and he must register the trepidation on my face. 'Open it.'
Slowly, cautiously I do as he says. It makes me gasp.
'I said I'd bring you one, didn't I?' He takes it from the box in his fingers. It's a starfish. Blue and covered in tiny gems, hanging from a silver chain. 'Sorry it's late,' he says a little sheepishly.
'I love it,' I laugh, watching him shift a tiny clasp on one side. 'Where did you get it?'
'Some crazy London market,' he winks. 'My mom helped me pick it out.' It pops open at the side and he hands it back to me. I hold it to the candle on the table, read aloud what's inscribed inside. The words cause a lump to form in my throat again: To Isla. An island who rose above. And to Bizzy, who showed me how to love.
'What will I get you now?' I whisper eventually, searching his face, putting a palm to his cheek and kissing the space between his brows; then his nose, then his lips. This man has absolutely no idea how much he's changed my life.
'Well, I'd have said a hot cross bun, but I already had one,' he says, seriously, tracing his thumb softly along my lower lip.
'There's more where that came from,' I flirt and he laughs, kissing my neck and helping me fasten my new chain.
'I meant I had a real one, from your deli. It tasted pretty good. Not as good as you, though.'
'You went to the deli?'
'Long story,' he grins. 'But really, all I need is all of you.'
'I think I can give you that,' I say, kissing him again as I let myself fall even further into him, body and soul.
Ben had all of me before the tsunami, when I was sixteen and love-struck and life was simple. Now that I'm twenty-seven and love-struck, somehow life seems just as simple.
We lost more than we really knew how to deal with; both of us did. But I suppose life is full of tsunamis, in all shapes and sizes. As long as we can keep our heads above the water; as long as we can let the love in, keep it flowing, not let anything pull us down, I know for a fact that we'll survive.
We'll do more than survive, in fact. We'll live.
THE END
...ALMOST...
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Read on for more of my romance novels and the bestselling Starstruck Series - three books about the battle to keep true love alive in the shallow world of fame and celebrity.
Before He Was Famous (Starstruck #1)
Let me guess. When you say the name Noah Lockton, you see him standing with one of a hundred guitars around his neck, glistening with sweat in the glare of the stage lights. You see him grinning, maybe on a pap shot, maybe snapped on a red carpet, smiling at you from the middle of a magazine. You see him in the spotlight; hot in more ways than one, right?
You see shouting headlines, hear the shrieks of infatuated fans, visualize the vacuous presenters buffing up his ego on all those TV channels and him batting away compliments like they're bees. You see bulbs flashing, neon flickering, videos playing on loop everywhere. They're in the gym, on the seatback screens of airplanes; in your Facebook sidebar when you're messaging your friends.
You hear his music, obviously. How could you not? It's everywhere. His voice is everywhere. You know the stats. Noah Lockton. Twenty-three. Five-foot-eleven, messy brown curls and steel-gray eyes. Pisces. You think you know him, this superstar, guitar-playing rock star.
But there are some things you don't know about Noah Lockton.
You don't know how proud he was that time, to have made me a cake out of Lego, mud and toothpaste. How when he was eight, he sat up in the tree house for three whole days after Prairie died. I was freaking out that if the dog fell down from heaven no one else would be as close to the sky to catch him. Noah just didn't want anyone else to see him cry. So we sat up there together, neither of us saying a word. Just holding hands.
You don't know how crazy he made me, teaching me guitar till my fingers bled. How we perfected the art of burping the entire first Britney Spears single together after four cans of Diet Coke and convinced a radio station to put us on air.
You don't know how his arms felt wrapped around me when my world came crashing down; how I clung to the feeling of him inside me, filling me up; bringing me back to life again when all I could feel otherwise was numb.
You don't know how we avoid the subject now.
When we were kids, his dad said his eyes were so shiny in all my photos because of all the stars inside them.
Noah was always going to shine.
He was always going to be mine.
But sometimes even I forget the way things were before he was famous.
Get Before He Was Famous now
Before He Was Gone (Starstruck #2)
I watch Joshua pick up the spear again. The lion roars at me from his arm as he pulls the fish off the end and walks to the shore to wash them off. My eyes trace the lines of his shoulder muscles. I flashback to last night... and this morning. We couldn't get beyond PG-13 before the cameras arrived, circling the rocks in the water again like sharks.
I wasn't exactly applying logic to my actions last night, though. Kissing him took me to another planet entirely. What if the entire U.S just saw me crushing this sand couch and now they're watching me standing here, acting like I have no clue what happened?
Journey glowers at me. Joshua doesn't turn around. Owning up would be the right thing to do in any regular situation, yes, but everyone knows the second a couple hook up on Deserted, the others turn against you. You're viewed as a threat. I need to think. I need to talk to him, but he's turned around now and he's still not looking at anyone. Maybe we shouldn't have stayed out so late, but the more we talk the more we have to say. We'd only been asleep a couple of hours before he was waking me up and taking me spearfishing.
Between dives this morning, Joshua told me about a guy he worked with once, out in Arizona, who lived in the desert because he was afraid of some watery abyss: 'You know, eighty per cent of all life on this planet is under the ocean,' he said, his flecked eyes bo
ring into me under the sun. 'The world's biggest waterfall, the biggest mountain range...'
'Yup. And there's more historical stuff down there - more planes and boats and secrets than in all the museums in all the world,' I said, remembering my facts from school. 'We know more about space than the sea,' and he grinned. I could tell he was struggling not to kiss me and I'd be lying if I said it wasn't kind of thrilling, being desired yet unattainable at the same time.
'True. But this guy was terrified, seriously terrified that some alien force is going to come out of the ocean someday. I helped him build a bunker, so he'd be safe.'
'I kind of want to meet this guy,' I told him.
'No you don't, he's crazy.'
'Why were you there?' I asked him.
'I had nowhere else to be,' he said.
I feel my pulse race again. Shan's right, Joshua's a dark horse for sure. For all he says to me now when we're alone, there's so much he's not saying in front of them and it's pissing people off. But there's something that's hurting him; I can't get it out of my head. Joshua told us how Mike was defensive 'cause of his fears, but I'm guessing at times he's exactly the same. Whatever made him speak up against Stephanie's beliefs stems from something he's struggling with alone.
I look on as he strokes the excess sand off the fish with his fingers carefully, stares out to the horizon. Maybe I'll never know what's haunting Joshua. What if he does get voted out next? The thought sends a bolt of dread through my core but I force my head back on straight, tear my eyes away from his body. I have to stay sharp. I'm not here for a guy. I'm here for a million dollars.
Get Before He Was Gone now
Before He Was A Secret (Starstruck #3)
