I was right. She shook her head. “I’m sorry. Maybe… maybe we should just go back to sleep when we get to the tent,” she said softly, turning her head away.
I sighed and drew back, zipping my pants up. My mood had instantly deflated along with my cock. I knew she wasn’t just saying that because she was actually sleepy. Something had changed in the last few seconds. Something in her mind. Perhaps hearing people heading toward us made her snap back to reality, and her idea of reality was rejecting me.
“What do you want, Indi?” I asked as she hastily dressed. I tried my best not to sound frustrated, but it was damn hard considering how things had been over the last week or so. She seemed to change her mind about whether she wanted me or not every five seconds, and it was getting beyond the point of ridiculous.
She kept avoiding eye contact. “I just want to get back to the tent and go to sleep,” she mumbled.
Great. That was useful information.
“This is because of the adrenaline, isn’t it?” I said with a dejected sigh as she slipped her jacket back on. “You got all freaked out, so your heart was racing, everything going a million miles an hour. Then I showed up, and all that buzz made you practically jump me. Now you’ve come to your senses. Sound right to you?”
She shook her head. “Maybe,” she muttered, pulling her jacket hood over her tousled hair. “Let’s just go, please.”
I trudged back toward our tent, keeping an eye on her to make sure she was okay, and I wondered if I had been completely delusional this whole time. A creeping feeling of dread told me that was indeed the case.
Indi had told me time and time again that she had no interest in me. Hell, she even told me that she’d never had any interest in me, even back when we were teens and I was certain she had a crush on me.
Perhaps I was so desperate to hook her that I’d glazed over and ignored her when she was telling me how she actually felt. I’d convinced myself that her frequent rejections were mere flirting, playing hard to get. Convinced myself that she really did want me, even when she was telling me straight to my face that she had no desire to touch me.
So what the hell was I meant to do?
Christ… I wasn’t sure of anything at this point. Was I supposed to give up? How many times could a guy put himself out there and get rejected by the same woman until he just stopped trying? I didn’t want to stop trying, but I also didn’t want to harass Indi into doing something she clearly didn’t want to.
Tonight was just a slipup, obviously. Like I suggested earlier, all that adrenaline flooding her veins had made her do something crazy. Something she instantly regretted. Something that wouldn’t be repeated.
Oh, well. At least I got to touch her and taste her, even if it was just for a moment or so. That kinda made things worse, though, because now I knew just how sweet she tasted, and I craved more. A lot more.
As I slipped back into the tent, I mentally cataloged every instance that made me think I had a clear shot with Indi. First, there was the kiss at the fake wedding photo shoot. But no, that was staged, so that didn’t count.
Then there was the time on the boat over to the island, where we bonded a bit during a chat about old times, and I thought she was going to kiss me. That didn’t count either—I was wrong, and she was simply sick.
Okay, what else….oh, there was that time on the first night when she acted all jealous at seeing Vanessa trying to flirt with me, and then there was the incident a few days ago when she thought she ‘caught’ me with Vanessa and got upset. I teased her at the time, saying I knew she was jealous because she wanted me, but she’d outright stated that she simply hated cheating, and that was why she was so angry—she thought I was helping Vanessa cheat on her husband.
Shit, why hadn’t I just listened to her? All these times, I was so fucking convinced that she was just playing games with me and hiding her true desires, when all along, she’d likely been telling me the truth. The truth I didn’t want to hear, and simply refused to hear until tonight.
She didn’t want me.
Perhaps I should’ve listened to her, but my own arrogance got the better of me. Clearly, she’d brought me to this island as nothing more than an acquaintance who was convenient in the role of her fake husband. I couldn’t keep hassling her, couldn’t force her into something she wasn’t into. I wasn’t giving up on trying to be a part of her life. I just had to change what exactly that specific part was if I wanted to keep fitting in with her wants and needs.
I guess it would be easiest for us to simply be friends, and if I wanted to stay in her life, I’d have to be happy to do that and nothing else.
Yep. Friends.
Just what every guy wanted from the most gorgeous woman on Earth…
Chapter Nineteen
Indi
Another four days had passed, with a few more challenges on the show. One couple had been voted out by the viewers—Ben and Annie Holbrook. I wasn’t surprised. They weren’t necessarily a terrible couple, they were just incredibly boring, and I knew viewers secretly wanted to keep all the dramatic couples around as long as they could. Otherwise Vanessa and Jay Varrone would’ve been out of here in two seconds flat, seeing as they were by far the worst-functioning couple on the show.
Right now, I was in the main function room at the Candle Cove Inn, standing at a breakfast buffet table which was put up by the staff from six till nine every morning. I picked up an apple and blueberry muffin before trying to decide if I wanted bacon and eggs as well. I decided against it, opting for just the muffin. Ever since the camping trip last week, I hadn’t been very hungry.
I turned my head over my shoulder to look at the reason I wasn’t hungry.
Blake.
He was sitting at the communal dining table, chatting to Yuri while they both dug into their breakfasts. He caught my eye for a second when he noticed me looking, and I abruptly turned back to the buffet table and pretended to be very interested in a custard Danish.
Last week’s late night forest incident between the two of us was my fault, I could admit that. I screwed up. Royally. I kissed him when I knew it was a bad idea, and then I let things progress even further. Too far. I was even about to climax when I saw the light… literally. Another husband and wife team had ventured out into the woods to squat somewhere, and the bright beam from their flashlight pushed me right back into reality.
That reality was my feelings for Blake. They weren’t just lust. I was seriously falling for him, just by being around him every day, and I knew how stupid it would be to get involved with a guy like him.
We’d done this back and forth thing for days now. A couple of weeks, actually. I knew I led him on, and that was wrong of me. I shouldn’t have kissed him; shouldn’t have let things get so far. But I also knew I couldn’t keep going with this charade of pretending that I was okay with casual hookups.
Blake was the love ‘em and leave ‘em’ kind of guy. That much was obvious, and it always had been. He wasn’t the ‘get married and have a house in the suburbs with three kids’ kind of guy, and I knew that was what I wanted for myself in the end. I didn’t want to set myself up for disappointment by getting too involved with Blake now, only to be left devastated when we arrived at the ‘leave ‘em’ stage of the short-term fling.
And so I pulled away from him, yet again. I didn’t want to. Lord, no. Not when his mouth was doing so many magical things to me. But I had to. It was for the best.
My ears pricked up at a nearby angry voice.
“Stephen, this is my seventh message. If you don’t call me back soon, I’ll have to assume you’re either dead or simply don’t want this job anymore. I really stuck my neck out for you to get it, so you’ve made me look like a complete asshole by leaving. Call me back!”
I turned to see Ed Kramer standing in the corner with a cell phone, near the French doors that led into the bar. When he saw me looking, he approached me and smiled apologetically. “Sorry, Indi, I didn’t see you standing there. I wish you didn’t have
to hear that.”
I shrugged. “It’s fine. He’s your son. Family stuff can be difficult.”
He sighed and pressed his lips together into a thin line before replying. “Tell me about it. He always said he wanted the same job as me, so I got him this junior producer position. And what does he do with it? Nothing. Unless you count flirting with the female crew members and shirking his duties. And now this.”
The ‘this’ Ed was referring to was Stephen Kramer’s sudden departure from the show after the camping trip. I’d only heard rumors from the other contestants so far, but apparently Ed had received a text early in the morning saying something like, ‘Sorry, had to head back to LA for a few days. Girl trouble’. He still hadn’t come back, and judging by what I just overheard, he also hadn’t bothered answering any calls.
“Any idea what’s taking him so long?” I asked.
Ed shook his head. “No. He was always like this, to tell the truth. He didn’t grow up like I did. My life was shit as a kid, honestly. We were poor, Haplin was boring…it all sucked. So I always made sure to give Stephen the best of everything in the big city. I guess I overcompensated, and he wound up a spoiled, entitled little brat.”
“I’m sure he’ll come back soon,” I said with a sympathetic nod.
“Let’s hope so,” he said. “Anyway, I’ll let you eat. Enjoy your morning off. We’ve got a busy afternoon planned, so bring your A-game. No losers allowed.”
Filming for the show didn’t start until about one o’clock today. Beforehand, I planned on going into the little town center to check out a café with Amy and Donna (accompanied by a crew member to keep an eye on us), and I thought Blake might’ve mentioned something about going fishing with Mike at a little spot on the inn grounds. I wasn’t entirely sure, because our recent conversations were all so awkward and stilted.
Again, it was entirely my fault. I knew that.
I wolfed down my muffin, then headed down the hall toward our room. I planned on kicking back with a magazine until Donna and Amy were ready to go. As I reached the door, it opened, and Mike stepped out. “Oh, hey, Indi,” he said. “Have you seen Blake? He said to meet him in your room for our fishing trip, and the door was unlocked, but he’s not in there. Any ideas?”
I nodded. “Yeah, sorry, he’s still at breakfast,” I said. “How long do you think you’ll be fishing for?”
Mike shrugged. “Dunno. Probably just till lunchtime. Filming starts back up at one, right?”
“Yep. Well, have fun fishing.”
“Will do. Thanks, Indi.”
Half an hour later, Amy and Donna came to get me, and we took off on our long walk down the hilly road toward town. As we went, we chatted about anything and everything, and soon the conversation took a natural turn to our love lives.
“So tell me about your wedding, Donna,” Amy said.
Donna began to gush about her wedding to Keenan five years prior—her designer princess gown, the huge heritage-listed church the ceremony was held in, the guest list of three hundred and fifty. It all sounded lovely, but I knew instantly that it wasn’t for me. Of course I wanted to get married one day, but not like that. I wanted something smaller, simpler.
“What about you, Indi?” Amy asked. “What was your wedding like?”
“Um….” I went silent for a few seconds.
I felt like such a fraud. I didn’t deserve to be here talking about my wedding when I wasn’t even married. I didn’t deserve to be here, full stop. I was nothing but a dirty liar. I couldn’t come clean now, though. I was in too deep.
I was officially a terrible person, wasn’t I?
“It was perfect,” I finally said, trying to ignore my raging guilty conscience. “It went off without a hitch.”
That last part was technically true—our fake, non-existent wedding went off without anyone actually getting hitched.
“Tell us more!” Donna demanded.
I took a deep breath and delved deep into my imagination. “It was in my parent’s backyard, in the town Blake and I grew up in. Lakewater, Washington. It’s a bit like this island, actually. All forests and mountains. Anyway, there was a little arch covered with white flowers in the yard, and there were also candles and fairy lights everywhere. The guests sat on white chairs my parents borrowed from the town’s function hall. And that was it. Simple but sweet.”
“God, that sounds gorgeous,” Donna said.
I nodded. “It was,” I replied in a small voice. I’d realized about halfway through my little speech that not only was I describing my dream wedding, I was describing my dream wedding to Blake in particular. The two of us in our little hometown, surrounded by close friends and family.
Nothing fancy. Still perfect.
Before now, I hadn’t really considered marriage other than in a sense of ‘something I’ll probably do one day when I’m older and have my shit together’. But now things were different. I found myself actually thinking about it properly. More to the point, I found myself wishing I hadn’t let things get so screwed up with Blake, because I was suddenly and inexplicably considering what it would be like being married to him.
But that was crazy… right?
Chapter Twenty
Blake
“Hold it steady, then slowly reel it in.”
I watched Mike tighten his grip on his fishing rod, and he followed my instructions before pulling it in too fast at the last second. “Damn, I think the lure snapped off.”
“It’s all right. You’ll get the hang of it,” I said. “Just remember—slow and steady.”
“Thanks for teaching me, man. Always wanted to go fishing, but never got around to it. Can you believe it? Grown-ass man who’s never fished.”
I chuckled. “It’s fine. Hardly anyone does it these days. It was nice of the producers to hook us up with some fishing gear, though.”
Mike shook his head. “It was actually Loretta. You know, the owner of the Candle Cove? Her husband loves fishing and told her she could lend us all this gear. All because she remembered me mentioning to Meredith on our first day here that this place looks like it would make a great fishing spot.”
“Oh, right.”
“I’ve actually been chatting to Loretta a lot. You know what else she told me?” Mike said as he attached another lure to his rod.
“What?” I sat back and watched him. He was a quick learner.
“She told me where the Candle Cove got its name from. Do you know much about the history of this island?”
I shook my head. “Nope. Fill me in.”
“She told me that back in the days of Prohibition, this place was somewhat of a bootlegger outpost. Small and out of the way, enough to attract practically zero attention. The inn had a secret distillery in the basement, and they’d take all the bottles down to the little cove just near here, hidden in boxes of dried fish. They’d light candles to signal to boats off the shore that the stuff was ready to be picked up. In the dead of the night, of course.”
“Man, history is cool sometimes,” I said, looking down from our little fishing spot toward the cove. “So they ended up calling it the Candle Cove Inn from that, I presume.”
“Yup.” He nodded. “The name stuck, and they never changed it. And why would they? It’s a cool piece of history. They even had tunnels running everywhere, just to make sure no one ever got spotted heading to the cove with all the contraband alcohol.”
“Nice. Maybe we can try and explore next time we have a full day off filming.”
“Yeah, for sure.” Mike smiled, then hesitated. “I saw Indi earlier.”
“Yeah?”
“Yep, when I went into your room to look for you. Ran into her on my way out, and she told me you were still at breakfast.”
I kept my face as nonchalant as I could. “So that’s how you found me. Sorry, I got caught up with all that crispy bacon in the buffet,” I said, trying to dodge the subject of Indi as much as possible.
“She seemed a little… I dunno, ma
n. Never mind. Not my place to say, I guess.”
I sighed. Clearly, he had something to say about Indi. “It’s fine. Go ahead.”
“She just seemed a bit…” He shook his head. “I dunno how to explain it. Like her light is gone. I mean, she didn’t say anything negative. It was just her general kind of aura. Listless. Y’know?”
I sighed. “Yeah. I know exactly what you mean.”
He glanced at me curiously. “Is there something going on? You wanna talk about it?”
“Nah. I’m good.”
“You sure? It could help to talk through your issues, figure them all out. That’s why we’re here, after all.”
I shook my head. “I already know exactly what my issues are. Just basic shit, really. Something hurt me a long time ago, and since then, I pretty much gave up. Stopped pursuing happiness within a relationship. Blah, blah, blah, you know the drill,” I said. “Er, our relationship, I mean,” I added, remembering that I was still supposed to be fake-married to Indi.
He nodded and leaned forward as he cast his line out into the water again. He was silent for a few minutes, and then he spoke up again. “Y’know, I really want to get first prize on this show. All that money… I fucking need it, and I’m pretty sure I’d do damn near anything to get it. But you know what I need more?”
“What?”
“To fix shit with Meredith. We’re on and off, on and off. Rinse and repeat. I can’t deal with it anymore. We need to stop. Need to heal. That’s the most important part of being here, right?”
“I guess,” I replied, feeling a little awkward. Indi and I weren’t like the others. We weren’t in a broken, dying marriage.
We weren’t in anything.
“Well, I know you don’t really wanna talk about it, but let me give you some advice at least.”
“Sure. Shoot,” I said. The man was trying to help, after all.
“We tried a couples therapist once. Didn’t work that well in the end, obviously, because we’re here, but the therapist did tell us some stuff that helped things along more than anything else ever did. Two main things. Never stop dating your wife. After he told me that, I realized that as soon as Meredith and I got hitched, I stopped trying. Stopped taking her out, stopped trying to surprise her.”
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