I had to go sooner than planned. You deserve every happiness in life and I truly hope you find it. Don’t try to find me again. It’s over. We’re better off without each other.
She was better off alone and he was better off finding someone else.
Her heart raced as she ran to her room. She travelled light and it took less than ten minutes to get all her possessions into the small pack.
“I need to get off the island tonight,” she said to Tamati when she found him in the office.
“Is everything okay?” He looked concerned.
“Everything’s fine,” she rushed her speech. “I just need some space. Quickly.”
“Has something happened?” Tamati’s frown grew and he glanced in the direction of Hunter’s villa.
She touched his arm gratefully. “No, it’s fine. I just… we want different things and it’s better for me to go rather than get heartbroken.”
“Heartbroken?” Tamati echoed, stunned. “Then he doesn’t deserve you. Don’t worry. We’ll stall him for the night.”
Luisa didn’t imagine that anything would stop Hunter if he set his mind to it. Not even miles of ocean and no boat.
* * *
“Where’s Luisa?” Hunter frowned at the manager of the island resort. His blood was pumping and his muscles twitching. Fighting the urge to run was making his jaw ache.
“I couldn’t say.” The manager’s reply was laconic but underlined with a hard edge.
She wasn’t working the bar. He’d glanced in at her room and her bed was neatly made. The notebooks and that tin of pencils were gone though. Of course they were.
He didn’t need the man to tell him she’d gone, her lame-ass little note had done that. And he realized what the staff were doing with their slow, uninformative replies and their inability to look him in the eye. They were keeping him here for another night. Giving her the time to make a clean getaway. She didn’t trust him not to follow her. She didn’t want him to follow her. He stalked back to the beach and stared out to the horizon. So fucked off he could hardly think.
Better off without each other.
What kind of weak bullshit was that?
This wasn’t over. It had only been getting better between them. But he’d opened up to her—and he never did that—and she’d run the first chance she could. Snuck away while he was asleep. Couldn’t she handle the blurry mess of his background? Was she some kind of social snob?
He knew that wasn’t it. But it picked his most vulnerable scab—that part of him that had never healed. He never spoke of his past, and the one time he did, this happened? For the first time he’d truly relaxed around someone and he’d opened up. Now he felt cheated and… worthless. He hated that she’d made him feel worthless. Like he wasn’t good enough for her to stick around for or to be honest with.
In this second he hated her for that.
And he damn well wasn’t going to hunt her down—she didn’t need to go to the trouble of asking other people to hold him back. That just added insult to injury.
He swigged bourbon straight from the bottle, needing the burn to warm his ice-up veins. Standing on the sunlit beach of this tropical paradise, he was so fucking cold.
Luisa Williams was a coward. She ran from things she couldn’t cope with and she couldn’t cope with her feelings for him. He’d been trying to give her time—to give them time because it had taken only a couple of days before he’d realized there was more to this pull between them than just the physical. Hell, for the first time in his life he’d actually been having pure and simple fun—he’d been falling…
But she’d bolted.
He could see that she’d be better off without him—a moody ass who put himself in danger for a living. Who didn’t smile enough. Didn’t speak enough. He got that he wasn’t the life of the party like she was. He poured another triple nip straight into his mouth. But why would he be better off without her? Or was that just some platitude because she didn’t want to ‘hurt’ him.
He stilled, then spat out the drink. Luisa’s nature was generous and she felt things deeply. He also knew that she didn’t want to feel things deeply. That was what she was fighting within herself.
She truly wouldn’t want to hurt him—so why did she think she’d be able to? What was it about herself that she thought he needed protecting from? What hadn’t she told him? What were the last of those secrets in her eyes? Because there were more secrets, he knew it.
He had too many unanswered questions. And he also knew what he was going to do.
Again.
* * *
Luisa unfolded the tray-table on the airplane and grimaced as she opened her journal. She’d been stalling going home for so long. The check-up with her oncologist couldn’t be avoided and she couldn’t avoid her family for much longer either. It wasn’t fair on them. She’d thought she was being so strong, so brave, so awesome, but it was totally the opposite of that. She’d been a complete coward.
As for Hunter…
She should have been honest with him. She should have explained that she was too broken and that she didn’t want him trying to be the glue for her. Whether he wanted her to not, it hadn’t been fair to run away. Again.
She flipped through the pages of her journal, her tin of pencils open on her lap. She had a few hours on the plane and given she was never going to sleep, it was the perfect time to add in some pages. She hadn’t added anything in the last few days because she hadn’t had the time. But now she couldn’t bring herself to paint anything, to draw. Certainly not to write. She couldn’t bring herself to remember. But she couldn’t block the memories—they swamped her, swirling not just in her mind, but in her body until she was one big desolated ache.
How would he have reacted to her disappearance? He’d opened up to her and she’d used him…
Maybe he was relieved she’d gone? Maybe he was over all her drama and happy she’d gone already. That’d be fair enough. But she couldn’t quite believe that he’d not be bothered and she felt guilty for the way she’d walked out. He’d been as intensely into her as she’d been into him. Now every fiber yearned. She missed him.
Oh she was so viciously selfish.
All the guilt washed over her—the way she’d avoided visiting her poor parents. Hunter would never do that to his if he knew who they were. He understood too well the heartache of loneliness and isolation. He was a much better person than she and he’d be so disappointed in her if he knew the true extent of her emotional cowardice.
She understood now how much her parents had wanted to protect her, because they loved her. In the same way she’d wanted to protect Hunter because she’d fallen for him. But she’d mucked it up.
Surely she could learn from his example—to find, to try to forgive, to try to make things better?
She breathed out in a moment of respite. She’d see her parents. Then she’d go find him and offer that apology in person.
But a tiny voice inside mocked her.
Her desire to apologize wasn’t about him. It was still her own selfishness and her own need. It was that last kernel of hope—that he’d still want her, that he’d ask her to stay—that last wish that wouldn’t shut up
She’d force it to shut up. She’d crush it. She had to be stronger. If she was going to do what was best for him, she had to let him go completely. What was done, was done. He wouldn’t come for her.
It was over.
CHAPTER TWELVE
“HEY LOGAN.” Hunter answered his phone, knowing his buddy would worry if he didn’t.
“Where are you?” Logan never wasted time getting to the point.
“New Zealand.”
“Why the hell are you that far away? Doesn’t it take like two years in a plane to get there?”
It felt like it. Hunter grimaced as he looked out the window of the hotel he was currently camped in, battling himself not to keep searching for more info on the elusive Luisa Williams.
“You found her.” Logan said flatly. “You okay
?”
“Maybe not.” He wasn’t sure if he could cope with her rejecting and running from him again.
There was a silence. Yeah, Hunter had pretty much never admitted that to anyone before. Until Luisa.
“You need me to come out there?” Logan asked. “I’ll make the arrange—”
“And waste two years of your life in a plane?” Hunter joked lamely. “I couldn’t ask you to.”
“You can ask me anything. I’ll be on the next flight—”
“No, don’t.” He sighed. “I’ve lost her again. Why the fuck didn’t I just fully investigate her?” Why wasn’t he online already? Why had he gone the old school route—in person.
“Because you wanted her to tell you everything herself.”
“Dumb ass idea.” People kept secrets because they were scared. He’d wanted him to trust her. But what was that worth anyway—like he could make a real difference?
“Idealistic maybe. Sure. Not necessarily dumb.” Logan paused. “So you know her deal?”
“Not enough.” Not everything.
“She scared?”
“Yeah. I guess.” Not of him physically. Maybe it was just that she didn’t want him. But he couldn’t believe that. She couldn’t fake the joy in her eyes when he was with her. That laughter had been real. It had been so good he didn’t know how she could walk away from it so easily. “How’s Min?” He changed the subject.
“Outrageous as ever.” Logan answered with the smile in his voice that he had every time he thought of his woman. “Stay in touch Hunter. Don’t go offline. I don’t want to have to worry about you. It sucks.”