Fuck my constant need to control everything. I’ve made a fucking mess, and I just hope I’m not too late to make it right.
I need to get to Doralee and explain, but first I make a phone call to Margaret, outlining what I need her to do. I try to apologize about being that boss on New Year’s Eve, but as per her usual she takes to the task I lay out like a pit-bull, knowing there will more than likely be a sizeable bonus in her bank account by morning.
Which there will. Because if there’s one thing I always do, it’s reward loyalty.
“Fuck.” I grunt, turning toward the kitchen door and steeling myself for what I’m about to find upstairs. I have some explaining to do and I’m not relishing it.
Before I can get out of the kitchen, I see a flash of white, dark hair streaming behind running out the front door, slamming it hard behind.
What the fuck.
I race to the door, swinging it wide, and see Doralee in a white sundress, half marching, half jogging down the front path toward the gate that surrounds the property separating it from the dirt road that leads to the other villas.
“Doralee!”
She spins around, still running half sideways away from me in bare feet.
“Leave me alone!” Her eyes are red and the low sun shines on her wet cheeks, her tears ripping a hole in my heart.
“No.” I bark back, already at a dead run toward her. “I’m not leaving you alone.”
She stops running as I get close and turns, squaring her shoulders, and to my surprise comes toward me with a fury, fists clenched at her sides, the tears in her eyes more like hard-edged crystal than water.
She gets right up to me, her face only coming to my chest, glaring up at me, and jabs a finger into my sternum. “You’re a liar, just like all of them. I’m tired of being everyone’s pawn in whatever games they are playing. I thought you were different.” The anger in her voice shreds my heart. “You’re just another version of the same.”
“No.” I shake my head, grabbing her hand, but she jerks away from my grip. “I’m not like them! I couldn’t wait, Doralee. If you had gone to Paris…I just know how things work. There was no way I could let you go there alone. From that first moment I saw you, I loved you. I needed you.”
“Didn’t consider that I could make decisions by myself? Didn’t think maybe, just maybe, you didn’t have all the relevant information?” She turns around, doubling over and screaming, her hands at the side of her head. Then she spins back around with a look in her eyes that nearly puts me to my knees. “The only things I love in this world are gone because of you! I’ll never, ever see them again and I’ll never, ever forget that you did this!”
“I didn’t know. Doralee, wait, I’m trying…”
“Let me go!” She starts walking backwards again. “If you don’t, I’m just trading one prison for another. Is that what you want?”
“No, baby—”
“You asked me to give myself to you. Give, not be taken against my will. I’m done with no one asking me what I want. Everyone just thinking they know better. Well guess what? I do know what I want. I do know what’s best for me and right now? That. Is. Not. You.”
She spins, walking through the gate, and I fight the urge to run to her, to scoop her up, to throw her over my shoulder and do exactly what she’s asking me not to do.
Control her.
It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do, but I let her walk away. Her white sundress fading to gray as she marches down the path. My only relief is that she will, in time, have to come back to the house. There’s no car to drive off the island, no ferry to catch.
When she does, I’ll be there waiting, hat in my hand, ready to do whatever it takes to be the man she needs me to be. I fucked up. I thought I knew better but turns out I was wrong.
Back inside the house, I make my way to my office. I throw a chair against the door. Break a lamp. Kick the wall until the plaster crumbles and pain shoots up from my toes, leaving me heaving and screaming at the ceiling.
I drop down into a chair across from my desk, trying to settle my breathing as I look out the window toward the ocean. The waves are breaking on the shore, the wind has picked up and the sun is only a strip of orange on the horizon.
What I hear next turns my blood cold, and I’m on my feet bolting toward my office door.