Uncharted(65)

“I…I…” I hiccup.

“Violet Anderson, you utter madwoman. You crazy, stubborn, complicated, awful, wonderful, beautiful girl. You lovely, charming, wretched, funny, sweet, strong woman.” He releases my shoulders to take my face between his hands. “I love you. I love you. And I will keep loving you until I take my last breath, whether that’s here on a deserted island with only hermit crabs to witness it, or back home in civilization, with the rest of humanity. I told you a long time ago — I’m here for you. I’ll be here for you. Always. Even when I’m a dick about it.” His lips twist. “Even when you’re a dick about it.”

I can’t help smiling at that amendment.

His eyes soften. “We may’ve been lost on this island, but I found myself in you. And I’m never letting you go. Not now. Not ever.”

His lips land on my cheeks, kissing away the tears still streaming down my face, then moving to claim my mouth. The kiss is one for the record books — an indisputable underscore to the emotions he’s just laid bare at my feet. I feel like I might float up out of my body as we stand interlocked on the beach, both trembling.

When he finally breaks away, my tears have stopped and there’s a lightness in my chest that’s been missing for days. He’s brought me back, yet again. My ever-present guardian, hauling me bodily from the brink.

From the depths of a swallowing ocean.

From the clutches of a scorching thirst.

From the embrace of a still, clear pool.

From the midst of a pit of despair.

He has saved me over and over and over again. Without faltering. Without failure. In the darkness, he leads me back, a guiding star illuminating my way home. In the glaring light of day, he is my solid foundation, letting me fly but always there to catch me when I need to return to earth.

I hear my pulse pounding in my ears as I look up at him. They say the average human heart beats 2.5 billion times over the course of a lifetime.

2.5 billion heartbeats.

And every one of mine belongs to him.

“I love you,” I tell him, kissing him again with every ounce of passion in my bloodstream. We’re both breathless when we finally break apart.

Beck’s eyes never shift from mine, emerald surfaces shining with light as he holds me close.

“Going home won’t be the end of us, Violet. It’ll be a chance at a real beginning. A future together, carved out in whatever pattern we want.” His nose nuzzles mine in a stroke of reassurance. “I don’t give a fuck what anyone else thinks about that. About us. The world can go to hell, for all I care. I’ve been there and back already. And if, when all is said and done, I walk out with the love of my life at my side… I guess I can’t really complain about a damn thing.”



In the end, it happens rather quietly.

There are no waving flags, no blaring trumpets. No armored knight on a white horse, charging in to save the day. A helicopter does not swoop down at the last second to air-lift us to safety. Men in black flak jackets don’t storm the beach, guns blazing, as though we’re hostages in a standoff with the island keeping us against our will.

It’s a sun-drenched morning. I sit with my feet in the shallows, watching minnows dart by with preternatural speed as Beck re-builds his fishing traps in the sand nearby.

One minute, the horizon is clear. The next, there’s a large luxury cruiser gliding into view.

Beck speaks rapid-fire into the radio as I throw wet leaves on our fire, sending a plume of thick black smoke up into the sky, to lead them straight to us. It’s far too shallow for the hundred-foot ship to approach our reef-ringed atoll. We stand on the beach, hand in hand, watching as a hard-bottomed inflatable dinghy is lowered from the upper deck with rope pulleys. It hits the water with a splash.

A few minutes from now, they’ll be here.

A few minutes after that… we won’t be.

This is our last moment alone together, I realize. Our last moment on the island.

I turn from the shore and glance around at the dense trees, the white sand, the azure sky overhead, taking it all in with fresh eyes. All the beauty and the devastation, all the love and the heartache. This place has been the battleground that tested my mettle; the fire that tempered me to steel; the landscape that altered me from girl to woman. I can’t help a bolt of sadness that shoots through me at the thought of leaving it all behind.

Well…

Not all of it.

I’ll be bringing the most important piece home with me.

“Are you ready?” Beck asks lowly, squeezing my hand ever tighter.

Whispering one last goodbye to Ian beneath my breath, I turn my back to the island and look ahead, toward the future, prepared to face whatever comes next. As long as we’re together, we can face anything.

Craning my neck, I plant a lingering kiss on Beck’s mouth.

“Let’s go home.”



THE END





…or is it the beginning?





Acknowledgments





So, funny story.

I never planned to write this book. I mean it! It started as an inside joke.

A bit of background…

At the end of 2016, I wrote a two-book series called THE GIRL DUET. In that story, the main character is an aspiring actress who lands the role of a lifetime starring in a movie about two people stranded on an island in the South Pacific after their plane crashes.