Silence slipped between us.
Speak again.
Please, for the love of everything fucking holy, speak to me.
“Three nights I’ve repeated myself. Three nights, I’ve made you a smoothie and fed you just the essence of it, knowing how dangerous it is to put something in your mouth when you can’t swallow. By trying to save you, I might just kill you, and you know what...I’m beginning to think you might want that.”
Her voice cracked, but she heard my plea and kept talking. “Jess is awake, by the way. She woke up over a week ago. Dr Campbell let her move into Cal’s villa yesterday. Her wounds are healing. She’ll never have children, but she’s alive, and I’ve never seen her so happy. She said you’re aware Cal had finally seen how she felt about him. Well, they’re taking things slow...obviously with them both wounded, but they’re together.”
A quick slash of blueberry on my tongue before her voice dropped with painful secrets. “I can’t be around them for long. Does that make me a terrible person? I’m happy for them, of course I am, but seeing them laughing together, touching...it breaks my heart, Sully.” Her voice was as tragic as I felt, heavy and hitched with grief. “I just wish...I wish you were here. I mean, you are here, but you’re not. I have your body, but without your soul...there’s nothing.”
I’m so fucking sorry, Eleanor.
“Almost six weeks you’ve been hiding. Six weeks of sleepless nights and endless hoping. I hate myself that I’m complaining when you’re the one trapped in there, but...it’s so, so hard. So hard not knowing how I can help. So hard thinking I’m not helping enough. So hard just letting time either cure you or kill you.”
I’m here.
I’m not going to die.
I give you my word.
I’ll find some way to get back to you.
“Louise said if you stay under much longer, your body will start shutting down. She keeps trying to talk to me about the end. Whether or not I’m prepared to sign documents that allow you to fade peacefully, or if she needs to have life support ready to drag out your catatonic existence forever.”
A sliver of ice danced over my lower lip as she ran her thumb with blueberry smoothie.
“I told her that it’s your choice. It’s always been your choice, and I have no power to make you choose, but...if you can hear me, I need to say something. I need you to know. After all, you can only make a choice on informed facts. You don’t know what I’ve done. You think the world you left is still the one you’ll wake up in, but...it’s not.”
What do you mean?
What did you do?
“Before I tell you, you have to promise me you’ll forgive me. Then again, if you wake and hate me, I can accept that. Wake and send me away and I’ll go. I’ll leave and I won’t come back because I’d rather live in a world where you’re alive and not with me, than a world where you don’t survive.”
You’re scaring me, Jinx.
What did you do?
“I keep wondering if I’ve gone too far, but...I did it because it was the right thing to do. And something tells me...you were ready to do the right thing.”
Tell me.
She paused and darkness crept from the shadows. Cloying and deleting, blackness came for me.
Speak, Eleanor!
Keep me with you.
“I went through your emails.” She stopped for a moment before continuing, “I cleared out anything that could be read as suspicious and saved correspondence from your company. Cal has been in contact with Peter Beck and your scientists are working as normal. And as far as your corporate life is concerned, your requests to your lawyer were wise. Cal is aware you’ve left Sinclair and Sinclair Group to him—not that he’s accepted that you’re gone, of course—but he is looking after your investments.”
She saw.
She knows I bequeathed—
“You gave me Goddess Isles.” Her voice cracked with tears. “You gave me Pika and Skittles.” Something thumped against my chest. A feminine fist. A bite of pain. “You chased after me all while knowing you wouldn’t come home, and I hate you for that. I curse you for putting me first because it was never meant to be that way. We were equals, Sully. You are not my master with the obligation to keep me safe. You are not my husband with vows to protect me in sickness and in health. You were meant to stay alive so we could be happy!”
Christ, Eleanor.
My beating heart splintered down the middle. Her sadness kept me shackled, not allowing the blackness to claim me.
“Anyway.” She sniffed back tears and kept going, “The police came back two days ago with a search warrant.”
What?
“Cal and I gave them free access to your databases, your laptop, and your office. They swarmed the island from the guest villas to the goddess villas and every pool and restaurant in between.”
Holy shit.
I would wake—if I could wake—in handcuffs.
What was the fucking point in leaving one jail for another—
“They left with a profuse apology. They wished you a speedy recovery and are satisfied that Goddess Isles is a simple respite for married couples who come for some sexual counselling and relationship advice. That was my idea, by the way.”
Her soft laughter undid me.
“I could wipe your emails clean and destroy any files that might have hinted at purchased goddesses, but I couldn’t hide the abundance of accommodation and the aura of paradise and perversions.”
Her lips pressed against my ear. “I stayed with the police as they did their tour. I grew wet as I led them through my villa and looked at the sink where you took me. I wanted to touch myself as we walked on the beach where you fucked me on all fours in the shallows. I answered their questions as we stood in the same place I watched you appear from
