SEAL’s Love by Leslie North
15
The next day, they were back at the resort, hoping to get a note from Serenity in response to their message the day before. Harper needed to be focused on her sister, but all that looped through her head on endless repeat at the moment were Colin’s words from the night before.
I love you, Harper.
In a different universe, those words should make a girl happy, overjoyed. The great guy she was with cared about her as much as she cared about him. But all they did for Harper was make her even more stressed than she already was. Which wasn’t good. Not at all. She’d been very nearly asleep when he’d said them, and part of her desperately hoped that they were just a dream—that he hadn’t really said them at all. If he didn’t love her, then they could keep going like they were. If he didn’t love her, then nothing needed to change. But if he did…
She didn’t want this to end between them. That’s why she’d cut him off the previous night, kept him from saying what he’d wanted to say. She’d panicked. Tried to use sex to distract them both, but it had backfired. Because last night’s sex had been deeper, felt more intimate than any time before and now she felt even closer to Colin, which would make the inevitable break up even harder. Because they would break up. She wasn’t good for him. Couldn’t be what he wanted. Should never had gotten involved with him like this to begin with.
Yet here they were, in exactly the spot she never wanted to be. Paradise all around them, hell inside.
Colin, apparently interpreting her silence as fear, took her hand and squeezed it. “It’s going to be okay. Whatever happens, whatever the note says today, it will be okay. I’ll make sure of it.”
How the hell did he do that? With his gentle reassurance and kind, sincere support, he managed to hit her right in the feels every damned time.
She took a shaky breath and tugged on his hand, pulling him off to the side of the large, crowded lobby. “Thank you.”
“For what?” he frowned down at her.
“For everything.” She took a deep breath and stared at the center of his chest for fear she’d do something stupid like start crying. Harper never cried, dammit. She blinked hard against the sting in her eyes. “I’m so grateful for all your help, Colin. I want you to know how much it means to me.” Then the old fears inside her clawed to the surface, and she flailed inside. Too close. Too intimate. Too much. Imminent danger. Abort! Abort! Harper tried to play it off with a snort and a joke. “But don’t worry, I’m not going to expect you to always be around to be my knight in shining armor. Once this is all over, I won’t lean on you like this again. Promise.”
She’d expected, hoped, he’d take the hint and tease her back, but instead of the eye roll she’d wanted, Colin’s frown deepened to a scowl and his blue eyes darkened with intensity. “I want you to lean on me, Harper. I want to be there for you. I don’t know what the other guys you dated in the past were like, but I’m not those guys. I won’t run away at the first sign of trouble. I love you. I want a future with you, no matter how hard or difficult or messy. That’s what I want.” He looked away and exhaled, then focused on her again. “Look, I know you’re not there yet and with everything else going on, now is probably the worst time possible to bring my feelings up. I swear we don’t have to discuss it again until all this is over and Serenity’s safe, but…” He swore under his breath, lowering his head before meeting her gaze again. “Just so you know, you can lean on me. Always. I love you, Harper Bell, and I’m not going anywhere. I want to be there for you, no matter what you’re going through.”
It was a lot to take in. Too much, honestly. Between his words and the stress of not knowing what was happening with her sister, Harper felt trapped and overwhelmed. She couldn’t protect Serenity, couldn’t give Colin what he wanted from her. Couldn’t get anything right.
Powerlessness slashed through her good intentions like a machete and she lashed out, pushing against him until there was enough space between them that she could breathe again. “No!” she said, too loud. The sound echoed through the lobby, and several people stopped and stared. Harper didn’t care. She had to stop this, had to get out, had to end this before even more people got hurt. “I can’t do this, Colin. I’m sorry, but I can’t. I care about you, I do. But I’m never going to want a marriage and a future and white picket fence with you. That’s not me.”
“I know. We can talk about this—” he started to say, but she was on a roll now and needed to get this out.
She held up a hand to stop him. “No. I’m done talking about this. I never should’ve let things get to this point and I’m sorry. This thing between us never should have gone so far. Let’s put this behind us and focus on rescuing my sister, okay? That’s why we’re here. It should’ve been our top priority all along. We’re done. Understand?”
Colin looked like he wanted to argue, his cheeks flushed and his eyes glittering with pain and frustration, but she knew he wouldn’t want to make a scene when there were so many people around. His nostrils flared as he inhaled deep, his lips compressed into a thin white line. Finally, that stoic wall crashed down as he got control of the emotions brewing behind his eyes, and the cool indifference made Harper’s chest constrict. She should be happy that he was putting away those feelings she didn’t know how to handle. This is what she wanted. Except it felt like shit. Like the sun had gone out in her sky.
“Fine. Message received.” His sharp voice could’ve cut diamond. “We are over.” He stepped back, posture rigid, military through and through. “I’ll check at the reception desk and see if they have a note from Serenity. Excuse me.”
Harper watched him go, knowing she’d done the right thing, but still feeling terrible about it. Her mood didn’t improve when Colin returned with said note, his expression a mix of confusion and consternation as he read it.
“What?” she asked, her heart in her throat. “What does it say?”
He handed it to her.
She skimmed the words, then skimmed them again. It made no sense, given all the previous conversations they’d had with Serenity. Her sister said she was fine. That Sebastian Bone was actually doing nothing wrong at all, and that he was a much better man than any of them had thought. She then said that Harper and Colin should leave the island and go home. And, as if that weren’t odd enough, her sister ended the note with some strange statement about the resort gift shop having Harper’s favorite mint chocolate chip ice cream. What the hell did that have to do with anything?
“Is that her handwriting?” Colin asked.
She nodded.
“What’s that weird sentence about the ice cream? Does that mean anything to you? Is it some sort of code or something?”
“No. I don’t think so.” She exhaled her pent-up breath, her shoulders slumping. “I mean, when we were growing up, we had this inside joke about me puking up mint chocolate chip ice cream when I was a kid. I haven’t been able to eat it ever since. She’d tease me about it sometimes.” She shrugged, uneasy, but unable to point to exactly why. The note should be good news, right? “I guess if Serenity is making jokes, maybe she is okay.”
Colin looked unconvinced. “Are you sure? If Sebastian Bone is innocent, why didn’t she come here herself to talk to us?”
His skeptical tone, paired with all the tension and heartache and uncertainty she was still grappling with from earlier pushed her irritation over the edge and she snapped, “Yeah, I am sure. I think I know my sister better than you. And maybe she was busy.” She folded the note, then shoved it in the pocket of her linen palazzo pants. “Sometimes, Colin, people learn that a situation isn’t what they thought it was, and then they decide they don’t want you around anymore.”
A muscle ticked near his tight jaw and the air sizzled between them. Her stomach twisted and she felt sick and sorry, regretting her angry words. She wanted to apologize, wanted to beg his forgiveness and throw herself against his strong, warm chest, have him hold her and comfort her like he’d done before, but no. She needed to get used to standing on her own two feet, alone, again. The sooner the better. Because this was over between them. She’d seen to that. For Colin’s own good. For hers too. Because letting people too close only brought pain in the end.
“Fine,” he said again, turning away from her to hail a taxi for them. “Apparently this is all over, then.”
They rode back to the house in silence. Walked up to his bedroom in silence. Packed their things in silence, trying their best to avoid getting in each other’s way. When he finally carried his bag out of the room and went downstairs, she could breathe again.
Knees wobbly, Harper sagged down on the edge of the mattress, picking up a flower he’d given her the other day that she’d kept in a small vase on the nightstand. Normally, she’d dry it and save it as a memento of their time here, of their relationship. She liked to do that, save small things to help her remember the good times in a relationship. But the thought of remembering Colin that way, as just another page in her scrapbook, just another relationship that had come and gone, hurt too much. So, she tossed the flower in the trash, then pulled out her sister’s note again, reading it over to reassure herself that Serenity was really safe.
But the longer she stared at the note, the more her gut said something was wrong.
Maybe Colin was right. It was weird that Serenity had come by the resort to drop off the note but hadn’t stayed to talk to them. And that last part about the ice cream was definitely weird. Weird in a way that nagged at her, like there was something she was forgetting.
After a minute, it came to her. When they were kids, they used to do this thing called Opposite Code, where they wrote things to each other that were meant to be read as the opposite. So “Let’s not go to Baskin Robbins at 3 a.m. because I hate ice cream” meant “Let’s go to Baskin Robbins at 3 p.m. because I love ice cream.” Stupid and silly, honestly, and a horrible secret code, since anyone could figure it out, but what if that’s what Serenity was doing here?
Pulse thudding, Harper pulled out her phone and called the resort gift shop.
“Nirvana Resort and Spa. How may I help you?”
“Yes, does your gift shop carry mint chocolate chip ice cream?” she asked.
“I’m sorry, ma’am,” the clerk answered. “But our gift shop doesn’t carry ice cream at all.”
Oh God.
“Okay. Thank you.” Harper ended the call, then stared straight ahead, thoughts racing. Serenity had sent her a message to read everything in her note as the opposite. Mint chocolate chip wasn’t her favorite. The gift shop didn’t have it. She wasn’t fine. Sebastian Bone was guilty, and he was much worse than they’d thought. Harper and Colin should not leave the island.
Colin.
She was off the bed and out the door in less than a second, jogging down the stairs and searching for him. She finally found him outside on the back patio and pulled him aside. “I found something. About Serenity.”
“Go on,” he said, that cold mask still in place.
“You were right. It was a code. Serenity and I used to have this thing where we’d write in opposites. Like I hate blue meant really you loved blue. That sort of thing.” She pulled out the note and glanced up at him, but his expression was still stoic. Undaunted, she continued. “The ice cream was supposed to clue me in to read everything as reversed since I hate mint chocolate chip. I’m guessing that my sister must have gotten caught by Sebastian, and she’s in trouble. He must’ve figured out that she was on to him, and he forced her to write this note to get us off his track. I’m sorry about the awful things I said back there in the hotel lobby, and I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you. I was upset and—”
“Don’t think about that now,” Colin said, snatching the note from her and pulling out his phone. “And you were right too. The only thing we should be focusing on now is saving your sister. Let me notify the island police.”
He stalked off to one corner as he made the call. From Colin’s darkening expression, the conversation didn’t go well. Cursing low, he returned to her a few moments later.
“What did they say?” she asked.
“I read them the note and they said they have to take it at face value unless we can produce evidence that Serenity’s being held against her will. There’s nothing they can do.”
“Oh God.” She turned away, terrified and frustrated. “What are we going to do now?”
“We’re going to save your sister,” he said, taking her hand and leading her back inside, then up the stairs to his room. “I promise.”
