Page 61 of Escape to the Sun

He wanted to. He really did. But he couldn’t help but be cautious, too.

He’d made a vow four years ago to never let anyone get too close again. To never again let anyone love him or depend on him. He would never again put himself or anyone else in the position he and Carlie had been in. He’d loved her more than life itself and she’d loved him. It was that love that had destroyed her because he couldn’t live up to it. In the end, he couldn’t be the man she needed or deserved and her love for him had been the end of everything.

Never again.

That wasn’t your fault.

The stupid voice in his head, the very same voice Ash thought he’d silenced years ago, piped up. It took him off guard and he stopped halfway down the steps back to the bungalows, needing to sit down.

Years ago, right after everything with Carlie happened, the voice in his head would tell him that things would be okay and that it wasn’t his fault and all sorts of other lies. He’d worked very hard to silence that voice. Mostly with whiskey and women. Lots of whiskey and women. It took a solid six months, but he’d managed to do it. He’d also managed to alienate what few friends he had left and his own parents barely spoke to him. If he hadn’t have had that five minutes of sobriety where he managed to sell his company, he would have lost that too.

But it would have been worth it. Because one day Ash woke up and the voice was gone. As were all the others.

No one, especially his own conscience, was telling him how none of what happened was his fault, and how things would be okay and he’d go on to love again.

It was quiet.

Two weeks later, he sold his condo, his sports car, and everything else he owned and moved to Bocas Town.

But now the voice was back.

Dammit.

Ash dropped his head into his hands and squeezed. When he looked up, the voice was gone, but instead there was a roaring.

A roaring?

It took him a minute to realize the roaring he heard was the sound of the panga and from the sound of it, it was coming from quite a distance. He jumped to his feet and looked through the trees out to the ocean. He scanned for a moment, until finally he saw it. Would Heather have taken the boat out? And what the hell was she doing way out there?

From his vantage point, he couldn’t see the dock where the boat should have been tied up, and it was too far out to tell whether it was in fact the panga that belonged to Casa del Sol, but either way, it was headed directly toward them. And he intended to be there when it arrived. Sherri was right: even if he didn’t fully understand it himself, it was time that he let himself go. He might not know what that meant, but without a doubt, despite all the voices in his head—or maybe because of them—he knew that somehow, in some way, letting himself go involved Heather. And he couldn’t wait to tell her so.

* * *

It tookher awhile to figure out where she was. Especially considering she’d barely been out in the mangroves and they all looked the same to Heather. Or at least that’s what she’d thought before. After a few minutes of puttering around in the mangrove coves, she started to notice familiarities and even a few landmarks. She didn’t let herself get frustrated, or panic about her situation either. Instead, she stayed calm, used her head, and methodically worked her way through until she got to a larger opening and finally the ocean.

Once she was able to leave the shelter of the trees, it was easier to spot familiar places, like the cantina one island over from Casa del Sol. From there, she worked her way around until in the distance she could make out the familiar thatched roofs of the place she’d already learned to call home. She pushed the engine harder, anxious to get back to the dock.

To Ash.

She’d been told once that crying was therapeutic: your body needed the opportunity to cleanse you from all the emotions that were bound up inside, and crying was the best way to do that. At the time, she was sure she called bullshit or something equally enlightened. But now, after having just sat on the bottom of her boat, lost in the middle of the mangroves, crying like a baby, for the first time, she believed that there might be something to that bullshit because she felt like a completely new woman.

She could have laughed at how cliché she probably sounded or even looked, standing in the back of her boat, wind blowing through her hair, a smile on her face. But she didn’t care.

Not. One. Bit.

Heather felt great and it had been way too long since she could say that. More than that, she knew what she wanted and what she wanted was Ash. A laugh grew deep in her gut and she threw her head back and let it out as she whipped toward the dock and the figure she knew to be Ash ran down the dock to greet her.

It was him. He caught the bow of the boat as she slowed and brought it alongside the dock.

“Where’ve you been?” Ash tied the rope to the cleat and turned, right as she stepped onto the dock and into his arms. He caught her with a chuckle that she cut short with the press of her lips to his mouth. “Mmm, I still don’t know where you’ve been,” he said when he pulled back. “But I’m sure happy you’re back.”

“Me too.”

His hands slid down her body and pressed her close to his need for her. More than anything, she wanted to answer that need.

“I didn’t know you took the boat out.” He bent and nibbled on her neck. “Were you gone long?”

The laugh burst from her throat before she could stop it.

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