I’d kissed my ex-husband.
I’d kissed my ex-husband and liked it. What the hell was wrong with me?
I buried my face in my pillow with a groan. My alarm clock had gone off three times already, but I couldn’t bring myself to get out of bed. Getting out of bed meant facing the aftermath of yesterday’s choices, and I was content to stay in my bubble of delusion.
Sadly, the universe didn’t agree. Less than a minute after I settled on the decision to loiter beneath the covers all morning, my phone rang. I ignored it. It rang again.
Another groan traveled up my throat. I almost wished I hadn’t stored it in one of the canoe rental’s lockers before we’d rowed out. Otherwise, it’d be at the bottom of the lagoon, and I wouldn’t have to talk to anyone at—I peeked at the digital alarm clock— eight fifteen in the morning.
I pressed answer and put the caller on speakerphone without lifting my head or checking their identity. “Hello?”
“Good morning!” Isabella chirped. “Sooo, how’s it going? Having the time of your life, I hope.”
“It’s complicated.” The pillow muffled my response.
My kiss with Dominic had lasted both too long and not long enough. In reality, we couldn’t have embraced for more than a few minutes, but his heat and taste had imprinted themselves so thoroughly on my senses that I could still feel him a day later.
The soft, firm pressure of his mouth. The expert sweep of his tongue against mine. The delicious tingles running down my spine when he’d tugged on my hair.
Goose bumps peppered my skin.
“Right, right.” Isabella sounded distracted. “Um, out of curiosity, are you at your hotel right now?”
“Yes. I was sleeping,” I said pointedly, which was half-true. Honestly, I was surprised she was calling this early. Isabella wasn’t a morning person.
Wait a minute. Why was she calling this early?
I popped up, my adrenaline spiking with sudden alarm. “Why?
Is something wrong?”
“Well…” She inhaled an audible breath. “A pipe burst overnight. The entire store is, um, flooded.”
Shock punched through the tatters of my grogginess. Flooded.
The word pulsed beneath my skin like a frantic heartbeat.
“How bad is it?” My voice remained surprisingly calm despite the panic short-circuiting my brain.
There were other questions I should ask—things I should do—but dread rendered me immobile as I waited for Isabella’s answer.
“Pretty bad. The water damaged a majority of the inventory, and some of the electronics are toast. It happened overnight, so we’re still getting a sense of the full scope of the damage. Kai called in someone who’s assessing the situation right now.” Guilt leaked over the line. “I’m so sorry.
If I’d showed up earlier…”
“It’s not your fault. There’s nothing you could’ve done.” Isabella was already doing me a huge favor by looking after the store while I was gone, and she wasn’t a plumbing professional. Even I didn’t know what to do in the case of a burst pipe.
“Don’t worry. We’ll take care of everything,” Isabella said. Her guilt was still palpable. “Kai’s on it, and the pipe will be fixed within the next two hours, but I figured you’d want to know.”
“Thank you.” My own guilt formed knots between my shoulders. The store’s grand opening was in less than two months. Sloane had been working her ass off on the party, and she’d already sent invites to dozens of high-profile guests—the ones I depended on to spread the word and keep the business afloat. Managing a physical shop required more strategy and publicity than an online one; I couldn’t fuck this up.
I knew that, and yet I’d been hiding in Brazil for the past two weeks.
Yes, I’d needed a break from the city, but at this point, I was actively avoiding my return. Brazil was fantasy; New York was reality, and it was time I stopped running from my problems. It wasn’t fair or right to make my friends shoulder the burden of managing my business. Isabella had a book to write, and Kai had a multibillion-dollar corporation to run. They shouldn’t be fixing my plumbing issues.
“Tell Kai I’ll handle it,” I said. I glanced at my suitcase, which lay open on the luggage rack across the room. “I’m flying back to New York.”
I asked Dominic for help out of necessity. I couldn’t find any last-minute direct flights to New York, and when I explained the situation, he checked us out of the hotel and had us in the air within two hours. No follow-up questions required.
The perks of owning a private jet.
“We’ll be there by evening,” he said. “Don’t worry. Everything will be okay.”
Logically, he was right. A burst pipe wasn’t the end of the world, but it was a rude awakening from my idyllic bubble in Brazil, and the superstitious part of me couldn’t help but read too much into the incident. It seemed like a bad omen for a store that wasn’t even open yet.
However, I kept my worries to myself. Dominic didn’t believe in superstitions, and I already felt bad about making him drop everything to fly me back to the city.
We had plenty of unfinished business ourselves, but we didn’t discuss our kiss during the flight. When we weren’t eating or sleeping, we were working. I researched how to handle burst pipes, ordered extra inventory, and emailed my current contractors since they couldn’t resume their work until the mess had been cleaned up. Dominic did whatever the CEOs of financial conglomerates did.
He tried to help me, but I declined. The flight was enough; I hated asking him for favors.
By the time we landed in New York that night, I felt marginally better…
until I saw the store.
“Oh my God.” I stared, stunned, at the disaster awaiting me while Dominic came up to my side.
The place was soaked through. One of the drywall panels was so drenched it’d collapsed, and several pressed flower pieces had been pummeled into pulp from the force of the water. Luckily, the cafe equipment hadn’t been delivered yet, but my work computer, printer, and various other devices were out of commission.
All my projects and gallery pieces, ruined. All my plans, upended. It would take thousands of dollars and God knew how many hours to ensure the space was ready for the grand opening. Unshed tears crowded my throat. The burst pipe wasn’t anyone’s fault. It was simply bad luck, but it also felt like an omen. The universe’s way of telling me I wasn’t cut out for this, that I was better suited for building others’ dreams instead of my own.
I stared at the waterlogged floor, where shards of glass glinted like the broken pieces of my life.
My divorce. My business. My relationship with my mother. Every fear, doubt, and insecurity I’d suppressed during the lost years of my life, when I’d lived without living. They cracked the glaze in my eyes, and tears poured through, blurring the carnage with a film of defeat.
I was so lost in my distress that I didn’t resist when Dominic’s arms closed around me and pulled me into his chest. He’d insisted on accompanying me to the store since it was so late, and I hadn’t argued. I didn’t have the energy.
I pressed my face against his chest, my soft sobs permeating the silence.
I was probably ruining his shirt with my tears, but he didn’t complain. In fact, he hadn’t said a word since we’d arrived; he didn’t need to.
Actions spoke louder than words, and in that moment, I didn’t care about the things he’d done or hadn’t done during our marriage.
I simply leaned into him, breathed in the comfort of his familiar scent, and let him hold me together.
