Page 106 of Salt Kiss
“I know.”
“Or the chapel after.”
“I know.”
She lets out a breath. I look over to find her staring at the waves.
“You’re ending it, aren’t you?” she asks. Her words are so flat, so dull, that I know she’s already gone somewhere deep inside herself. The place she’s lived inside of for years to cope with her mother’s death, with her father’s plans for her future. And I hate it. I hate that I’m the cause of that voice; I hate that I’m the one sending her to that place.
But she’s right. I am ending it.
I exhale with an unrelenting tightness in my chest. “Yes.”
“Why? Why when I can do whatever I like until the wedding? A wedding which is weeks from now?”
I turn to look at her, but she stays as she is, her eyes on the water.
“We’d have to stop anyway. It’s better we do it before we get home to Mark.”
“Because you’re worried about him finding out,” she says tonelessly.
“Because I love him.” My voice is quiet, tired. Sad.
And she does turn to look at me now.
“I have to be loyal to my own feelings,” I explain. “And while you might be free until your wedding day, I’m not. If I’m going to stay at Lyonesse, then I have to be worthy of his trust. I have to be worthy of my own. I can’t sleep with his bride behind his back, no matter what her own freedoms are.”
“So this is the cost of you staying for me,” she says. Her eyes are wet, but the tears haven’t fallen. I don’t think she’ll let them fall. “If you stay, then we have to end things now.”
“It’s for the best. Besides,” I add in a self-wounding attempt at comfort, “you told me yourself that you didn’t love me. So this was just temporary anyway. Just fun.”
Her jaw flexes once.
“Just fun, that’s right,” she says, voice devoid of inflection. “No harm done.”
“Well, maybe some harm done.” I flex my hands on the railing. “I know what you do before the marriage isn’t Mark’s business, but I’m not convinced it’s the same for me, especially since I’ll be working there after the wedding too.”
It makes me sick to say it out loud but it has to be said. “Are we...going to tell him? Or keep it a secret? And hope he never finds out?”
When I look back, her arms are wrapped tight around herself, and I want so much to jump over to her balcony and pull her close. I want to comfort her, soothe her, drive away any fears or worries. It only adds to my misery right now that I can’t.
That I shouldn’t.
She doesn’t love you, I tell myself.This is hurting you far more than it’s hurting her.
Still, though. The idea of her hurting any bit, any little bit at all, is excoriating.
“I don’t like lying any more than you, Tristan, although I think I might be better at it. But I suppose—if I were thinking with a clear head, which I admittedly haven’t done much of recently—it would be smarter to keep it between us until after the wedding. I shouldn’t risk the marriage, not when we’re so close. And then—after the papers are signed—we can think about it some more.”
It all makes sense, and I nod.
“As you wish,” I say, and pray that I’ll become a better liar in the next twenty-four hours.
I put my hand on the door to my room, sliding it open to step inside.
“Tristan.”
I look at her, slender and steely against the bright blue sky.
