Page 80 of When the Smoke Clears

CHAPTER 19

ISLA

The smartphone slips from my fingers, clattering onto the tile beside the tub as I sink beneath the bubbles with all the grace of a beached whale at SeaWorld. The bathwater muffles the world, but not the heat rising in my cheeks.

Lavender-scented steam clings to my hair and lashes, but the burn inside me isn’t from the bath. It’s humiliating. Mortification hot enough to scorch. For one ridiculous, shame-filled second, I vow to stay submerged until the bubbles die, the water cools, and maybe until I dissolve into it entirely.

But reason wins, because lungs don’t hold out forever. I surge upward, gasping, hair plastered to my cheeks in dripping ribbons.

Water slides down my skin, streaking across my shoulders and collarbone, tiny rivers racing toward the bubbles below.

I wipe my hand on a towel and snatch it up with shaky fingers. The glow of the screen slices through the haze of steam. My pulse thrums, quick and shallow, as I type with thumbs that don’t quite obey:

ISLA: Can you…see me?

The dots appear immediately, bouncing with infuriating patience. Then his reply:

LUKE: Yes. The nurses thought I was having a heart attack. But it’s impossible—every drop of blood is much lower than my heart right now.

I choke on air. My mortification spikes so sharply it could slice through porcelain.

ISLA: OH. MY. GOD.

LUKE: Relax. Kidding. Cameras are only outside.

My exhale rattles out, part relief, part renewed embarrassment. Outside cameras. Right. Of course. He doesn’t actually see me. Still, the fact that he guessed…I chew my bottom lip until it stings.

ISLA: Then how did you know?

LUKE: Deck cam showed the window steaming up. Gabe left earlier. I put two and two together.

Even from a hospital bed, hooked up to wires and IV lines, Luke is somehow still the one in control. I can’t help the tug at my lips, a reluctant smile that rises even as shame simmers beneath my skin.

LUKE: Tell me how relaxed you are right now.

I stare at the screen. That has to be the medication talking. Some drug-fueled whimsy wrapped in teasing authority. But another bubble of laughter tries to escape my chest, because this is so utterly him—gruff and commanding, laced with sarcasm, always a step ahead.

ISLA: LUKE. You’re recovering from surgery.

LUKE: And you’re naked in my tub. Humor me.

The phone wobbles in my wet hands. I should shut this down, toss the phone onto the bathmat, and drown myself in lavender until I forget he ever sent that.

But the memory of his hands on me the other night rises unbidden—how they steadied me, how his mouth left me trembling. The distance between us now, the safe wall of texts, makes my pulse flutter in ways I can’t deny.

ISLA: In that case…I’m very relaxed.

LUKE: Paint me a picture.

I bite down harder on my lip. I know exactly what he’s asking. My stomach knots, equal parts anticipation and dread.

ISLA: Are you serious?

LUKE: Dead serious. Tell me a bedtime story about what you’re doing right now and how it makes you feel. I’m lonely.

The last word spears me right through the chest. Lonely. The idea of Luke lying in a sterile hospital bed, pain stitched into his body, reaching for me through words on a glowing screen—I can’t turn away from that.

ISLA: If I’m wrong about what you’re saying, I’ll never be able to look at you again.