Page 62 of Take Me Away

I hand him the mug of tea, our fingers brushing. The contact sends a jolt through me, and I can tell by the slight tensing of his shoulders that he feels it too.

‘Kit…’ I start, not sure what I’m going to say, only knowing I need to say something. ‘I’ve spent so long wrapped up in half-truths and lies and what other people wanted me to say,’ I whisper, setting my mug down with a shaking hand. ‘I don’t want to do that anymore. Not with you.’

He studies me, those blue eyes seeing through all my carefully constructed walls. ‘What do you want, Isla?’

The question hangs between us, loaded with a decade of missed chances and unspoken words.

‘I want…’ My voice catches. ‘I want to stop running. I want to remember what it feels like to be real. To be me. And I don’t know where else to do that than here.’

His eyes drop to my mouth, then back to my eyes. The air between us feels charged, electric.

‘Isla,’ he whispers, and it’s a little bit tortured, a little bit memory, a little bit fantasy.

I don’t think. I just move.

My hands find his face, fingers sliding through damp beard, and then my mouth is on his – warm, certain, shaking.

He stills. One breath. Two. Then – he breaks.

His arms come around me hard, lifting, pressing me back against the counter. His mouth claims mine with heat and urgency that makes me gasp. It’s not careful. It’s not sweet. It’s raw, unfiltered need.

His hands thread into my hair. A sound – half groan, half my name – spills between us, and I’m lost in it.

I press closer, wanting the weight of him, the solidity. The grounding. He tastes like rain and tea and the kind of promise no one makes out loud.

Everything else disappears. My foot. The press. Marcus. All of it. Gone.

Just us. This kitchen. This kiss. The sea in our blood and the past in our bones.

When we finally break apart, breathing hard, he rests his forehead against mine.

‘Isla,’ he breathes – and the way he says it, it’s not a name. It’s a place.

I grip his shirt, needing something to hold on to. ‘Don’t apologise.’

His eyes open, blue and burning. ‘I wasn’t going to.’

Then he kisses me again. Slower. Deeper. Devastation wrapped in tenderness. And I let it all go. My edges. My armour. My fear.

Until my phone rings and we both break apart to glance down at the screen, where an image of Reid Usher and me at an awards ceremony, arms wrapped tight around one another, flashes with almost cruel brilliance.

Kit steps back, looking between me and the phone. ‘I forgot you had a boyfriend.’ The lines on his face are back to cold indifference.

‘Kit, it’s not⁠—’

A shrill, urgent wail cuts through the air.

Not a phone. Not a car alarm.

The RNLI signal. I haven’t heard it in so long I’ve almost forgotten it existed.

His hand is already reaching for his phone.

‘Harding,’ he answers, voice clipped, urgent. ‘Where? How many?’

He’s already moving, grabbing his jacket from the hook by the door, soaked through and waiting.

‘Kit, we need to talk.’