Dex scowled. "Yeah. I asked her to go with me to Ilhota Rosa, just the two of us. I was going to cook for her and just, you know. Be together. Because I-"
He bit off the word before he voiced it, but it pinged around inside him anyway. Love. He'd been about to say that he wanted to be with her because he loved her.
No way. Loved being with her was what he'd meant. He'd wanted to meld memories of a woman with a special place, both of which would be gone soon.
"I like hanging out with her," Dex corrected casually, but the quirk of Evan's mouth said he didn't buy the amendment.
This conversation was going south in a hurry. What had he hoped to accomplish by holding up a mirror to his relationship with Emma? And by talking about it to Evan, the king of all Silent Types?
Dex huffed out a breath. That was a cop-out. Evan had expressed far more sympathy than Dex would have ever expected, had stuck around even though this kind of stuff made him hugely uncomfortable, and then asked all the right questions.
Dex just didn't like the answers. "I didn't tell her. I didn't say anything because what would I say? Hey, Emma, I know we just met each other and you have a life at home, but what do you think about hanging around so we can see if I have what it takes to do something more? That's crap. I'm not anyone's long-term guy."
"You sell yourself short." Evan didn't blink as his gaze bored into Dex. "We're damaged goods, sure. But not all women are like Malika. Or Carrie. What if you gave Emma that speech, and she said okay? How hard would you work to make it worth her while?"
So hard. He'd move heaven and earth to prove she'd put her faith in the right guy. But he hadn't given her that speech, because at the end of the day, she'd nailed it. He was terrified that she could take it, take him and all his baggage and be every inch the woman he'd been convinced didn't exist. One who would expect things from him he couldn't deliver. And he couldn't protect her from that.
"Hey." Dex scowled at Evan. "When did you get to be such a blabbermouth?"
"When I have something to say, I say it," he countered mildly.
"I don't have time to work that hard. Charlie is depending on us. Aqueous is growing and … " Just like his song and dance to himself when he let her walk away, these were all excuses in the end. He didn't actually know that Emma wanted a white picket fence, because he'd never asked her. And wasn't going to.
Bottom line-Emma made him feel like less of a mutant, more like he could actually be that man she saw, and it freaked him out.
Evan bopped him on the arm with a small smile. "You only get one shot, Dex. Make it count."
Yeah, he was staring through the sight at something huge, and he had no idea how to hit the target. That might be the scariest thing of all.
Emma dragged her suitcase down the little ramp toward the tarmac. The sun beat down on her shoulders as she stepped out of the terminal and walked toward the staircase attached to the edge of the plane that would take her away from the Bahamas. Her legs grew heavier and heavier until she could barely lift them, and then she stopped.
Rachel stepped on her heel and bounced off with a curse. "Trying to walk here."
"I can't do it."
"What, walk? It's not like they have a people mover to get you to the plane. This is Freeport, not Logan International."
Logan. When she got off the plane, she'd be home in Boston. And she'd have to start her life over. There were no more excuses. She had to go, had to prove she was strong enough to leave Dex. She'd been depending on him and his strength, and it was sapping her own. She had to leave.
She'd had this argument already. With herself. With Rachel. A dozen times each. Every time, she'd become convinced getting on that plane was the only possible thing to do. But now that she actually had to do it … nothing seemed very clear anymore.
Emma spun to grip Rachel's arm. "I'm making the right decision. Right?"
Rachel adjusted her wide-brimmed hat that she'd bought from one of the bustling markets they'd visited yesterday in hopes of distracting Emma from thinking about Dex. Which hadn't worked.
Rachel glared at the portly middle-aged man in line behind them, who'd grumbled something uncomplimentary about how they were holding up the line. "Back off, buddy. Tarmac's big enough for you to go around."
Then she patted Emma's hand. "Gouging a hole in my arm will not help, honey."
Instantly Emma released her friend's arm. "Sorry, I'm a mess."
Rachel clucked. "Who isn't? But you're my mess, and I still love you."
Tears filled Emma's eyes, and one dripped down her cheek. So much for the perfect makeup she'd applied to show that she could handle leaving, that her hand was steady and she could face the world with a smile.
Rachel was her only true friend, the one who'd stuck with her through all the insanity. She'd be there for Emma when she got home. Of course she would. It was going to be okay.
"But," Rachel countered with a glance over Emma's shoulder in the direction of the terminal. "You do need to consider that the life you think you're going home to isn't right for you anymore. That the reason you're having a hard time moving on from Chris is because you've changed too much to settle back into what you had before he messed it all up. Maybe you've got an opportunity to find a new normal. One that makes you happy instead of one that checks off a bunch of boxes on Emma's Get Better list."
Oh, God. Yes. That was exactly it. How had Rachel picked up on that? Emma didn't want to go home and reenter her old life like nothing had happened. Because everything had happened, and she'd emerged from the ocean reborn. Exactly as Dex had said.
Dex. He was her light at the surface. What if she went home and found out that yes, she was strong enough to move on but wasn't actually happy? Because Dex made her happy.
It didn't make any sense. Maybe it wasn't supposed to.
"What are you saying? That I shouldn't leave?"
With a smile, Rachel pulled Emma out of the flow of traffic and set her carry-on down on the tarmac. "That wasn't what I said at all. But the fact that you interpreted it that way tells me you've already made up your mind."
"What if I have?" Emma bit her lip. Craziness. It was sheer craziness to even talk like that. What would she stay for? Dex had blown her off. As he should have. Their fling was over, and he hadn't sought her out to fall at her feet with a pretty speech about what came next.
Maybe this was part of proving her strength too-by taking a chance. A leap of faith. What if she stayed, and it didn't work out? At least she'd have tried.
Which was crap. She wanted to be with Dex, day after day, in his bed, swimming in the ocean, laughing, loving. There was no way she'd stand for anything less. Sure, he might be hesitant, at first, but she always swayed him around to her way of thinking.
"I have made up my mind," Emma said with a nod.
"Then I would say count me in." Rachel grinned. "I already told you how much I loved it here. We'll do it together."
Agape, Emma stared at Rachel. She was saying she'd stay too. With Emma. Together. It was almost better than anything Emma could have imagined.
"You're bringing this up now?" Emma swirled a hand over her shoulder to encompass the terminal at large, mostly so she wouldn't smack Rachel with it. "Now that we're already here and about to board? You couldn't have mentioned that back at the resort?"
If she had, would Emma have still insisted they leave? She was standing on the edge of a precipice with no net, but she'd never felt more alive in that moment as she considered a few absolute truths-namely, that she'd never forgive herself if she left. The Caribbean represented a new lease on life that felt more right than anything Emma had experienced since surfacing in the Atlantic with her ex-fiancé still in the car below her treading feet.
Rachel shrugged. "That was then. This is now. I wasn't totally convinced you had anything to stay for. But," she nodded over Emma's shoulder. "That pretty much sold me."
Emma whirled to see Dex threading through a crush of passengers who had just disembarked from a different flight and had flooded the terminal. His head bobbed above the tourists, seeking, and then his gaze locked onto hers, and her heart fell completely out of rhythm.
He'd come for her.
Rooted to the spot, she watched him navigate, and his face twisted with aggravation when a local with a squirmy pig lost her grip as she crossed his path, blocking him. Patiently, he helped the woman resituate the pig, his lithe fingers closing around the porky little body without hesitation, and that was the moment when Emma's heart spilled over in the most unrecoverable way.
How could you not fall in love with a man who rescued pigs?
She waited for him to push through the rest of the crowd because she couldn't move if her life depended on it. And in a lot of ways, it did.