ever felt happier or freer in my life.
Except that she was leaving tomorrow, I reminded myself, unable to keep from doing it. Unable to let myself be truly happy, even for a moment, for the guilt that it brought with it.
Because her replacement boat would be arriving sometime today or tomorrow, which meant she’d no longer be tethered to my island. She’d no longer have a specific reason to have to stay.
Unless I gave her one.
And with the thought came another: I needed to talk to her. About her leaving and how I didn’t want it to happen—but more importantly, about who I was and why I’d backed away from her every time we got close. I’d seen the hurt in her eyes every time I did it, felt the confusion roiling up off her, and I knew I was being horribly unfair.
I just hadn’t been able to stop myself.
But that ended today, I told myself firmly. It had to. I owed Trish the truth—and I deserved to tell her what was really going on. Some part of me deserved to be heard and understood, and for the first time in the last five years, I’d found someone I actually wanted to tell.
Look, that part had been harder than it sounds.
But now that it had happened, surely it was reason enough to take down my walls. That and the love I knew was growing in my heart for this amazing woman from Texas. This strong, brave woman, who had come to Greece to get away from her troubles and recover from heartbreak herself.
I turned my eyes back to the horizon, realizing suddenly that I hadn’t been paying attention, and put the thoughts away for later. I’d talk to her today. That much was settled. Until then, I was going to enjoy the day with the woman who had fallen right into my lap—or more accurately, the ocean right next to my island—and stolen my heart.
Doing anything less was no better than sailing with my eyes closed.
When we pulled into the harbor near Athens about an hour later, I slowed and scanned the shore, looking for the dock I normally used. I made this trip relatively often, whenever I needed things on the island, which meant that I generally came every two weeks or so. Once a month if I was really organized and managed to grab all the things I needed in one trip.
That didn’t happen as often as I would have liked. The mainland itself—and Athens, specifically—had become both a blessing and a curse for me, in that it not only allowed me (forced me into?) human interaction that I didn’t normally allow myself… but also exposed me to the memory of what it was like to be around people. It gave me a glimpse into a world where I didn’t have to exist alone, and that always broke my heart a little bit.
It wasn’t that I didn’t want to be around people. It was that I didn’t trust myself around them.
Having had Trish on the island with me had been a nonstop onslaught of that sort of company. And I had, surprisingly, been reveling in every single second of it—not only because there was someone there with me, but because it was her.
It was different than it had ever been before. In the past—or for the last five years, at least—the presence of other people had simply reminded me that I was alone. They’d presented danger that I wasn’t sure I was ready to deal with. Getting too close to them brought on the guilt of having lost Lia, and allowing them into my life brought on fear that I would find a way to hurt them, the way I’d done with her.
Trish was… not that way.
So coming here to Athens right now, today and with her? It was no longer an oh-God-I-have-to-be-around-people moment. It was a flood of joy and excitement at the thought of showing the place to Trish herself—regardless of how many other people were around.
The moment we docked, I took her hand, gave her a sideways grin, and launched into the city. I knew the place well enough to be able to get around with ease, having grown up not far from here, and it was only a matter of moments before we were on rented bicycles and heading toward my favorite café for breakfast. A breakfast that Trish said she was about to die for, and that I felt almost as excited about.
The