Taryn Belle - In Too Deep

“Fantastic!” Alex forced a smile, then glanced over his brother’s shoulder toward the adjacent bar to check for any new arrivals. He’d been doing this since they sat down in the restaurant an hour ago, just hoping she might walk in. Just hoping he’d have the chance to apologize and thank her the way he should have in the first place. But there was no one new—just the same lineup of bodies seated at the strawberry blonde’s bar that had been there since they arrived.

A sharp knife of regret twisted in Alex’s gut. He’d acted like a fool. Sure, he’d been furious and terrified, but how could he have let his pride get the best of him like that? He rubbed a hand over his stubbly face. “Hey, you know what?” he said to Dev, pushing his chair away from the table. “It’s been a long day, and I need to get some sleep. I’ll see you back at the house, okay?”

Dev looked taken aback. “Sure, man, whatever you want.”

Alex excused himself and looked around for their waiter. He knew his gazillionaire brother was accustomed to paying—even expected to pay—for everything all the time. Dev wouldn’t even check the bill when it arrived. But it was the principle of it that mattered to Alex. Just as he’d refused Dev’s offer of the private jet, he would pay for his own meals and any other expenses that arose when they were together. Letting his brother give him a free ride only enforced the shadow Alex had lived in his whole life—especially after Dev’s first album took over the charts when he was just twenty years old.

The waiter was nowhere to be seen. Sighing deeply, Alex made his way over to the bar and leaned forward on his elbows. The strawberry blonde bartender was inches away from him, but instead of offering him a drink, she picked up a bar mop and started slowly wiping down the already clean countertop.

Alex cleared his throat. “Excuse me.”

“Oh.” She rocked back coolly on her heels. “Did you need something?”

“Just hoping to pay my bill. I can’t find my waiter.”

She tapped a button on the iPad that was sitting on the bar. “Table twelve? Mr. Stone has a credit card on file.”

Alex reached into the back pocket of his shorts and pulled out his wallet, then took out a hundred and laid it on the counter. “Then please just put this toward it,” he said. He was about to walk away when he caught himself and spun back toward her. “Hey,” he said, giving his fists two quick raps on the bar. “There’s a dive instructor that works at the scuba shack...blond hair, greenish eyes—”

“Male or female?” the bartender interrupted with a lift of her eyebrow.

“Female.” And hot as hell , he wanted to add.

“Sorry, doesn’t ring a bell,” she replied with an exaggerated upturn of her palms, then returned to her cleaning.

Alex stared at her. It was so obvious she was lying that it was almost funny—she wasn’t even trying to hide it. Which could only mean one thing: that she and his rescuer were friends, that his rescuer had already spilled the story and that somehow the bartender had figured out that he was the guy who’d made it all go down. God only knew what an asshole this woman must think he was.

“Listen,” he said. “I did something really stupid today, and I owe that woman a serious apology. I get it if you’re protecting her. But as her friend, think about this—would you rather she went to bed tonight feeling shitty, or feeling like a hero? Because she was my hero today, and I really need to tell her that.”

Her eyes widened. “Wow. You’re good.” She reached under the bar and slid a piece of paper across to him. “I’ll give her a note.”

WEDNESDAY MORNING. NICOLA awoke around five thirty to the sound of tropical birds chirping loudly outside her window. Above her bed, her skylight was a dark orange square of light streaked with purple. She tossed and turned for a while, considered getting up—someone still had to walk to the gas station for a jug of gas, and she guessed it wasn’t going to be Kiki—but then she fell back into a light sleep filled with strange, twisted dreams. An hour later she woke up feeling foggy and out of sorts.

Today would have been Nicola’s second day back at school. She imagined another teacher in her old classroom, organized exactly how Nicola had liked it with her hand-lettered alphabet cards circling the dry board. She thought about twenty faceless children sitting before her, those little sponges who, for eight years, she’d taken so much joy in helping discover their worlds. Then she pictured the faces of her students from last year, stopping to hug her as they bravely made their way to their second-grade classroom.

And Oliver. Sweet Oliver who talked a mile a minute, whose imagination was more intense and whose curiosity was more boundless than any child she’d ever known, the kid who’d stolen her heart from day one with his earnest questions and spontaneous hugs. And the same kid who’d start digging his pencil into his skin when he became bored, who’d physically lash out at his schoolmates and at Nicola herself when he felt overwhelmed.

A severe case of ADHD. Nicola knew the symptoms, had grown up seeing them in her own mother every single day. Her mother hadn’t known it because times were different then. But now that Nicola had encouraged her to get treatment, she couldn’t help but wonder at how different things might be if her mother’s condition had been managed earlier. Not just the instability and poverty that marked her childhood because her mom had had trouble holding down a job, but the calling Nicola felt as an adult to help others in similar circumstances. Would she have still stepped outside her professional boundaries to help Oliver? If not, everything that happened stemming from that one decision—the first photo with Matthew released by Celebrity Life , the paparazzi camped on her doorstep, the one piece of dirt the press was able to dig up on her, and the hurtful accusations from parents and coworkers—might never have happened. But it had, and as a result Nicola had had to leave behind everything she knew and loved.

A month ago Nicola had turned thirty. Teaching scuba diving on an island of celebrities, no matter how idyllic it might appear, was not the life she’d planned for herself at this point.

You have to stop this line of thinking , Nicola scolded herself. Such thoughts could only lead to one thing, and she never wanted to go back to the place they brought her to again. She simply couldn’t afford to exist in a world that dark.

Determined to get her day off to a better start, Nicola rolled over in bed—and came face-to-face with her open laptop on her nightstand. Three tequila shots in quick succession were never a good idea, but when combined with Google they could be downright regrettable. A little drunk and still reeling from the dive mishap—and him —she’d broken down and searched Matthew’s name last night for the first time since she’d moved here. What she’d found hadn’t helped her mood. Her screen had filled with the latest news—that his wife had filed for divorce because “their marriage hadn’t been able to take the strain of Matthew’s alleged affair with elite private-school teacher Nicola Metcalfe.” That his wife was asking for spousal support and full custody of their only child, Oliver.

Nicola had felt like she’d been punched in the stomach. She understood why celebrities flocked to this island. There were no tabloids or newspapers for sale at the gift shop, and here you could choose, if you wished, to exist without the internet and TV. The very famous were trapped in a hell of their own making that elicited zero sympathy from the public. Only by association, Nicola had lived that hell for six endless months, and it had nearly destroyed her. She couldn’t imagine what it must be to have the world judging her every word, move and decision—to fuel the voracious appetites of the masses for failure and hope and mistakes—simply by existing.