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1359 Words
The next few days settled into a rhythm that felt unreal, like we were living inside a picture taken by someone else. Morning light painted the villa gold. Birds sang across the trees before the sun reached the ocean. The wind played with the curtains like soft fingertips. Everything here should have been perfect. Paradise. A dream.
But inside the dream, something kept shifting between us.
Chase began to see me. Not the mask. Not the borrowed hair. Not the shape of Cassandra stitched over my skin. Something else. Something smaller. A girl hidden behind a life that did not belong to her.
It happened in small ways.
At breakfast, Malia would tell stories about growing up near the beach, about fishing with her father and climbing palm trees barefoot. I would listen closely, asking questions about currents and storms, about flowers that grew only near saltwater. Cassandra would have laughed loudly, changed the subject to herself, turned the moment into a spotlight. I only listened, curious, quiet, lost in the picture of someone else’s memories.
Chase watched me. Quiet too.
He did not interrupt. He did not explain. He simply observed, like he was studying the difference between two sisters for the first time with the lights turned off. Something softened in him when he realized I was not trying to impress anyone.
When we walked along the private beach, the sand warm under our feet, I slipped out of my sandals because the grains felt like warm sugar between my toes. Halfway down the shoreline, I turned to reach for them.
Chase was holding them.
He lifted them casually, as if it meant nothing, carrying them in one hand while his other stayed loose by his side. Sand clung to his ankles. The wind ruffled his hair. The world saw a powerful Alpha carrying his wife’s shoes. Small. Tender. Intimate.
No cameras were near, not that we could see. He did not do it for them.
He did it without thinking.
And something inside me melted quietly.
At lunch near the pool, he read documents from his coach, planning strategies for a charity match on the island. His eyes sharpened each time he studied the diagrams, lines of movement drawn like tracks across the ice. I leaned slightly closer, noticing how his ideas formed. How strategic his mind was. Not loud. Not boastful. Sharp like blades cutting through silence.
Cassandra would have been bored. She never liked sports unless people were watching her watch them. I found myself asking questions, soft, curious.
“Why do you take this angle on the goal line.”
He paused, surprised by my interest, then explained patiently.
Because the defender turns his weight left.
Because a small opening in a second looks like chance to someone playing slow.
Because speed gives choices the audience never sees.
I listened like a student learning something she had never understood before. He looked at me differently after that. Not as the girl pretending to be a bride, but as someone interested in the world he loved.
Later, when paparazzi returned in another boat, too far to see clearly but close enough to aim a lens, Chase adjusted my scarf, tucking it closer around my face. His fingers brushed my collarbone lightly, but it did not feel like stage directions. It felt like protection. A simple act of shielding.
“You do not need to be seen today,” he murmured.
His breath warmed the space near my cheek.
Stranger than that moment was the way it made guilt twist inside me. The lie had shape now. His kindness made it heavier. Because he did not owe me softness. He owed it to the woman who vanished on her wedding day. And yet the soft things were falling on me instead.
I started avoiding mirrors.
Each time I passed one, Cassandra looked back. Her clothes. Her colors. Her style. The girl in the glass was composed, elegant, perfect for cameras. My eyes behind the sunglasses looked like a ghost wearing someone else’s pride.
I showered longer at night to wash away the feeling of pretending. I whispered the truth into the steam, small confessions stolen by the water:
I am not her.
I do not know how to be her.
I do not want to disappear because of her.
Yet no one heard except the tiles beneath my feet.
Chase seemed to feel the shift too. He became quiet in a way that was not distant, only thoughtful. His steps slowed around me. His eyes lingered longer. He asked questions without asking. Watching. Listening. Collecting pieces.
He stopped seeing Cassandra.
He was seeing Isla.
During a walk along a cliff path, with the wind pushing salt into our hair, I told him about a book I had loved as a child. A story about a wolf who believed he was too small to hunt, until he saved his pack by doing the one thing none of them could. Hide in shadows. Move like silence. Think like water.
Chase listened with unexpected focus.
“You liked that,” he said quietly.
I nodded.
“It made me believe small things can protect big things,” I whispered.
He stared ahead at the ocean.
“Small is not weak,” he said.
The words hit something deep in me, a place that had never been touched by belief before.
I asked him personal questions too. Not about fame or trophies, but about mornings in the rink when no one else woke up. About the sound ice makes under skates. About what silence feels like in a stadium before a goal. His answers were soft, almost poetic.
“Ice sings when you cut it right,” he told me once. “It feels like flying without leaving the ground.”
I imagined that. Flying in circles made of frozen water and light.
Each day, the space between us changed shape.
No longer sharp.
No longer cold.
No longer built on anger.
Something like longing began to take root. Quiet, careful, afraid to be named. It lived in his gestures. In my breath. In the way we looked at each other a moment too long. In the way our conversations lingered even after they ended.
But guilt stood between us like a wall made of my own heartbeat.
Every time he was gentle, I remembered she ran.
Every time he looked at me softly, I remembered he believed I was her.
Every time I smiled, I remembered the lie sat behind my teeth.
It was a storm I could not outrun.
One night, after a long walk on the beach, we returned to the villa in silence. The sky was violet with sunset. The last edge of daylight curled behind the horizon like gold sinking into water. I walked ahead slightly, holding my dress as the wind tried to lift it.
He followed, slow steps on stone.
On the staircase, a strand of my hair escaped the pins, falling across my cheek. The wind pushed more strands free, curling them around my face. I tried to tuck it behind my ear, but the breeze was stronger, and the hair fell again.
Chase reached out without thinking.
His hand lifted, fingers brushing near my temple. The movement was soft, instinctive, gentle in a way that broke something inside me. His eyes followed the strand as if it mattered. As if the smallest detail of me mattered.
His fingertips hovered just beside my ear.
He almost touched me.
Almost.
Then he froze.
His jaw tightened. The softness vanished behind restraint. His hand pulled back slowly, as if it took effort to pull away from the moment. He stepped back, fingers curling into his palm like he needed to hold them still.
I stood still too, breath caught halfway in my chest.
The air between us throbbed.
He looked at me for one long second that felt like something breaking open inside the quiet night.
Then he turned away.
Leaving the strand of hair where it fell.
Leaving the moment unfinished.
Leaving a storm in both our hearts, restless and gathering strength.
- Writer
