SCARLETT
Monaco in the morning was a different world entirely.
The gala version, all candlelight and performance and carefully arranged expressions, dissolved completely in the daylight. The hotel beach was private, white sand and blue water so clear you could see the bottom, and mom had declared it a rest day before our last evening in the city.
I came down at nine in a black bikini and found Ethan already there, sprawled in a sun lounger with a book and sunglasses and the specific contentment of a person with no complicated interior life.
I envied him that deeply.
"Morning," he said without looking up.
"Morning." I dropped my bag on the lounger beside him and looked out at the water. It was extraordinary. The kind of blue that didn't look real from a distance and somehow looked eve
