“No.” Matt shook his head frantically as he looked away and took a deep breath. “No way. Last week you were willing to move to Atlanta with me. I don’t know what’s going on with you, but—”
“What’s going on with me is that I’m in a relationship I don’t want to be in. I can’t live in Atlanta, just like I can’t be tied down like you want. Maybe I thought I could, but it’d never last,” Alex said, his voice quivering. “It was always just a phase—for both of us. You wanted to know what it was like to be with a man. I wanted to know what it was like to have a boyfriend, but you were supposed to leave when it was over. It was never real.”
Matt pulled himself up to his full height and looked Alex in the eye. “I don’t believe you.”
“Believe it,” Alex said with grim certainty. The tequila had kicked into full gear, and the image of Matt’s dead body that haunted Alex every night was so vivid in his mind he could’ve told him he hated him to get him to go back to Atlanta. He settled on, “I don’t want to hurt you, but you have to know I don’t want you anymore. I want my life back. I want Key West and a different guy every week. This”—Alex gestured wildly back and forth between them—“was never supposed to be my life, and I’m not willing to rip everything to shreds and go down in flames to hold hands with you in public.”
Matt’s entire body was tense; his eyes were narrowed for several long heartbeats. Those amazing aquamarine orbs that Alex had spent so many nights looking into grew glassy with pain and then spilled over, leaving a trail of tears down Matt’s tan cheeks.
A part of Alex was wildly jealous of Matt for having the outlet, because everything in him wanted to drop to the ground and break down.
Matt turned away from him, wiped at his cheeks like Alex was nothing but an afterthought. “Then get out.”
Alex sucked in a sharp breath, because it actually happened. He’d broken up with Matt, and Matt hadn’t done anything to stop him. It was all too easy. A few harsh words, and their golden world tarnished and turned to dust like it had never gleamed to begin with.
“I’m sorry,” Alex whispered as everything in him silently cried out for one of them to undo this before it was really over.
Matt turned back to Alex, this time not hiding his tears as he growled. “Fuck you, Alex.”
“I wish it didn’t have to end like this.” Alex’s voice cracked as the pain fought its way past the tequila haze.
“But it does, apparently,” Matt said with a harsh glare. “And I believe you know where the door is.”
Alex stood there, feeling the sting of tears and then decided to leave before he grabbed Matt and kissed him until he woke up and the nightmare ended. Even as he walked out the door, he couldn’t believe this was the end and worse of all—Alex had been the one to do it.
Matt slammed the door so hard the glass splintered. Alex stared at the veins running through the frosted etchings on the door. It looked suddenly fragile as if one more push would cause the entire thing to shatter and fall to the ground, turning to nothing but a broken pile of jagged memories of what was once beautiful and unique.
Alex left his bike in the driveway and jogged the two miles it took to get from the good side of the beach back to the side where he belonged. His jeans were wet from the surf, and his shirt was sticking to him from the sea breeze and sweat.
He peeled them both off when he got into the house that was oddly empty even if it was only ten in the evening. He found Holly in Will’s bed, curled up and sleeping, but she shifted and rolled over as if sensing him.
“Will?”
“It’s Alex,” he said hollowly. “Where is Will?”
“We had a fight.” Naked from the waist up, she sat up in bed, blinking at him as she brushed the hair out of her eyes. “What’s wrong?”
Alex shook his head as the tears he fought all the way down the beach finally betrayed him. He covered his eyes and let out a sob of agony as he stood there shaking.
“Come here.” Holly leaped out of bed and grabbed him, wrapping her arms around his waist as he stood there crying in his underwear. “Tell me what happened.”
“I know he’s better off without me. Breaking up with him was the right thing to do,” Alex whispered into Holly’s long, soft curls as he leaned down and buried his face in the curve of her neck. “But this feels like too much. I didn’t think
anything
could hurt this bad.”
“Oh God, Alex.” Holly moaned in horror. “Why would you do that? You love each other.”
“Please don’t judge me tonight,” Alex begged her. “Do it when I feel like I can breathe again.”
“Okay.” Holly’s voice became softer, more understanding as she pulled back toward the bed.
Alex crawled under the covers with Holly, both of them near naked, while great wracking sobs of agony burst out of Alex as he mourned the loss of his innocence and his first true love and the dreams of he and Matt being golden forever. Holly simply held him and rubbed his back until he passed out from all the mental exhaustion.
He dreamed of Matt on the beach this time, but before he could say sorry and beg him to come back, Matt turned to dust and drifted away on the sea breeze, like Alex’s parent’s ashes floating out on the water. Life and love and beauty reduced to nothing but gray soot that drifted away from Alex as he was forced to stand there and watch it go.
The nightmares weren’t gone—they were just different.
* * * *
For the past two years, Matt had been convinced that the worst day of his life would always be the one where his mother called to tell him his father had been found dead in his office chair. He’d stayed late for work. No one thought to be alarmed that his father didn’t come home. Then the cleaning staff found him four hours postmortem hunched over his desk.
So Matt was blindsided when Alex Hunter swooped in and did something that hurt worse and scarred deeper than the phone call that not only robbed him of a friend and father, but also tossed the weight of the world on his shoulders at the age of twenty.
Matt spent all night packing his shit. Then he threw all evidence of Alex that lingered in every corner of the house into a brown box he’d found in the garage. He never slept, he never stopped shaking, and he never stopped crying.
By the time he pulled up to the beach shack Alex called home, he was so mentally and physically drained he could barely function. He wanted to leave the stuff on the doorstep, but the strange thing was Will stood in the driveway despite it being pitch-black outside. He was loading his jeep with a bunch of boxes and looked less than thrilled to see Matt.
“It’s four in the morning,” Will said as Matt got out of his car. “What’re you doing here?”
“Just dropping some of Alex’s stuff off.” Matt reached into the back and grabbed the box of Alex’s things that included the keys to his bike he’d abandoned. “I’m heading back to Atlanta today.”
“Oh.” Will looked at the box and then shrugged. “Just dump it on the doorstep. I already locked the door, and I don’t want them to wake up.”
“Okay.” Matt went ahead and put the box by the door. When he walked past Will he asked, “Where’re you off to?”
“New York.”
“Without Holly?”
Will reached down and grabbed the last box on the ground behind the jeep and walked around to put it in the front seat. “Didn’t work out.”
Matt glanced at the front door and frowned. “Does she know that?”
“It’s better this way. I’m making it easier for all of us.” Will turned back to Matt with narrowed eyes that were red-rimmed and bloodshot. “Now if you don’t mind…fuck off, Tarrington.”
“Fine.” Matt shrugged and then walked back to his car. “I just have one more thing.”
Will didn’t acknowledge him. It was pretty clear he was having his own bout of life-altering drama. Matt just grabbed the mounted marlin out of the front seat and walked it back to the door. He took care to lean it against the wall, because despite everything, he didn’t want it damaged.
Against his will, he looked at the inscription on the plaque beneath the marlin.
A PERFECT DAY
OCTOBER 8, 2006
He could only hope Will was so caught up with his own hell that he didn’t notice Matt standing there wiping at the tears that started again without warning and didn’t stop until long after Matt had driven over the bridge that took him away from Mirabella.
* * * *
Holly had labeled it Doomsday.
The night both Hunter men did something so insanely, irrevocably stupid nothing could undo the damage they’d caused. In a desperate attempt to find happiness for one of them, Alex had left Holly sobbing in the living room of the beach shack and chased his brother all the way to New York.
It turned out he couldn’t fix things for Holly and Will any more than he could repair his own life.
“Are you gonna tell me what happened to your hands? It’s been two days and your knuckles are still swollen. Tell me what Will said.”
Alex looked at Holly across the corner booth in Frank’s café, seeing that she hadn’t taken a bite of her breakfast and was just staring at him pointedly instead. “Nope,” he said with a shake of his head, shuddering just thinking about the confrontation with Will in New York. “No way in hell. I couldn’t say it out loud even if I wanted to.”
“Why?” she snapped, her eyes narrowed furiously. “You look like you’ve been in a fight! I deserve to know what happened in New York.”
“I’m not telling you. I’m sorry. Following him was a mistake. We should’ve just accepted he was an asshole when he left in the middle of the night, and let it go at that. The only thing you need to know about New York is that anything you had with Will is over, and you’ve got to find some way to move on. We both do.” Alex looked back down to his own breakfast, finding that he wasn’t hungry either. He hadn’t just lost Matt, he’d lost Will too. His brother was as good as dead to him when it’d been them against the world for so long. “Why did we think coming here was going to kick-start our appetites? I don’t even have real butter for my pancakes.”
Alex picked up the little containers of cheap margarine and looked at them with distaste.
“Everyone bitches about the margarine,” Holly said distantly, clearly thinking of other things as she looked out the window to the ocean. “They bitch about the creamers too. They want real cream. Not the fake stuff.”
“How hard is it to buy real butter?” Alex growled. “It’s shit like this that’s putting Frank’s under. I could do a better job running this place. The food quality sucks.”
“Not when you’re cooking.” Holly tried to give him a smile, but it was more pained than anything. “Or Will… Working with him made it a little easier.”
“Holly.”
She shook her head and looked back to her eggs as tears made her eyes sparkle like emeralds before they rolled down her cheeks. “Please don’t try to make me forget him.”
“You’d be better off,” Alex snapped as he remembered Will in New York, saying things that even now made him want to hit something.
“Will’s a good person.” Holly looked at her breakfast as if still completely shell-shocked. “He just made a mistake. Like you made a mistake.”
Alex winced. “Thanks for the reminder.”
“Go back to Matt,” Holly urged as if desperate for one of them to have a happy ending. “Go to Atlanta. Say sorry. Make it better.”
“And then what?” Alex laughed bitterly. “Watch him slowly start hating me when the money runs dry, and the world turns against him. He’s better without me, Holly. Guys like him can’t live off love.”
“I think you’re underestimating him. You should’ve at least given him a choice in the matter!”
Alex turned away from her, looking around Frank’s, which was slow despite it being lunchtime. He studied the old tables and booths with seats that were split and held together with silver duct tape. Instead of commenting on Holly’s astute observations that Alex was every bit as big an asshole as his brother, he said, “You know, Hol, I’m gay enough to make this place better.”
Holly frowned at the odd statement. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“I have better taste than Frank. More style. Just because we’re on this side of the beach doesn’t give him an excuse to let this place rot like he does. Most of the tourists stay on our side. There’s tons of money to make.”
Holly looked around and then shrugged reluctantly. “True. If he remodeled, he’d have more business than he could handle.”
“What a fucking waste.” Alex shook his head. “The way things are going, Frank’s will eventually be another boarded-up failure. I hate when shit like that happens and makes the beach look like hell.”
“What’re you guys talking about?” Melissa asked as she stopped in front of their booth with a coffeepot in hand.
“What a shithouse this place is.”
Melissa laughed at Alex as she refilled his cup of coffee. “You’re just now figuring this out?”
“He thinks he could make it better.” Holly filled in for him, her voice still dull and sad, but she was at least trying to be social, which was an improvement. “’Cause he’s so good at fixing things that are broken.”
Alex glared at Holly. That one hurt.
Melissa set the coffeepot on the table and slid into the booth next to Holly. She wrapped an arm around her shoulder and pulled her close. “Cheer up, darling. Seeing you so down breaks my heart. You had to know it’d never work out with someone like Will. He’s too big for this island. He’s just one of those people who rises to the top.”
“Wow, that helps.” Alex frowned. “Thanks for that. Good to know he’s better than the rest of us bums on the beach.”
“Happiness is knowing your place,” Melissa said softly. “You could’ve gone to college, Alex. You had a free ticket, but you’d rather stay here and party. There’s nothing wrong with it. That’s just who you are. You’re never going to make a hundred grand a year, but you’ll probably have a much better time along the way, and we all like that about you.”
“I’m so sick of life being about money,” Holly said bitterly. “There’s so much more to living than how much you make. That’s not what it’s about.”
“Exactly,” Melissa agreed as she squeezed Holly tighter once more. “It’s about friends and having a good time and the beach after a long day. Stick with Alex. He gets it. He’s the better Hunter for you.”