2. Good news

TWO

GOOD NEWS

FIVE YEARS LATER

" C yn? You home?"

Home. It's so hard to believe it, even after more than a year of us living together, that this is my home—and I share it with a man who looks for me every time he walks through our front door.

"I'm in the kitchen," I call out.

Seconds later, there he is. His curls as wild and attractive to me now as they were more than a decade ago, his handsome face thinned out a little from his boyish looks, and his toned body undeniably belonging to a man. His sculpted arms play peekaboo with me beneath the uniform polo shirt he wears down to the office every day. It's good publicity for him, too. When you go to your physical therapist, you want him to look like he takes care of himself.

And, at twenty-seven, Tommy takes excellent care of his body. Trust me. As his partner for the last two years, I know every inch of him intimately.

I turn the knob on the old gas range down so that the pasta doesn't boil over, then turn to meet him in the middle of the kitchen.

Tommy palms my ass as I go up on my tiptoes to kiss him in greeting.

"Have a good day?" I ask, bracing his chest with my hand.

"Always do when I know I'm coming back to you," he says, deep blue eyes twinkling as he runs his hand down the curve of my ass cheek. "Something smells delicious."

"Garlic bread," I tell him. "It's in the oven. Once the spaghetti is done, I'm going to toss it in sauce and melt some mozzarella over it." A comfort dish from my childhood and, considering the date creeping closer and closer, I needed some comfort tonight. "It's almost done, but you're early. I wasn't expecting you for another half an hour."

"Got some good news and wanted to come right home to tell you."

Oh? My stomach twists a little even as I pull a smile on my face. "This wouldn't have anything to do with how secretive you've been lately?"

Tommy waggles his eyebrows. "Maybe." He laughs a little. "Damn. I thought I was being sneaky. You noticed that?"

I shrug. "You've been on the phone a lot. Coming home later than your usual time instead of earlier. If I didn't know better, I'd wonder if you were cheating on me."

You'd think I'd tiptoe around the topic. If I had to spend the rest of my life not addressing the elephant in the room, I never would've started over with Tommy. Between the both of us, we decided to keep the past where it belongs: behind us. We were only seventeen, after all. Tommy wouldn't hold my getting with Clay before I actually ended things with him against me as long as adult Cyn gave her word it wouldn't happen again.

He has nothing to worry about on that front. Just like I know that Tommy will never, ever fumble his second chance with me.

And in case I needed reassurance?

His easy-going expression takes on a hard edge. "Never." His voice drops an octave lower than its usual tone. "You know I would never do that."

I do. "So what's the good news?"

That settled, Tommy's impish smile returns. "You know how I was talking about maybe doing something for Halloween?"

I nod. It's another thing he and Clay had in common, their love for the holiday. Over the years, Tommy's younger siblings—in their late teens and early twenties now—all grew out of it, but there was something about the magic of monsters and horror films and candy that Clay enjoyed until his death, and that Tommy gets excited over every year.

I wish I could match his enthusiasm. But considering what happened a couple of days before..

I try. It's tough, but I try, and I keep an open mind as Tommy tells me what he's been planning for ages now.

"Okay. So I had this great idea, right? It was hard, getting the week-long slot I wanted for us all, but I got a call from the new owners right before I came home. Halo Island is open to rent from next Friday all the way through Halloween.

Halo Island. That name is a punch to my gut. No, no, no. He's not suggested what I think he's suggesting… is he?

Oblivious to the way my heart just about stopped pumping, Tommy continues. "From the 25th until November 1st, we get to be one of the first ones to see the new and improved camping set-up on the island." He's almost bursting with excitement now. "It's clamping or some shit, but it still sounds like it'll be fun. A secluded wooded island on Halloween where we're alone? Awesome, yeah? What do you think?"

What do I think?

I think I'm going to puke.

Do I go pale? I'm pretty sure I just went pale because, suddenly, Tommy's hands land on my shoulders.

"Hey. Cyn. You okay?"

I don't know. A nervous tic of mine, I duck out from under his hold and immediately start twisting the narrow gold band on my left hand as I ask myself the same question. Halo Island … am I okay?

Tommy sees me fiddle with the ring, but he doesn't say a word about that.

We both know I still wear Clay's ring. I give Tommy everything I can, but that was the line in the sand I had to draw when we got back together. I couldn't bring myself to take it off, and if that was a dealbreaker for Tommy, it was better that we got that out in the open before we both ended up heartbroken this time around.

He said he could deal. So far, he's held true to his word. But when I'm twisting my ring, it's a dead giveaway that I'm not in a good space mentally—and he knows it.

I've been so good lately. I actually did what Dr. Lucas suggested before I left New Jersey: I moved on. I never meant to, didn't really plan on it, but after five years glued to Clayton Rivers' hip, I knew I needed to figure out who Cynthia Preston was without him. I dropped my married name because it was too painful to be Clay's when he was gone. The house sold within a few months of me putting it on the market, and since Tommy was in constant contact with me, putting the bug in my ear about moving back to Gullhaven, I finally did.

Of course, he needed to help me settle back in. He helped me find an apartment of my own when I point-blank refused to move into his 1950s-style ranch house with him. He reintroduced me to the friend group I had years ago, and before long, it was like I never left.

And after three years of Tommy being my bonafide emotional support human, allowing me to lean on him while I navigated a life without Clay, he finally suggested we give us a second try.

I say three years. Tommy tossed the idea at me the first time about a year after I relocated to the west coast, and I did everything to ignore him. For fuck's sake, part of me kept thinking that Clay's death was just a sick joke. That he'd pop up one day, trying to figure out why I wasn't waiting for him in Little Falls.

But years passed, and though that strange, unsettling feeling that someone was always watching me never went away, my desperation to be reunited with my dead husband ebbed enough that I could look at Tommy and think… maybe.

Maybe I deserve to be happy. Maybe I deserve to be loved. Clay said that, if anything ever happened to him, I should rely on Tommy. Though I really doubt that Clay had any idea that something would happen to him, I took his words to heart. I let Tommy back in.

And now, look at us. Last year I did move into his house. Now we're like an old married couple, exchanging a kiss in the kitchen while I prep dinner for when he gets off of work.

The only difference is that, while I have a wedding band on the fourth finger on my left hand, it's not Tommy's. We're not married, though that's not for a lack of trying on his part, and when I struggle, it's Clay's ring I cling to.

Boy, am I struggling at the moment.

Halo Island.

Why would he bring me back to Halo Island?

I swore I'd never go back. After they sent a Coast Guard boat out to ferry my mother home in a body bag, I promised myself I'd never return to Halo Island. It would've been easy to keep that promise, too. Besides the fact that I ended up in New Jersey, Halo Island itself was shut down after my mom drowned.

Halo Island has always been privately owned. So much smaller than any of the other islands off the coast of California, the guy who rented out the cabins and campgrounds decided it wasn't worth the risk after my mom died during a high school trip she was chaperoning. Last I heard, he was tearing down the old structures to dissuade locals from visiting, and the ferry from Cottonwood Harbor stopped heading there.

But that was years ago. After that, I stopped paying attention. On the rare occasion anyone mentioned the island around me, Tommy usually ended the conversation before it inevitably touched on my mom's suicide. Because, in Gullhaven, something exciting so rarely happens around here that the locals need to gossip about awful fucking things that took place a damn decade before.

I didn't know it was reopened. I had no idea that it was a glamping getaway for people who could afford to buy peace and solitude, a week at a time.

Until now.

Tommy explains it to me, eager to get me to agree. It's a group excursion, but we'd have our own cabin, complete with electricity, a fridge, and running water; the ‘glamping' part, I guess. Only those in the group get to be on the island, though, and we'd have to bring everything we need for the week we're there. The ferry drops us off on an assigned date, picks us up on an assigned date, and since the whole idea behind this getaway is to unplug, unwind, and get back to nature, there's no cell service on the island. No internet. No television. No stores, either, just the bonfire pit, the renovated cabins, and the lake.

More importantly, it'll just be us, and I'd have to be a heartless bitch to refuse when Tommy obviously put so much time, effort, and money into planning this for me as a surprise.

Only… he couldn't have picked a worse week for this trip.

I'm still quiet, and his mood shifts.

"We don't have to go, Cyn," he says softly. "If you don't want to… if you can't … I'll call the whole thing off. Yeah, I'll lose the deposit, but I don't give a fuck. I still have the week off of work. We can spend it here together, just you and me."

And then I'll feel guilty and sad the entire time.

No.

No.

I swallow roughly. "Do we need to stay the whole week? Or is the weekend good enough?"

No matter what, I can't be away from home on the 28th. That's the day my world split in two: Clay and No Clay. The cops showed up at my door on October 28th, and whatever happened to my husband, that's the day I mourn him the most.

Halloween is on a Thursday this year. The 28th is Monday. I can give Tommy Friday through Sunday. Monday morning at the latest if I have to.

Relationships are about compromise, right? I'll go. I can't promise I won't have a fucking meltdown, returning to Halo Island for the first time since my mother died, but I'll go… so long as I don't have to turn my grief into a performance for Tommy and his friends on the 28th.

I know that's not what he intended. Tommy would never do that to me, and I think he realizes that his attempt to distract might've been done in good faith, but I'm not ready to pretend October 28th doesn't have meaning to me.

"We got a deal for the whole week, but if you want to leave Monday morning, I can arrange for the ferry to take us back as soon as the sun's up. Everyone else can stay without us. What do you think?"

When I nod, Tommy visibly relaxes. I don't think I realized how sure he was that I would react poorly to his ‘good news' until I agreed to at least return to Halo Island for a couple of days.

In as pleasant a mood as he was when he first walked into the kitchen, he sidesteps around me, moving toward the counter where I was prepping the rest of dinner.

It hits me a second later what he said: everyone else . Right. He mentioned it's a group getaway.

"So who else is coming? Who did you invite?"

He pops a piece of the mozzarella I chopped into his mouth. "Everyone."

Everyone, huh?

Yeah. I need a little more information than that.