Prologue

Somewhere in the Caribbean, six years ago

T he moon lit a twinkling, silver path through the waves that gently rolled up onto the sand, and a tropical breeze whispered through green palm fronds above us. I slowly strolled on this picture-perfect beach, hand-in-hand with the most beautiful man I could have imagined. Soon, he would stop, turn to me, and ask the question that I knew had been on his mind. It was an important issue, weighty and significant, and my answer would change both our lives…forever.

Nothing after this night would be the same; I would leave this beach as a different woman from the Sophie I’d been when I’d disembarked from the plane two days before. He must have been contemplating it, because his noble brow furrowed and I caught him looking over at me, as if he were trying to guess what my answer would be.

I was contemplating a different issue, one related to those palm trees: was it really true that more people were killed by falling coconuts than by sharks? I would have to look that up. My sister Brenna had warned me about a lot of potential hazards before I’d left for Detroit Metro Airport for my flight south, but she’d been sneering as she’d cited the statistic about coconut fatalities. I knew her heads-up had come from jealousy over my trip rather than real concern, so it was likely that she’d been lying. Also, it was unlikely that she would have been correct about anything numerical.

Just in case, though, I kept an eye out for falling objects as we walked. All I saw above us was that shining moon in a sky that was so, so dark. It reminded me of when I’d gone to northern Michigan as a little girl to stay at my grandparents’ cottage, far away from city lights. In Detroit, where I had grown up with my six siblings and parents, it never got so totally black and quiet.

“Sophie.”

I turned to Caspian and my heart beat faster. It always did when I looked at him because, sugar, I hadn’t been kidding when I’d bragged about his extreme beauty. Seriously, the man was so unbelievably gorgeous that it was like he wasn’t real. Perfect hair that naturally swept back in a dark wave from that noble forehead. Perfect skin to match, and also a straight nose, high cheekbones, and a mouth that my sister Juliet would have said was kissable. I’d never understood what that was until I’d seen him: “kissable” meant that whenever he moved his lips to talk, I wanted to plant my own right on them. When he didn’t say anything and his mouth was just full and sensuous, I also wanted to kiss him. When a slight smile tilted the corners—

“Sophie, we need to speak seriously.”

I nodded and tried not to pin my gaze on his lips. “Yes, go ahead.”

“You know that I have had something so serious on my mind.” His soulful eyes looked deeply into mine. “I love you; I love you desperately. I would rather die than continue this—this—debacle! It is endless torment and I seek surcease from the pain.”

I quickly checked the palm trees for movement, because I didn’t think he meant those statements literally. “I love you too,” I assured him.

“These past days have been so wonderful, so breathtakingly perfect,” he continued. “I cannot return to what was before. I cannot go back to the sterile messages, the barren phone calls. I cannot stand to see the images of your lovely face that flicker and freeze on my screen.”

“Well, the dropped stuff is a problem with the internet infrastructure on this island…but I agree,” I answered, nodding. “It really sucks.”

“My love.” He bent his head and kissed me fiercely. “What can we do?”

“Well,” I said again, and took a deep breath. “I’ve been giving that a lot of thought. I decided that I don’t need to be a CPA.”

Caspian tilted his head. “What?”

“I’ll give that up. I don’t like it very much, anyway.” I’d been pursuing a career as an accountant because there was no way that I was going to succeed as a journalist, my original plan from high school. Job security was more important to me than a childish dream, so I’d decided to follow my dad’s path and become a CPA. I’d worked hard and gotten my bachelor’s and had been accruing the hours towards the certification back home, but what was that worth when the man I loved was thousands of miles away?

I’d never visited this island before (I’d never traveled too much at all), but I thought it was great. I’d met his family and I liked them a lot, and they acted as if they liked me, too. His mom had been wonderful. She was friendly, gainfully employed, and non-hysterical. Unlike other mothers, she definitely wouldn’t meddle in the lives of other people—I could already tell.

“I’d be happy to move,” I continued. “Who wouldn’t want to live in paradise? It’s a paradise with you,” I added, and he smiled.

But then his noble brow furrowed once more. “It is a lucrative career, no? And you have completed your studies. You would relinquish that hope, disregard the work you have done?”

“I would do anything for you,” I told him. “Or…were you thinking of moving to Detroit with me, instead?”

Caspian shuddered, his muscular frame shaking like a palm frond. I reflexively checked the trees again, but the coconuts still seemed secure. “Me, in Detroit? My God, no,” he answered. “I would freeze to death and feel the pull of my island every day. Every day, my heart would yearn for the white sand and golden sunshine.”

“We do have sun and nice beaches in Michigan, but I get you,” I told him. “Ok, then it’s settled.” I could deal with living here. Yes, it was a little small and isolated—and the internet connectivity was really crud, but the other inhabitants had found workarounds. They probably enjoyed sitting outside in all that golden sun instead of staring at their phones or laptop screens, alone. I could also make friends, real ones besides my sisters…

And that was a problem with moving here: I would miss my family a lot, even my parents. But they could visit because they’d love to come to a place where the weather was always perfect. We’d just have to buy lots, and lots, and lots of sunscreen.

“It’s settled,” I repeated, and a wave of excitement rose up from my stomach. “I’ll move here to be with you, and I’m happy to do it. I want us to be together, for always.” I smiled at him and he cupped my face in his palms and kissed me again, until I was dizzy. Oh, wow. I totally understood that saying about someone getting swept off her feet, because I felt like I was flying when Caspian did that.

“My love,” he murmured. “I want to ask you something. I must.”

My heart pounded, because here it came. Would he get down on one knee in the sand? How would he phrase it? Would it be a straightforward, “Will you marry me?” or would he first tell me more about how much he loved me, how my hair was like the dark-glowing embers of a banked fire, how my blue eyes sparkled like the cresting waves of the wild ocean? He really had a way with words.

“Sophie,” he whispered. “Sophie Curran.”

My name sounded so beautiful when he said it, nothing like when my little sister Grace said “Soapy” because she still had trouble with the “F” sound even though she was fifteen. It sounded much, much better than when the high school mean girls had called me “Bitchy Sophie.” I had always shaken my head when I’d heard it, disappointed in their efforts. They could have been a lot wittier with their abuse! What about “Stupid Sophie?” “Sucky Sophie?” There were so many alliterative insults right there in front of them, dangling like coconuts. Sloppy, scary, strange…the list of demeaning adjectives that started with S was practically endless or they could have gone with a rhyme—

“Sophie, my love,” Caspian murmured. He touched my dark-glowing embers hair, which was really just a very deep auburn but it sounded so cool when he compared it to fire. He’d told me that he wanted to take this moonlit walk on the beach to discuss something very important, to ask me a question that was on the top of his head. He did have that way with words but English wasn’t his first language (hence the sexy accent) and he sometimes messed up our sayings, in a totally adorable way.

He must have been very worried about my answer because he still hadn’t asked me. “Yes?” I prompted gently. I heard my voice shake but my response was firm in my mind. Yes, I would marry him. Yes, I would move; yes, I would give up on my current career path. Yes, I would intertwine my life with Caspian’s forever.

His perfect lips parted; his sensitive eyes met mine.

“Yes?” I whispered. My reply was primed and ready.

He took my hands, stepping closer. His muscular chest heaved and his breath rushed in and out with his nerves. “Sophie.”

“Yes? Yes?” I felt a tremor in his hands and now I shook through my whole body. “Yes, Caspian?”

A silence stretched as we gazed at each other and I thought I saw tears brim in his soulful eyes. His lips parted again, I held my breath, and the question finally emerged:

“Can you be ready to leave in an hour?”

“Ye—” I stopped before the word was complete. I shut my mouth, opened it again, and blinked. “What? What did you just say?”

“Can you be ready to leave in an hour?” he repeated.

“Huh? Leave for where? Where do you want us to go?”

“There is a flight to Detroit every Tuesday at ten pm,” he explained. “I thought you could get on it. You will probably have to pay a fee to change your ticket, since you were not supposed to depart for another three days. But you will enjoy a direct flight more.” He winked one of his soulful eyes at me. “There is less of the jetlag with fewer stops.”

“What?” I repeated. Was he making a joke? “Why would I want to leave early? Why would I want to change my flight and pay a fee? I don’t want to go. I was just telling you that I was going to stay forever!”

“I heard you say those things,” he agreed.

Maybe he hadn’t fully understood them, though. “I meant yes. Yes, I’ll marry you!” I explained. “Yes, I’ll live here on your island! Yes!”

Caspian nodded complacently. “That is not going to work for me, though.”

I stared. It wouldn’t work?

“It is as I told you, my love.” His voice was rich, like delicious, dark chocolate. “I cannot go on the same way, with all the distance between us.”

Ok! He definitely hadn’t understood me, maybe due to a language issue, so we could work this out. “Right, the distance is very bad,” I concurred. “It’s very hard because we miss each other so much and we’re both so busy.” Perhaps he wasn’t quite as busy as I was, though, because he was a painter and made his own schedule, picking up his brush and oils when inspiration struck him. On the other hand, I was working full-time and couldn’t make my own hours, of course, and I was also studying for the next section of the CPA exams.

It was a lot to manage and he was so spontaneous. It was hard to tell him that no, I couldn’t pause what I was doing to talk, or that I was sorry but I just didn’t have the time to respond with something as romantic and eloquent as what he’d written to me. It must have been difficult or even painful when I kept putting him off, and it must have seemed like I was always sticking him on the back burner.

“I’m sorry about how our communication has been over the past few weeks. I know that’s my fault. It’s no excuse, but I was trying to get a lot done so that I’d be totally free of any obligations during this vacation,” I explained.

“I understand. That is something I admire about you,” he told me. “You put your lips to the headstone.” He smiled as he spoke, and his teeth shone as bright as the moon over the ocean.

Holy Mary, could he have been any more attractive? I loved it when he butchered idioms! “I put my nose to the grindstone,” I corrected, and then we both laughed. I breathed out and relaxed, too. The idea of me leaving early had been some kind of weird misunderstanding.

“Ready?”

“For what?” I asked.

“You will need to stop by your room, won’t you? To gather your possessions and return them to your bag,” he prompted further, when I shook my head. “We still have time to make the flight.”

“Are you…I thought we just cleared that up,” I said. “I want to stay. I’ll marry you!”

“I know.” He nodded sadly. “But I am not that type of gentleman.”

“The type who gets married?”

“Such is the life,” he told me. “We will go back to my bike.”

But I still stood there in the sand as he walked away, toward where he’d left the little moped on which we’d sped around the island with me holding his waist and cuddled against his back. The past two days had been wonderful—amazing! He’d told me how much he loved me, how sorry he was that we had been apart, how glad he was to see me, how happy he felt that we were together. We’d spent our days on the beach, playing and swimming, talking and laughing under a big, UV-protectant umbrella. We’d spent our nights in other ways.

“Wait a minute!”

He stopped, turned, and smiled sadly at me. “Yes, my love?”

“Are you breaking up with me?”

He shrugged one shoulder. “In the passage of time, as our world careens through the galaxy, this is but a small—”

“The Earth doesn’t careen through the galaxy. It’s on a predictable orbit around the sun.” I stomped through the sand toward him. “If you’re breaking up with me, have the balls to spit it out.”

He didn’t, though. He only shrugged again.

“Why did you let me come down here? Why didn’t you say this before I left Detroit?” I asked. “Is this because of something I did since I arrived? What is it? I can fix whatever is wrong with me. Wait,” I interrupted when he started to speak. “Please don’t say that thing about being the type of gentleman who doesn’t want to get married.”

“I am a gentleman who—”

“No, I told you not to say that,” I interrupted. “You let me know that you had something important to discuss, that you needed to ask me a question that would redirect the course of our lives.”

“As it did,” he agreed, but I shook my head.

“You told me to wear my prettiest dress. You took me out to dinner and we drank champagne. You said that you loved me. You repeated it a lot,” I reminded him, and he nodded. “And after all that, after so much lead-up, your question was, ‘Want to change your flight? You have an hour to pack.’” Confusion battled with anger inside me, but anger was pulling ahead.

Caspian checked his phone. “Oh, I am sorry to say that now there is less than an hour. We need to put the foot to the metal.”

Anger definitely won. It swelled until I could almost see a red haze around him. “I’m going to put the foot to your butt if you don’t tell me what the heck is going on. Right now.”

He slowly returned his phone to his pocket. Despite myself, I admired (again) how nicely his pants fit him, how the linen fabric skimmed over his chiseled thighs…

“I do not want to be in this relationship anymore,” he said. “I had thought that when I saw you, I would remember why I had wanted to be with you, and I did remember that we enjoy each other’s company.” He looked sad, with his kissable lips tilting downward. “But that is all there is. Should we go ahead and pound the road?”

“You can pound sand,” I told him, and he looked down at his bare feet in confusion. Sugar, he did have beautiful feet. I had never paid much attention to that feature before, but his were perfectly formed and…and he had just told me, very clearly, that he didn’t want to be with me. He had been saying that he loved me—he’d been repeating it for months—but that wasn’t true. He wanted me to leave, so he wasn’t only breaking up with me. He was kicking me off his island, like this was some kind of contrived TV competition.

But this was my real life. I wanted to run, cry, scream, and kiss him, but none of those were viable options for my behavior. Instead, I gave him my best approximation of my sister Nicola’s death stare.

“I am sorry to leave you like this, then,” he said, and he did sound sorrowful. He looked truly bereft, and if that was the case, there was an easy fix! We could stay together and both of us would be happy. But he held up his hand in a farewell and took a step back, because he was leaving without me. He was putting his foot to the metal and pounding the road, too.

“Wait,” I said, because I was weak. There was still hope that we could work this out, wasn’t there? It couldn’t actually be over. “I love you,” I admitted.

“I understand that. It is such pain for you.” Now he put his hand to his mouth, those long fingers and the well-shaped palm which he kissed softly and then blew on. He took another step back, and a strong gust of tropical wind tossed his thick, silky hair. “Sorry, Sophie.”

Sorry? He was sorry, and that was it? The breeze rustled the palm behind him, and I looked up to see a cluster of coconuts about ten feet above his head. They swayed as the tree leaned with the wind, and then the trunk snapped back into place with a sharp movement. There was a little cracking sound and one of those coconuts—

“Did it hit him on the head? Did it knock him out? Does he have amnesia?” Addie clapped her hands to her cheeks. “Holy Mary! He could wake up in a hospital and have no memory of anything that happened that night. He might still be in love with you, Sophie!”

“Addie, are you serious?” our big sister Nicola asked. She sounded totally exasperated. “This is real life, not some made-up drama. And you’re in nursing school! You should know that post-traumatic amnesia is nothing like bad TV movies.” She explained, in detail, what the condition entailed and I was sure she was right, because Nicola always was.

Finally, she finished and turned to me. “Well? Did Caspian get hit with the coconut?” Our younger sister Juliet held up her hand, fingers crossed.

I hesitated before I answered, because this could go a few different ways. “No,” I finally said. “No, he didn’t get hit with a coconut.”

There was a collective growl of anger from my listeners. “If there was any justice in this world, it would have nailed him, just like in some cheap soap opera. There’s never any justice at all,” Nicola bitterly pronounced.

“Not for him,” I answered. “The coconut landed in the sand and he walked away. I heard his motorcycle start up, and then he was gone.”

“Oh, Sophie,” my sister Addie said. She was crying a little, and had been through most of this story. “Oh, it’s all so awful. I wish it had hit him, too! He deserved it. Why did he want you to fly all that way, just to say such horrible things?”

“Men are walking penises,” Juliet opined. She was only nineteen and was in an “angry at all Y chromosomes” phase of her life. She was the youngest sister here; in our family, first there was Nicola, then me, then Addie, then Juliet and her twin Patrick, then Brenna, and finally Grace. “Yes” was the answer to the question “are your parents crazy?” and “no” was the answer to “did they plan for seven kids?” But we were what they’d gotten.

I’d decided to explain my situation to a few sisters at once so that I wouldn’t have to go through the sad story again and again. Our brother was in Chicago for college and our two littlest siblings weren’t in attendance, either. Brenna was probably too young (seventeen) and also uninterested (self-absorbed). Grace was definitely too young (fifteen) and was also uninterested (space cadet). Anyway, I had previously deputized Nicola to explain it to them, if they had questions. They always went to her, since she was more like their mom than our actual birth parent had ever been.

Our mother was the person on Addie’s mind, too. “What are we going to tell Mom about this? We have to say something, Soph, because she knows that you just took that trip. She knows that you were going down there because of a guy.” Her voice turned mournful. “You went to that beautiful island and this happened before you had a chance to even try for a tan.”

The sunny, balmy Caribbean felt very far away from our current location in my sister Nicola’s living room in Detroit in the middle of winter. “I’m not going to answer any of her questions,” I stated. “All I’m going to say is that we broke up. It’s over.” The story had ended.

“Mom may want answers, but you don’t have to give them,” Nicola said grimly. “She can work herself into a fit but none of us have to pay attention.”

“Nicola, you don’t have to be mean,” Juliet chided our oldest sister. “Mom means well and she loves us. You guys are always saying nasty things about her.”

“You don’t live here,” I reminded her. “We have her on our backs all the time but soon enough, you’ll head back to the dorm at your private college.” That was true, because JuJu had gotten to leave Michigan to study elsewhere, something that her older sisters (meaning Nicola, me, and Addie) hadn’t been privileged to partake in. “Mind your own business, Juliet, and don’t tell Mom any of mine. Keep your mouth shut.”

She got mad and started to argue but Nicola cut her off. “The issue here isn’t our mother, for once. The issue is Sophie’s boyfriend dumping her in a foreign country and leaving her abandoned and alone,” she stated loudly, and boy, did it sound stark when she said it like that. She was right, though: I was alone.

“It’s ok, Soph,” Addie said kindly. “I’m sure you’ll meet someone else! You’re only twenty-three. You have time before the well runs dry. There are still a few years to find a new guy, a better one who won’t trick you into going on an amazing vacation and then ruining your life. You can still get married and have plenty of kids.”

“No.”

My sisters all looked over at me. “No?” Addie echoed.

“No, I’m not doing that. This is why I told you the story about Caspian. Because that was it. I’m done, I’m through, and I’m finished.”

Nicola was checking a notification on her phone and frowning at it. She probably had a shift at the hospital to rush off to, because suddenly she was working all the time. “What are you talking about, Sophie?” she asked me. “Spit it out and stop being dramatic.”

“I’m not being dramatic!” I flared up, although in retrospect, I had been. Slightly. “I’m just telling you that he was it. Caspian was my final boyfriend and I’m not trying it again, no matter how much time I have left. I’m done with it.”

“When you say ‘it,’ what do you mean? Because I can totally understand a woman wanting to flip off the patriarchy and say no to a relationship that ties her down for life. But are you also talking about giving up sex?” JuJu asked doubtfully. “Won’t you miss the feel of—”

“Juliet!” Addie admonished. She blushed, too, but then asked me, “You don’t really mean that you’re giving up on everything, do you? Men, sex, marriage, kids? Don’t you want any of that?”

“Nope,” I answered. “None of it.”

“But…” Addie stopped and then restarted. “But, don’t you think that you’ll be lonely? Don’t you want to fall in love and have someone love you?”

“Not everyone needs that.” Nicola sounded tired. “That’s just not in the cards for all of us.” Addie looked horrified.

“But…” Juliet also stopped and then continued. “But, don’t you think that you’ll want to screw someone? You don’t need a boyfriend for that. You can just sleep with different guys, no strings attached.”

“I don’t want any of it,” I told them. “None.”

“If you’re worried that you won’t find anyone else, you probably will,” JuJu said. “You just need to tone it down, Sophie. You’re…a lot. Guys don’t like that.”

“There’s nothing wrong with Sophie,” Addie defended me.

“No there isn’t,” I said angrily. “And I won’t be looking for anyone, anyway. Didn’t you hear what I said? I’m done.”

I thought of Caspian, conjuring his perfect face in my mind. There was his noble brow, the sweep of his hair, his soulful eyes, his kissable mouth. There he was in all of his perfection. The dream boyfriend.

I could tell that my sisters didn’t believe what I said about men and my relationships with them. They didn’t think I would stay single, but they didn’t need to. I didn’t care what any of them thought, I didn’t care what my mom would say, and I didn’t care about being all by myself forever.

“None of it,” I repeated, and Caspian’s image shimmered and then broke apart like mist when the wind gusted, just like how it blew outside my sister’s window. The icy blasts scattered the snow on her front lawn but in my mind, I could also hear the rustle of palm fronds.

“Sophie,” Addie started to argue, but I shook my head.

“No, I’m done. Forever.”

That was final, and nothing would change it.