I can’t believe she came with an itinerary and a full work schedule!
She went further to have it printed, color-coded, a proper time-blocked schedule for the honeymoon, which I discovered when I glanced at the carry-on bag she was loading into the car at five forty-seven in the morning.
I caught the corner of it laminated, naturally before she zipped the bag shut and looked at me like she’d caught me reading her diary.
I smiled in disbelief.
“What?” she asked me, almost annoyed.
“Nothing.” I bit back a smile.
“Alright then.
Are you ready?” she asked, as if she hadn’t just packed a laminated itinerary for what was supposed to be fourteen days of doing nothing.
“Whenever you are, wife.” She got into the car and I followed, and for the first twenty minutes of the drive I said nothing and watched her work from her phone, her thumbs moving across the screen with a focused efficiency that belonged to a boardroom at nine AM and not a car at six in the morning on the way to an airport very specifically for a honeymoon.
She was different quite alright.
The city was still dark and the streets were empty.
Outside, Seattle moved past the windows like a painting and Sloane Reed didn’t even take her nose out of her phone to look at any of it.
Is she going to be like this the entire trip?
I wondered.
The airport was supposed to be a straightforward situation.
We were supposed to get to the private terminal where we expected minimal staff and no delays.
At least, that was what I planned for – a clean departure.
What I didn’t plan for were the photographers we met there.
Three of them, positioned just outside the entrance like this was planned and they knew exactly where we would be.
They had clearly been tipped off.
The second we stepped out of the car, the cameras came up.
Sloane saw them before I did.
I watched her posture shift, shoulders back, chin level, the expression she wore for cameras slide into place.
She’d been managing her public image since she was old enough to understand that she had one.
But the problem with having a professional mask was that it was stiff and in this case, that was not the mask she needed.
She needed a carefree mask that communicated relaxation and happiness.
I put my hand on her waist before she had time to think about it.
The effect was immediate.
She didn’t pull away because she was too smart and controlled for that.
But for one second, the professional mask slipped.
She released the breath she’d been holding.
My hand was at the curve of her waist, and she finally showed a crack of emotion showing that my touch had affected her more than she cared to admit to herself.
She recovered fast like she always did.
But I’d seen it.
I smiled at the cameras like she did and we went through the entrance looking exactly like a couple on their way to a honeymoon, and when the doors closed behind us she stepped out of my grip without acknowledging it had happened.
“That was good,” I said.
“Don’t,” she replied swiftly and walked ahead.
I chuckled.
Always so feisty.
The flight was eleven hours in a private cabin with every comfort available, an ocean of sky outside the window and all the time in the world to do nothing.
But, Sloane had chosen to spend approximately nine of those hours working.
Her laptop was open with files spread across the table, her phone in one hand and coffee going cold in the other because she kept forgetting it was there.
I watched her from the seat across the aisle and felt irritation settle in my chest.
Is this all she does?
I wasn’t irritated at her but at the sheer waste of the moment and the fact that she could sit inside something beautiful and feel nothing because she’d already decided what this trip was before we left Seattle.
I read my reports and answered a few calls and when I was bored, I looked out the window because when I looked at her, she didn’t look back once.
I shook my head a couple of times.
This was her way and I just had to accept it.
The resort was on the water.
The car from the airstrip pulled up at golden hour.
I watched the white stone villas from afar looking stunning.
We passed Infinity pools that bled into the ocean, surrounded with the sound of water from every direction, waves from the beach below, the fountains at the entrance, a stream running through the garden path to our villa.
The entire thing was stunning and it was a shame Sloane walked through all of it looking at her phone.
I stopped in the middle of the garden path.
The light caught her hair and the ocean was visible through the trees, deep blue and vast.
She hadn’t looked up once.
“Sloane.” “The villa is this way?” she asked without lifting her eyes.
“Yes.” She walked past me and found the door herself.
By seven o’clock she had colonized the smaller of the two sitting rooms.
Her Laptop charger was in the wall, files from her bag spread across the glass table and the villa’s complimentary notepad already covered in her handwriting.
In the time it had taken me to shower and change, she had turned a room that cost twenty thousand dollars a night into a branch office of Reed Industries.
I stood in the doorway and looked at her.
She didn’t notice.
Dinner was on the terrace and had been arranged beautifully by the resort.
There were candles, the ocean was below the terrace and the food I knew was going to be exceptional because I’d personally handpicked the chef.
Sloane sat across from me with her phone face up beside her plate.
“Do you plan to remember you’re on a honeymoon?” I asked.
She looked up.
“Successful companies don’t stop running because their CEO takes a vacation.” “You’re not on vacation.
You’re on a honeymoon.” “Same thing.” She shrugged.
“It’s not.” She set her fork down.
“What exactly do you want from me, Zane?
You wanted pictures.
We’ll take pictures.
You wanted the board to see a happy couple.
They’ll see it.
But when the cameras are off, my company is still my company and I have work to do.” “The cameras being off is exactly the problem.
You’ve been married for a week and you’ve spent most of it hiding in your office.” “I’m not hiding, ” “You’re working instead of living.” I held her gaze.
“There’s a difference.” I emphasized.
A myriad of emotions ran through her face, anger being one out of many.
Something she didn’t want me to see.
She stood, picked up her phone, and walked back inside without finishing her dinner.
The balcony off the master bedroom faced the water.
I found it, after the dinner plates had been cleared and the villa had gone quiet.
The ocean was dark beyond the railing, the sky above it crowded with stars that Seattle’s light pollution erased.
I heard the door behind me.
Sloane stepped onto the balcony and stopped when she saw me.
She looked at me, then at the ocean.
I watched her decide whether to go back inside.
Then she decided to stay.
Neither of us spoke.
Beneath us, the water moved and the sound of it filled the space between us.
This was more intimate than everything that had happened since they came.
And felt more dangerous than all the arguments.
She shifted beside me and turned to go back in.
Her foot hit the wet stone.
The sprinklers had run earlier and left the far end of the balcony slick.
She went sideways fast, a fall that had no recovery.
I caught her.
My arm came towards her back and I saved her fall.
Her weight was against me so my hand gripped where it had landed.
I felt it properly, the curve and the warmth through the thin fabric of her clothes.
It was her butt.
Neither of us moved.