Ellie's POV
The sand is cold between my toes, and I dig them deeper anyway, anchoring myself to something solid while everything else spins out of control.
I walked until the mansion became nothing but a scatter of lights against the cliff—distant enough to feel like someone else's problem, close enough to remind me I'll have to go back eventually.
The Pacific stretches endlessly before me, black and silver under the moon, waves whispering secrets I'm too exhausted to decode.
The water rushes over my feet without warning, and the warmth of it startles me—bath-like and gentle.
I don't move away. I let it swirl around my ankles, let the salt sting the small cuts I didn't know I had, let the ocean pull at me like it wants to drag me under and keep me.
Maybe that would be easier.
The thought surfaces before I can stop it, and I shove it down immediately—not because I mean it, but because the fact that I thought it at all terrifies me.
Who have I become?
The question doesn't feel rhetorical anymore. Two weeks ago, I was Ellie Harman—quiet, agreeable, invisible. The girl who smiled through disappointment because fighting back required energy she didn't have.
Now I throw crystal vases at men's heads and kiss billionaires against walls and cry in strangers' bedrooms while their sons hold me down on expensive sheets.
"What the fuck is wrong with me?" The words rip out of me, carried away by the wind before they can settle. The ocean doesn't answer. It just keeps coming, wave after wave, indifferent to my breakdown.
"I'm not this person." My voice sounds foreign, scraped raw from crying earlier. "I don't do this. I don't—I don't want three different men in two weeks. I don't throw things. I don't feel this much."
But that's a lie, isn't it? I've always felt this much. I just got very, very good at pretending I didn't.
I dig my fingers into the sand and let the grit settle under my nails, sharp little reminders that I'm still here.
Slut. The word floats up from some dark corner of my mind, ugly and familiar. That's what they'd call you if they knew.
Footsteps crunch through the sand behind me, and every muscle in my body goes rigid. If it's Tyler, if he followed me down here to continue whatever that was in the guest bedroom, I don't know what I'll do.
Scream, probably. Or kiss him again.
But the figure that lowers himself onto the sand beside me isn't Tyler.
Zack sits with careful deliberation, still wearing his business clothes—charcoal suit jacket, white shirt unbuttoned at the collar, slacks that probably cost more than my entire wardrobe.
His shoes are missing, abandoned somewhere between the house and here, and his bare feet look oddly vulnerable in the moonlight.
Neither of us speaks. The waves fill the silence, rhythmic and indifferent, and I focus on counting them—seven, eight, nine—until my heartbeat slows to something manageable.
"I owe you an apology." His voice cuts through the tenth wave, low and rough around the edges. "For what happened last night. I should never have let things go that far, and I should have handled it with more grace than storming in and issuing orders like you were one of my employees."
I turn my head, studying his profile in the silver light. The sharp jaw, the distinguished gray at his temples, the tension radiating from his shoulders even as he tries to appear relaxed.
"I'm not sorry it happened." The words come out steadier than I expected. "But I understand why you are, and I understand why it can't happen again. You don't need to torture yourself with guilt on my account, Zack. I'm made a choice, and I'd make the same choice again if you gave me the opportunity."
His jaw tightens, but he doesn't look at me. "That's precisely why I can't give you the opportunity."
"I know." I draw a pattern in the sand with my fingertip, watching it fill with shadows. "For what it's worth, your restraint is admirable. Frustrating, but admirable."
A sound escapes him—not quite a laugh, not quite a sigh. "You give me too much credit, Ellie."
Maybe I do.
"Whatever happened between you and my son—" He pauses, and I can hear the effort it costs him to form the words. "That's your business, Ellie. You're both adults, and I have no right to—"
"Which son?" I interrupt, because the alternative is letting him finish that sentence, and I'm not ready for the conversation that follows.
His head turns sharply. "What?"
"Which son are you referring to, Zack?" I tilt my head, letting a smile curve my lips—the first genuine smile I've managed all day. "Because I have to be honest with you, the McKinney men are proving difficult to resist."
The look on his face is worth every ounce of humiliation I've suffered today. Shock, followed by confusion, followed by something that might be reluctant amusement if I squint hard enough.
"You're telling me that both my sons—" He stops, runs a hand over his face, and makes a sound that's definitely closer to a laugh this time. "Of course they have. Of course you did. Why would anything in this situation be simple?"
"Simple is overrated." I bump my shoulder against his, a gesture that feels surprisingly natural. "Besides, if it makes you feel any better, I think I'm drawn to them because they remind me of you."
"Ellie—"
"Derek has your kindness buried under all that charm," I continue quickly, the words tumbling out before he can derail them with whatever warning or rejection lives behind my name. "Tyler has your intensity hidden beneath the cruelty. Different packaging, same fundamental appeal."
"That does not make me feel better." But his voice has lost some of its tension, warming around the edges despite his words. "That makes me feel like our life is the plot of a very bad soap opera and not at all how I imagined spending my summer."
"Life rarely goes according to plan. Trust me, I had very different expectations for my summer as well, and none of them involved becoming the source of family drama in a Malibu mansion."
He laughs then—actually laughs, the sound low and genuine and completely unexpected. It transforms his face, softens the severity, makes him look younger.
"You're trouble, Ellie Harman." But he says it fondly, like trouble is something he's learned to appreciate rather than avoid.
"So I've been told." I pause, watching the waves for a moment before asking the question that's been circling my mind for days. "Where's Veronica? I haven't seen her for days."
The warmth drains from his expression, replaced by something flat and distant. "It's over. Has been for a while, if I'm honest."
"Why?" The question escapes before I can weigh whether I have any right to ask it.
He turns to look at me then—really looks, his gray eyes searching my face in the moonlight—and I see it. Vulnerability, raw and unguarded, flickering beneath his composed surface like a flame behind frosted glass.
For one breathless moment, I think he's going to tell me the truth. The real truth, the one that has nothing to do with Veronica and everything to do with the way he kissed me against that wall.
Then the walls rebuild until the man beside me is once again the controlled billionaire I met at my parents' funeral.
"Some things aren't meant to last." He rises, brushing sand from his expensive slacks. "Good night, Ellie."
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