Chapter 3: The One Bed Dilemma
The single blossom on the pillow seemed to pulse in the quiet room, a pink, perfumed heart beating at the center of their mutual defeat. The sea sighed against the cliffs below.
Sylus broke the silence first, tossing his duffel onto a low chaise lounge. “Well. This is subtle.”
“A single bed.” Hana’s voice was flat. “They might as well have hung a sign that says ‘procreate now.’”
“It’s not a single bed, midget. It’s a continent. We could get lost on it and send out search parties.” He approached the monstrous four-poster, running a hand over the silk canopy. “I’ve seen smaller soccer fields.”
“Which you’d know all about, since you were probably born offside.”
He ignored her, focusing on the practical horror. “There’s no second bedroom. The house manager made that abundantly clear. So. What’s the play?”
Hana strode forward, her earlier numbness burning away into habitual defiance. “The play is you take the floor. Or the couch.” She jerked her thumb toward the chaise. “That looks about your size.”
“It’s two feet shorter than I am. My legs would dangle off like a hanged man’s.” He folded his arms, looking down at her from his ridiculous height. “Why should I get the floor? You’re closer to it. It’s less of a fall for you.”
“I claimed the master suite in New York. By the laws of continuity, it’s my domain here, too. You’re the invader.”
“Those are fantasy laws. In the real world, the person who doesn’t resemble a garden gnome gets the bed.”
They stood on opposite sides of the silk-covered continent, glaring. The frangipani scent was suddenly cloying.
“Fine,” Sylus said, his smirk returning, that infuriating, knowing curl of his lip. “We share it.”
“Absolutely not.”
“It’s big enough we’ll never have to breach the no-fly zone. We’ll build a wall.” He gestured between them. “A great, noble wall of pillows. You stay on your side, I’ll stay on mine. The Silk Road Accord.”
Hana eyed the bed. It was, admittedly, vast. She pictured the expanse, a sheer no-man's-land of linen between them. The floor was hard tile. The chaise was a joke. Her back, still sore from a lifetime of compensating for her height, protested the idea of either.
“A high wall,” she stipulated, her voice tight. “A fortress. And if so much as a toe crosses the demarcation line, I break it.”
“Deal.” He said it too quickly, as if he’d expected her to agree all along. It irked her. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’d like to wash the smell of defeat and airplane off. Try not to booby-trap my side of the continent.”
He grabbed a change of clothes from his bag and walked toward a door she assumed led to a normal, sensible bathroom. He opened it.
Hana glanced over.
And froze.
It wasn’t a bathroom. It was a fishbowl. A stunning, modern, entirely transparent fishbowl. The walls, the shower enclosure, everything was made of perfectly clear, seamless glass. The porcelain tub, the rainfall showerhead, the toilet—all of it was on full, unobstructed display from the bedroom. There were no blinds, no frosted panels, not even a decorative sticker of a palm tree for modesty.
Sylus paused in the doorway, looked back at her over his shoulder, and saw her horrified expression. He followed her gaze into the bathroom, then back to her. One dark eyebrow lifted.
“What?” he said, all practiced innocence.
“It’s… it’s made of windows!” she sputtered, pointing.
He stepped inside, tapping the glass wall with a knuckle. It made a solid, expensive tink. “It’s not windows. It’s structural glass. Very high-end.”
“I don’t care what it’s made of, I can see everything! Are you blind?”
“What did you expect from a honeymoon suite, Hana? Sensory deprivation chambers?” He leaned against the clear doorframe, enjoying her panic a little too much. “It’s for… ambiance. Or conviviality. Or something.”
“It’s for voyeurs! I am not showering in a reality TV confessional!”
He shrugged, a slow, lazy movement. “Suit yourself. You can wait for rain. I, however, have no such hang-ups.” He said it with a bravado that didn’t quite reach his eyes. Her reaction was clearly the evening’s entertainment.
“You’re a pig.”
“I’m a pragmatist. And I won’t look.” He said it then, his tone shifting from teasing to something oddly straightforward. He wasn’t smirking. He just stated it as a fact. “You have my word. The Great Wall of Pillows extends to visual territory. I’ll keep my eyes on my own paper.”
For a second, they just looked at each other through the transparent wall. The trust exercise was absurd, layered on top of the absurdity of their situation. But his word, in their competitive history, had always been a weirdly solid currency. He’d cheat at a board game, but he’d never renege on a stated promise.
Hana, her arms crossed tightly, gave a jerky nod. “You’d better not.”
He gave a two-fingered salute, stepped fully into the aquarium, and without any further drama, turned on the shower. Steam began to cloud the glass almost immediately, obscuring the details but creating a ghostly, moving silhouette against the fog.
Hana whirled around, presenting her back to the entire scene. She focused fiercely on the bed, on the problem of pillows. There were plenty. She started yanking them off, building a heaping, lopsided barricade down the exact center of the mattress. She piled them high, using every decorative cushion from the chaise for good measure. By the time the shower stopped, she had erected a small, soft mountain range.
Sylus emerged minutes later, wearing grey sweatpants and a faded black t-shirt, his hair damp. He smelled of cedar and mint. He surveyed her handiwork.
“Impressive,” he deadpanned. “The Pillow Alps. Will there be a flag?”
“Shut up and get in your trench,” she muttered, clutching her own sleep clothes—a baggy t-shirt and shorts—to her chest.
She waited until he had climbed onto his side of the bed, his back pointedly turned to her and the bathroom, before she scurried into the glass box. The steam had cleared. It felt profoundly bizarre, like performing on a stage for an audience of one who’d promised not to watch. She showered faster than she ever had in her life, keeping one eye on his prone form the whole time. He didn’t move.
When she returned, damp and wrapped in a towel before darting to her side of the wall to change, he was scrolling on his phone, the blue light illuminating his profile. They didn’t speak. The only sounds were the whisper of fabric and the infinite sigh of the ocean.
They settled in on opposite sides of the Pillow Alps. He clicked off his lamp. The room was plunged into darkness, save for the moonlight painting silver paths on the floor.
“Goodnight, midget.”
“Don’t let the bedbugs bite, lamppost. Though they’d need climbing gear to get to you.”
Silence.
It was a long, stiff, bizarrely alert sort of sleep. Hana lay rigid, hyper-aware of the heat of another body just beyond the fluffy mountain. Every shift of the mattress, every rustle of sheets from his side, felt seismic. The wall, for all its size, was a laughable concept. His presence was a physical vibration in the air.
Somewhere in the deep, unconscious hours, the careful architecture failed.
It began with Hana, a notorious cover-thief even in solitude. In a dream, she was back in her old apartment, buried under her favorite heavy duvet. She yanked.
The movement dislodged a crucial keystone pillow from the base of the Alps. It tumbled silently into the valley.
Sylus, accustomed to sprawling, turned onto his back in his sleep, one arm flinging outward. It was a casual, powerful motion. His forearm swept across the summit like a god wiping away a cloud.
The Pillow Alps collapsed.
Downy cushions avalanched into the space between them. The great barrier was gone, leaving only a faint, lumpy topography.
Hana, still questing for blankets, rolled toward the sudden emptiness. She encountered not the edge of the bed, but a warm, solid, and decidedly human landscape. In her sleep-addled state, it registered as the giant, body-shaped heated mattress she’d always wanted. With a small, contented sigh, she buried her face against it and threw an arm across its waist.
The ‘mattress’ jerked.
Sylus woke to two unmistakable sensations. First, a weight on his chest, light but definite. Second, a tickling sensation under his chin from what felt like strands of silk. He opened his eyes to the predawn grey.
Hana Grace was sprawled directly on top of him.
Her head was nestled in the hollow of his shoulder, her blonde hair fanned across his collarbone and brushing his jaw. One of her legs was thrown over his, her arm was wrapped around his torso in a snug, oblivious hug. She was out cold, her breathing deep and even against the thin cotton of his t-shirt.
He lay perfectly still, stunned. The sea whispered its usual lie of tranquility.
This was not in the treaty. This was a full-scale invasion.
He should shove her off. He should wake her with a sarcastic comment that would etch itself into their shared history of humiliation. He should do anything but lie there, noticing how her fierce, sharp-edged presence softened completely in sleep. How she was, objectively, not a garden gnome, but actually kind of… compact. And warm.
A rogue, entirely unwelcome thought trickled in: This is the least alone I’ve felt since we got on that plane.
He squashed it immediately.
Instead, he craned his neck just enough to see the top of her head. “Midget,” he whispered, his voice gravelly with sleep. “Your conquest is complete. You’ve breached the walls.”
She didn’t stir. She made a soft, unintelligible sound and snuggled closer, her grip tightening.
Sylus Thorne, victor of a thousand childhood wars, heir to an empire, master of the infuriating quip, found himself utterly paralyzed. He stared up at the silk canopy, one hand hesitating in the air above her back before slowly, cautiously, lowering to rest on the mattress beside her. Not touching. Just… stationed.
A faint, completely involuntary grin tugged at his lips. This, he decided, was premium blackmail material. The kind you saved for a true emergency.
But for now, in the quiet, pearly light of a Caribbean dawn, with a human barnacle clinging to him, he just waited. And wondered how, exactly, he was going to extract himself without starting World War III.
The grey light brightened to gold. Consciousness returned to Hana in a warm, confusing wave. The surface under her cheek was firm but yielding, rising and falling in a steady rhythm. It smelled like cedar and sleep. It was not a pillow.
Her eyes flew open.
She was looking at the weave of a soft, black cotton t-shirt, stretched over a distinctly male chest. Her leg was hooked over a solid thigh. Her arm was locked around a torso. Panic fired through her veins, white-hot and paralyzing. She didn’t scream. She froze, her breath catching.
She tilted her head back, just an inch.
Sylus was already awake, staring down at her. His dark eyes were alert, watchful. That faint, maddening grin was playing on his lips again. He’d been waiting.
“Comfortable?” he asked, his voice a low rumble she felt through his chest.
Hana scrambled backward so fast she tangled in the sheets, nearly pitching off the side of the bed. She righted herself, clutching the duvet to her chin like a shield. Her heart hammered against her ribs.
“You lured me!” she accused, her voice morning-raw and shaking with outrage.
He propped himself up on his elbows, the picture of lounging innocence. “I lured you. Yes. With my advanced psychic sleep-powers. I mentally commanded you to dismantle the Pillow Alps and use me as a mattress. My master plan is complete.”
“You moved the pillows! You—you encroached!”
“The evidence suggests the encroaching was all you, Grace.” He gestured to the great, empty plain of the bed between them. The pillows were scattered like fallen clouds on his side, on her side, on the floor. “You sought warmer shores. Can’t blame you, really. Body heat is a biological imperative.”
“I would rather sleep on a bed of nails!”
“Noted for tomorrow night.” He stretched, the hem of his t-shirt riding up to reveal a strip of taut, pale stomach. He seemed utterly unfazed. “But since you’re up, and we’re apparently committed to this pantomime, we should strategize. The ‘honeymoon’ itinerary.”
The word was a bucket of cold water. The bizarre intimacy of the moment shattered, replaced by the familiar, grating reality. They were being watched. They had a role to play.
“We do what tourists do,” Sylus said, swinging his legs out of bed. He ran a hand through his messy hair. “We go into town. We eat overpriced fish. We walk on the beach. We look… conjoined.”
“I’d rather get a root canal.”
“Same principle. Less novocaine.” He stood, towering over her. “Be ready in an hour. And maybe wear something that doesn’t look like you’re about to paint a shed.”
The town was a postcard of crumbling pastel walls and vivid bougainvillea. The air hung thick with salt and the smell of frying plantains. They walked a careful foot apart on the cobblestones, a palpable force field of resentment between them.
“That statue is historically inaccurate,” Hana muttered, nodding toward a bronze conquistador in the main square.
“You’re historically inaccurate,” Sylus replied, without heat. He was squinting at a chalkboard menu outside a café. “Do you think ‘catch of the day’ here means something that was alive this morning, or last week?”
“For you, probably last month. You have the palate of a garbage disposal.”
He bought two pastries from a street vendor anyway, handing her one without looking at her. It was warm, flaky, and dusted with sugar. She took a grudging bite. It was incredible.
A moment passed. They stood side-by-side, eating in silence, watching the slow movement of the town. A skinny dog trotted past. An old man strummed a guitar on a stoop.
“It’s not terrible,” Sylus conceded, brushing sugar from his fingers.
“The pastry or the exile?”
“Both.”
She almost smiled. She caught herself, turning it into a scowl. “Don’t get used to it.”
They rented bikes, which was a mistake. Hers was too tall. His was comically small.
“You look like a circus bear on a tricycle,” she called out, wobbling past him on the coastal path.
“And you’re pedaling so fast your legs are a blur. Like a panicked hamster.”
They ended up at a secluded cove, all white sand and water so clear it looked like air. The tension of performance momentarily evaporated, replaced by a older, simpler challenge.
Hana dropped her bag and kicked off her sandals. “Race you to the buoy.”
Sylus didn’t bother with a reply. He just yanked his shirt over his head and broke into a sprint for the water.
She was right behind him, shucking her sundress to reveal a simple black one-piece. The water was a shock of perfect, cool silk against her skin. She dove under a wave, surfaced, and began cutting through the swell with sharp, efficient strokes. She was a strong swimmer, had been since childhood lessons at the country club.
She could hear him nearby, his longer arms pulling ahead with powerful, languid cuts. The red buoy bobbed, maybe fifty meters out. She pushed harder, the burn in her muscles a clean, honest feeling. For a few minutes, there was no merger, no forced marriage, no transparent bathroom. There was just the sun on her back, the salt in her mouth, and the need to beat him.
He touched the buoy a single second before she did. He turned, treading water, gasping for air. His dark hair was plastered to his forehead.
“Too… slow… midget,” he panted, a triumphant grin splitting his face.
She splashed a wall of water directly into his open mouth. “You… had a… longer reach,” she shot back, breathless. “Cheater.”
“Biology isn’t cheating.” He was still grinning, his eyes crinkling at the corners. He looked different like this—stripped of his suits and his sarcastic armor, just a guy in the ocean, winning a stupid race. The sight hooked something in her chest, an old, forgotten feeling that wasn’t pure hatred. It was closer to recognition.
He shook his head, sending droplets flying. “Come on. Before you get leg cramps and I have to rescue you.”
“In your dreams, Thorne.”
They swam back slower, the race energy spent. Back on the sand, lying on their towels, the silence was different. It wasn’t the suffocating penthouse quiet or the hostile bedroom tension. It was the exhausted, sun-dazed quiet of two people who had, for a moment, just done something.
“You’re not a terrible swimmer,” he said, eyes closed against the sun.
“You’re not a total anchor,” she replied.
A smile touched his lips. He didn’t open his eyes.
The fragile detente lasted until the walk back to the villa. It frayed over a debate about the best route, snapped over who got the outdoor shower first, and was fully severed by the time they were back in the glass-box bedroom.
“You’re covered in salt. You’re getting sand everywhere,” Hana complained, brushing at her legs.
“Then go wash it off. My turn for the aquatic display is after.” He flung himself onto the chaise, picking up a book he had no intention of reading.
Hana grabbed clean clothes and stalked into the bathroom. She turned the shower on full, the sound a roaring curtain. Steam billowed, quickly fogging the glass walls into an opaque, grey-white cloud. Safe. She peeled off her sandy one-piece, letting it fall to the wet floor with a slap.
The water was heaven. She tipped her head back, letting it stream over her scalp and down her shoulders, washing away the salt and the weird, confusing peace of the afternoon. She soaped her arms, her legs, the mundane ritual a comfort.
In the bedroom, Sylus stared at the same page of his book. The words were a blur. The roar of the water was the only sound. He tried to focus on a paragraph about coastal erosion.
A shift in the air pressure, a slight change in the light from the bathroom, made him glance up.
The steam on the glass was clearing in one place. A vertical streak had melted away, condensation running down in a clean, narrow line. It was a random trick of airflow, a flaw in the fog.
Through that clear, vertical slice, he could see her.
It was just a fragment. The curve of a soap-slicked hip. The dip of a waist. Then, as she turned slightly, the full, heavy swell of her breast, water sluicing over the pale, plump curve. A tight, pink nipple beaded from the cool air drifting through the vent. The glimpse was startling in its intimacy, a vulnerable, lush detail that clashed violently with the sharp-tongued rival he knew.
His breath caught, stuck somewhere in his throat. He should look away. He’d given his word.
But his body reacted before his mind could command it, a low, visceral pull of heat that was purely physical, utterly uncomplicated by thought. His gaze dropped, drawn down that clear strip of glass.
He saw the neat, trimmed triangle of blonde curls between her thighs, glistening wet.
Then she moved, her hand rising to push her hair back, and the clear streak fogged over again, as if it had never been. The view vanished, replaced by the bland, opaque white.
Sylus looked down. His knuckles were white where he gripped the book. The roar of the shower filled his head. He forced his eyes back to the page, but the words were now completely incomprehensible. A strange, restless energy coiled tight in his gut, a mix of guilt, trespass, and a raw, unwelcome hunger.
The water shut off.
He listened to the muffled sounds of her moving, the rustle of a towel. His own skin felt too tight. The image was burned into his vision: the water on her skin, the startling, soft weight of her breast, the neat blonde thatch.
He stood up abruptly, the book tumbling to the floor. He needed to get out of the room, needed space where the air wasn’t thick with the scent of her shampoo and the ghost of what he’d seen.
The glass door slid open. Hana emerged, wrapped in a towel, her hair in a turban. She was pink from the heat, her eyes clear.
“All yours,” she said, padding past him toward her closet, oblivious.
He couldn’t formulate a sentence. He just nodded, a sharp, stiff motion, and walked into the bathroom, closing the foggy glass door behind him. He leaned his forehead against the cool, wet wall. The space was still humid, filled with the scent of her—clean, citrusy, entirely too present.
He was in trouble. Deep, profound, five-years-long trouble.