Looking at her wide eyes, it was truly hard to tell if Rita was genuinely terrified of losing her romantic partner or simply panicking over losing her financial meal ticket.
Without a single second of hesitation, instinct took over. Emily sprang up from her beach towel, kicking up sand as she sprinted over to James’s lifeless body. She immediately pressed her two fingers hard against his sweaty neck to check for a pulse. He was still breathing, drawing shallow, ragged gasps, but his heartbeat felt dangerously weak and erratic under her fingertips.
“Grab an umbrella right now! We need to get him entirely shaded from this sun!” she barked, turning her fierce gaze onto the panicking blonde.
“An umbrella? What for? I do not know how to open it!” Rita stammered helplessly, proving to be completely useless in an actual crisis.
“Fine, forget it! Just run back to the hotel lobby and scream for a doctor! Hurry up and move!” Emily yelled.
Rita finally snapped out of her frozen shock and dashed off awkwardly across the deep sand. A small crowd of nosy onlookers had started to form a tight circle, merely gawking and whispering instead of lifting a finger to help. Ignoring them all, Emily expertly bent James’s right knee, rolled his heavy, limp body onto his side, and carefully propped up his chin to ensure his airway remained clear. She practically ripped a heavy canvas sun umbrella from the adjacent, empty lounger and jammed it deep into the sand right beside his head, casting a dark shadow over his pale face.
About thirty agonizing seconds later, James finally let out a low groan. He stirred slightly, his eyelashes fluttering as he slowly opened his eyes to the blinding daylight. The blurry silhouette above him finally came into sharp focus. He saw Emily leaning over him. She was the absolute last person on the face of the earth he ever expected to see.
“Emily… is that really you?” he mumbled, his voice thick and heavily disoriented, his dry lips barely moving.
“Yes, it is me,” she replied with an icy, terrifying calm. It was only in that exact second that she realized her hat had flown off in the rush and her oversized sunglasses were dangling forgotten from her fingers. Her disguise was completely gone.
Before Emily could even begin to process the sheer magnitude of the moment, the frantic sound of sandals slapping against the boardwalk broke the tension. Rita returned, completely out of breath, dragging a hotel doctor dressed in a crisp white polo shirt behind her. Emily immediately took a massive step back, retreating to the safety of her lounger. She hastily grabbed her oversized sunglasses from the sand, sliding them back onto her face as a physical shield.
She watched in tense silence as the doctor knelt beside the plastic chair. He moved with practiced efficiency, ripping open a sterile alcohol wipe and administering a quick injection into James’s arm. After checking his pulse and peering into his dilated pupils with a tiny penlight, the doctor finally stood up and wiped his brow.
“He is going to be perfectly fine,” the doctor explained calmly to a hovering, frantic Rita. “It is just a classic fainting spell. His blood pressure dropped dramatically, likely from a nasty combination of severe dehydration and overheating in this blazing sun. You need to get him up to a cool, air-conditioned place immediately and let him sleep it off.”
Rita dramatically threw her hands up in the air, her face twisting into a mask of pure annoyance. “And exactly how am I supposed to carry a grown man all by myself?” she complained loudly, her previous panic instantly replaced by selfish inconvenience.
“I will walk,” James muttered weakly. He slowly pushed himself up from the lounger, his legs visibly shaking as he fought for balance. He groggily rubbed the back of his neck and scanned the small crowd of onlookers, his bleary eyes desperately searching for Emily. But she had completely vanished into the background, a nameless tourist hidden behind dark lenses and a wide straw brim. Finding nothing, James heavily leaned his weight onto a grumbling Rita, and the two of them slowly hobbled back toward the towering glass doors of the resort.
Emily spent the rest of the afternoon operating in a complete mental fog. She and Ethan grabbed a quiet lunch at a little open-air café near the boardwalk, though she barely managed to force down a few bites of her salad. By the time they returned to the cool sanctuary of their hotel room, Ethan was rubbing his tired eyes. She tucked him into the massive bed for a midday nap and sank onto the adjacent sofa, her exhausted brain spinning.
Suddenly, a muffled, electronic ringing started vibrating from the depths of her canvas beach bag.
She let out an irritated groan, digging her hands through damp towels, bottles of thick sunscreen, and sandy plastic toys, desperately trying to locate her phone. At that exact same second, three sharp, urgent knocks echoed from the heavy wooden door of their suite.
“Hold on just a second!” she called out, thoroughly annoyed, her hands still blindly searching the bottom of the tote bag.
The knocking came again, louder and much more insistent this time.
“What is it? I said wait a minute!” Emily snapped, finally giving up on the ringing phone. She marched across the carpet and forcefully yanked the heavy door open, a sharp reprimand sitting right on the tip of her tongue.
The words instantly died in her throat. James stood in the hallway.
Pure, unadulterated instinct completely overrode her logical brain. Emily slammed the heavy door shut in his face with a resounding thud. Her chest heaved, her heart hammering a frantic, terrifying rhythm against her ribs.
Seconds later, his muffled voice drifted through the thick wood. “Emily, please wait! Just open the door.”
She squeezed her eyes shut, resting her warm forehead against the cool metal of the doorframe. She hesitated for a long, agonizing moment, battling the overwhelming urge to throw the deadbolt. Finally, letting out a defeated sigh, she cracked the door open just a few inches, leaving the heavy brass security chain firmly in place.
“How on earth did you find me?” she hissed, her voice a toxic mixture of anger and disbelief.
“I went straight to the front desk. I asked the concierge for my wife’s room number and gave them your first and last name,” he admitted, looking down at his expensive leather loafers.
“I am not your wife anymore,” she shot back, her words coated in ice.
“I know this is incredibly hard to process, but please, you have to let me explain,” James pleaded, his eyes finally meeting hers. They looked haunted.
“Not right now,” she whispered fiercely, shooting a nervous glance over her shoulder toward the darkened room where Ethan was sleeping. “The kid is taking a nap. If he wakes up and hears your voice, it will ruin everything.”
“Then let us meet tonight. Downstairs at the main hotel bar, ten o’clock sharp. Please, Emily. I am begging you.”
She stared at the man who had completely derailed her entire existence. A part of her wanted to scream for hotel security, but a much darker, burning curiosity ultimately won the internal war. She needed to know the truth.
“Fine,” she agreed curtly.
“Please actually come,” James said softly, his voice thick with an emotion she absolutely refused to decipher.
She shut the door and slid the deadbolt home with a satisfying click. Her mind was a chaotic race track. How was she possibly supposed to prepare for a conversation with a ghost? What ridiculous lies would he spin? Could she trust a single syllable that fell out of his mouth? Emily mentally locked away her vulnerable heart, vowing to stay completely composed, to question every single detail, and to keep her volatile emotions locked down tight.
After ordering room service and finally putting Ethan to bed for the night, she touched up her makeup, threw on a simple dark dress, and took the elevator down to the lobby.