And Danial, well, he hadn’t texted her at all—not that she expected him to. Their conversation had left her churning with regret and embarrassment, full of follow-up questions she wouldn’t dare ask. She wanted to know more about his mother, about his own feelings about that night at the party and what came after, about so much else. But it was clear that her petulant need to punish him with that video was enough to finally drive a permanent wedge between them. And she had no one to blame but herself this time, no moral wiggle room that she could occupy for another decade. They’d finally experienced true intimacy together, and it was glorious, but there was simply too much emotional calcification between them to share anything more than a few stolen moments on a boat trip. Even if she wasn’t mature enough to draw that line, he was—and maybe she should be grateful for that.

“We have a card already,” the receptionist continued. She turned around, grabbing an old-fashioned key with a heavy wooden tag from the wall behind her. “I will use that for the incidentals?”

“That’s great.”

“There will be breakfast every morning on the terrace from seven to ten o’clock, and the WiFi password is on the desk in your room. Please let me know if you have any questions.”

Alex nodded a thank you before rolling her suitcase over to the miniscule elevator, taking it up three painfully slow floors to her even more miniscule room. She looked around, taking it in. There was a double bed with extremely starched sheets and a television that couldn’t have been more than fifteen inches across, mounted just above a basic wooden writing desk where she immediately slung down her purse. The paint was scuffed in places, flaking from the baseboards and warping slightly under the window air conditioning unit. She had worried the hotel would feel like an unbearable downgrade from her cabin, but once inside, she found that its simplicity was surprisingly reassuring. She turned the television on to a Greek weather station, the sounds of the language washing over her as she opened her suitcase on the folding stand from the single closet.