Cam shook his head. “You called me the day before you left. You were all but crowing. Said you’d closed the land deal that day and that next you were going to be on a plane back to New York. I asked if you’d had a good vacation since you’d been gone for four damn weeks. You told me that some things were worth the sacrifice.”

Rafe went still. Suddenly it was hard to get air into his lungs. His chest squeezed painfully as pain thudded relentlessly in his head.

“Rafael? You okay, man?”

Still images flashed through his head like photos. The pieces of his lost memory shot out of a cannon. Random. Out of order. It all hurled at him at supersonic speed until he was dizzy and disoriented.

“Rafe, talk to me,” Cam insisted.

Rafael managed to open the car door and stumble out onto the curb. He put a hand back toward Cam when his friend would have gotten out, too.

“I’m fine. Leave me. I’ll call you later.”

He hauled his luggage out of the trunk and then walked mechanically toward the entrance. His doorman swung open the glass doors and offered a cheerful greeting.

Like a zombie, Rafael got into the elevator, clumsily inserted his card and nearly fell when the elevator began its ascent.

Memories of the first time he saw Bryony. Making love—no, having sex with her. The day at the closing agent’s office when Bryony had signed over her land and he’d given her the check. Of the day he’d told her goodbye.

It all came back so fast his head spun trying to catch up.

He was going to be sick.

The elevator doors opened and it took him a full minute to force himself inside his apartment. Leaving his luggage inside the doorway, he staggered toward one of the couches in the living room, so sick, so devastated that he wanted to die.

He slumped onto the sofa and lowered his head to his hands.

Oh, God, Bryony would never forgive him for this.

He couldn’t forgive himself.

* * *

“Mamaw, would it really be so terrible if they built a resort here?” Bryony asked quietly as the two women sat on Mamaw’s deck.

Mamaw glanced over at Bryony, her eyes soft with love. “You’re taking on too much, Bryony. You have to decide what’s best for you. It’s not your responsibility to make the entire island happy. If this resort is coming between you and Rafael, you have to decide what is the most important to you. Is it making everyone here happy? Or is it being happy yourself?”