ARIA'S POV
She found out at thirty thousand feet.
They'd been in the air for two hours and she'd asked three times and gotten nothing and she was considering more drastic measures when Damien reached into his jacket and put an itinerary on the table between them.
She looked at it.
Maldives. Private island. Seven days.
She looked at him.
He was looking at her face with the expression of a man who had been waiting for exactly this moment.
"You're smiling," he said.
"I'm not smiling."
"You're absolutely smiling."
She looked back at the itinerary. The villa details. Overwater. Private pool. Butler service. The kind of thing that existed in a register so far from a girl who had grown up watching her mother work three jobs that she still sometimes had to remind herself that her life was real.
"The Maldives," she said.
"Yes."
"You booked a private island."
"A villa on a private island."
"Damien."
"You deserve it," he said simply. "You deserve all of it."
