chapterthirteen
Cassie
I’m not surprised to wake up to an empty bed and an empty room.
Last night was amazing and seemed to turn the entire planet into my own personal Tilt-a-Wheel, but I’m not a woman who needs a man to wait on me hand and foot. Besides, I’m pretty sure Nick isn’t the kind of guy who sleeps late.
After all, I know how little sleep my brothers seem to need. Plus, by the time I drag myself out of bed, it’s nearly ten.
It doesn’t take a mind reader to guess that Nick’s been up for hours already and that he’s naturally too restless to sit around waiting for me to wake up. My suspicions are confirmed when I find a note on the dresser saying he’s gone out to exercise and will be back before lunch.
I don’t remember seeing an exercise facility at the resort, but I might have missed that part of the tour. But for all I know, Nick is out there swimming laps around the island or bench pressing whale sharks or whatever Navy SEALs do for exercise when they don’t have access to a gym, which is most of the time, actually.
I get dressed, slap on some sunscreen and go off in search of coffee.
Once I’m armed with coffee, I ask the staff and find out that nearly everyone else from our party went out on a boat earlier for a snorkeling excursion. I take my coffee out on to the patio, content to just sit and watch the water.
I’m not very good at not thinking about things. By nature, I’m someone who mulls things over, trying to see every angle, to predict what’s next.
The fact that I’ve made it a full twenty minutes without freaking out yet is impressive. Weirdly, even after I sit down and let myself think, I still don’t freak out.
It feels like I should be freaking out. After all, I’m not a one-night-stand kind of girl. I don’t sleep around. I don’t judge other people who do—that’s their business—but it’s just not something that’s ever appealed to me. Until last night, each time I’d slept with a man, it was something I gave a lot of forethought to. I know where the relationship was going. I knew what to expect, because I’d discussed those expectations ahead of time.
But with Nick, none of that forethought and planning, none of those discussions, seemed necessary.
Maybe it’s because he’s my friend. Maybe it’s because we spent all those months getting to know each other in emails and messages before we even met. I don’t know for sure why this feels so different, only that it does.
When I finish my coffee, I head back to the main palapa for a refill and that’s when I run into Tripp on his way out, carrying a plate of toast and several bottles of water.
I nod in greeting, ready to let him pass, but he’s the one who stops me.
“So you missed the snorkeling excursion, too?”
“Yep.”
“Ah.”
Nodding, I once again try to move past him, but again, he stops me.
“Delany was feeling sea sick this morning,” he says, even though I didn’t ask and have zero interest. “I was sorry to miss the snorkeling, but I’m glad I ran into you. To talk.”
Oh, Jesus. He wants to talk? To me?
What on earth for?
Though I’m tempted to tell him to fuck off, instead, I settle on something a little less potentially controversial. “Okay.”
“The thing is, Cassie…”
He brings his hand up, like he’s going to run his fingers nervously through his hair, only to remember too late that he’s holding the bottle of water. He pauses, looks at the water bottle in apparent surprise, and then sets the water and the toast on a nearby table.
“The thing is, Cassie,” he says, clearly trying to reclaim whatever momentum he lost with the water bottle snafu. “I miss you.”
“What?”
Oh, jeez. That is not where I thought he was going with this.
“We were good together,” he says fiercely. “We made sense. We fit.”
