“Are there plenty of stories involvingyou, too?” I asked. “While I’m all for blackmail material on Avery, I’d also like to learn more aboutyourembarrassing stories. So what was it, a first kiss gone wrong on the shore? Perhaps tripping and falling flat on your face while you were sprinting to the treehouse?”
She scoffed. “No way. If you want an embarrassing story, you’ll have to earn it, but for the record, you already know mymostembarrassing story. It’s the one where my fiancé was sleeping with my best friend and then married her just six months later.”
“Fucking idiot,” I muttered, my head shaking as I let the back of my hand brush hers. “Let’s talk happy memories instead. It must’ve been amazing coming out here every summer.”
“It really was,” she said after a beat. “I’m over him, you know. Hunter. It didn’t take me long after he and Farrah left to realize that I’d been with him for so long only because I’d been with him for so long. Things weren’t ever that great between us. I just didn’t know any better.”
“Yeah. I think I know what you mean.”
She glanced up at me, her brow slightly furrowed in curiosity. “You do?”
I groaned. “Well, no. Not really, but I do know what it’s like to think there’s only one path laid out for you and that you have to stick with it.”
Of course, in my case, that one path was vastly different from what she was referring to. I could see how she’d thought thatmarrying her high school sweetheart was the only way to go, though. Our lives had been so different, growing up.
She’d been here, in this small town where locals vacationed at the lake every summer and her dad had built treehouses with other dads. Meanwhile, I’d grown up in a house so big that visitors occasionally got lost and the only thing my dad had built had been a larger empire.
My childhood had been good. It’d just been completely different. As different even as the woman walking beside me right now. Raquel was tough as nails, independent, and completely capable in a male-dominated industry, but there was also this softer side to her.
She tried to hide it, but it was there in moments like this, the vulnerability and the willingness to open up once someone had earned it. I didn’t think she even knew it, but her beauty was different too. It was the kind that made me want to keep looking and that made it difficult to remember my own name sometimes, like this afternoon, when she’d been lying in that tube.
God, I could build a shrine to that moment.
In my world, she’d fit right in amongst royalty at a Westwood gala. With those lips, those eyes, and that smile, she’d walk into a ballroom full of socialites, executives, and senators, and she’d still be the most gorgeous, most interesting person there. Without even trying.
She just had that level of presence, that natural, effortless beauty, and yet, she had no idea. I honestly didn’t think she had a clue what those pale gray eyes could do to a man’s ability to form coherent thoughts.
To my mind, she was incredible. I just wished I could somehow make her see that.
“Is there just one path laid out for you?” she asked quietly, her arm brushing against mine as the lights of a cabin came into view between the trees.
I glanced down at her, shrugging instead of letting her see how heavily that very question weighed on my mind every damn day. “I prefer to think that I’m choosing my own path. It’s parallel to the one that’s been laid out for me, but I’m working on navigating it in my own way.”
“Well, if that’s not cryptic,” she muttered on a soft chuckle. “To think, people sayI’mguarded, but I don’t have anything on you.”
“That’s not true,” I protested immediately. “I’m an open book. You look at people like you’re going to stab them if they try to get close to you.”
“I don’t do that.” She scoffed but then sighed. “Fine. Maybe I do, but I haven’t actually stabbed anyone, so that should count in my favor.”
“Sure, but youhavethought about it, haven’t you?”
“Frequently,” she admitted, pumping her eyebrows at me. “You try living in a town like this and you’d get stabby too, though. Everyone is all up in each other’s business, and if you give them half an opening, they’ll make you bleed your soul out to them. Then they’ll run to the cafe and call a town meeting to share your innermost thoughts and feelings.”
I huffed out a quiet laugh. “Probably not without adding a few dramatic twists, turns, and tales too. Am I right?”
“Spot on,” she said. “It’s easier to keep to yourself, but at the same time, we’re lucky to live in such a tight-knit community. People really care about each other in Quartz Pass. I don’t think that’s true everywhere.”
I snorted. “Definitely not.”
When we reached a tiny cabin right on the shore, she slowed and motioned toward the steps. “This is me.”
“Oh, wow. Really? We’re here already?” I blinked up at the little wooden structure, the roof laden with dried leaves and the railing around the narrow porch listing dangerously to one side. “Are you surethathas AC?”
She smiled, turning to face me once we came to a standstill at the bottom of the stairs. “Don’t judge a book by its cover. It might not look like much, but it has AC, running water, and a double bed.”
I glanced back up at the cabin, slowly testing the first step before I ascended to the door. “If you say so, but I’m not sure I trust it. Do you want me to check your bed for scorpions before I leave? I’ve heard they’re a common problem.”
“I’m pretty sure I’ll be safe in there,” she murmured when she reached me, those eyes silver in the soft glow of the lights from inside that were filtering through the thin window dressing. “Thanks for walking me home. I’m sorry Avery made you do it. I really would’ve been fine on my own.”
