I grab my bag off the floor and head for the bathroom.
I unzip my suitcase and pull out a simple pair of jeans and a t-shirt. I had assumed I’d be arriving on the island today and dressed appropriately in slacks and a button-down. Yesterday, I was still wearing a suit since I stopped at the hospital before leaving for the hangar.
Now, though, I just want to be me. The water is scalding, the pressure is terrible, and I don’t care. I should be annoyed about what Rose did, with the rooms, but… I’m not. If it had been just yesterday, I would have been. I’d have assumed she was playing a game. Yesterday, she’d have said something cutting about me throwing money at everything.
But she didn’t say a word. And even though we’d just had yet another death-defying situation on the road with that hydroplaning truck, she still put the other people in front of us. I don’t know what to do with that version of her, the one I’m starting to get to know.
The way she confidently told everyone I’d pay for their rooms. The way she smirked at me and strutted out into the rain. The way she laid down on the mattress, like an offering.
Attraction has never been the problem with Rose. I’ve always thought she was beautiful in a way that felt almost unfair—like something designed specifically to be difficult.
The water sprays down my chest, the pressure abysmal. I let it hit the back of my neck and don’t move. When my hand finally moves down my stomach, I don’t pretend it’s accidental. I wrap my hand around my length and my head drops forward. I brace against the wall, jaw tight, trying to keep quiet in a room with one thin wall between me and her.
My cock is heavy. I squeeze once, feeling myself firm up. She’s right on the other side of that wall. She’d hear me.
Good, something inside me says. Let her.
Then I picture her face at the café—the moment she stopped fighting back. She tried to tell me her side of the story, and I brushed it off, explained it away.
I turn the dial all the way to cold. The water is shocking, but I stand there and take it, letting the cool ease my body down.
As much as I’m starting to like this new Rose, we’re on an unplanned road trip that keeps trying to kill us. This time tomorrow we’ll be at the wedding, surrounded by family and friends—well, my friends, I realize uncomfortably. This is just a pressure-cooker situation. I haven’t got laid in a while, and she’s right on the other side of that wall, looking like sin.
One more day, and then we’ll be free of each other.
Chapter 7: Rose
He’s being weird. Polite. Standoffish. Not that he’s lost any of his natural arrogance, he’s still cocky as hell. But Logan Wells is being a total weirdo.
He came out of the shower dressed down in a way I have never seen before. Dark jeans, a plain white t-shirt, no ugly, expensive watch. Casual looks really good on him. His hair is wet, curling slightly behind his ears, darker than usual. He runs a hand through it, and apparently that’s all that’s needed, because it’s drying in a way that is effortless and infuriating, and I want to grab hold and mess it up again, but maybe with his head between my thighs.
Oh, shit, redirect. He’s looking at me now, probably because I’ve been staring at him for the past twenty minutes.
“I’m hungry,” I tell him. I’m not actually; we just had lunch a couple of hours ago, but it’s too early to be trapped in this room for the night. “There was a bar next door.” I point past the pool outside the motel.
The storm is still raging. But the bar is right next door, and technically this isn’t even a hurricane yet. That’s tomorrow, when we drive straight into it like two complete idiots.
Logan puts his phone away. “Yeah, let’s get out of here.”
He agrees too easily, but he must not like being cooped up in this room with me any more than I do. I slip on my shoes, grab my purse, which I’d already pulled out of my backpack, and wait for him by the door. There’s something seriously disarming about casual Logan. He tucks his wallet into his back pocket, then gestures his arm out as if to say,lead the way.
I brace uselessly against the rain and scurry across the lot, head down, the wind cutting sideways so that the rain hits the side of my face no matter which way I turn. The music is blaring so loud I can hear it over the wind, and when I grab the door and pull, the storm grabs back, nearly bowling me over. Logan’s hand closes over mine on the handle and swings it open, his other hand finding the small of my back and pressing me in ahead of him.
I move inside, and when his hand drops, I try not to overthink the way the warmth of him lingers. The bar is packed wall to wall, every barstool taken, people crowded three deep. I doubt all these people are from the motel, they must be locals. Nobody in here seems particularly worried about the storm, either.
There’s a jukebox in the corner, country music bleeding into the noise of the crowd. Pool tables line the far wall, neon beer signs casting everything in yellow, red, and green. The floor pulls at my shoes, sticky with every step. It smells like stale beer and lost inhibitions. It’s perfect.
I sidle up to the bar, waiting shoulder to shoulder until there’s an opening. Logan presses in beside me, close enough that I catch his cologne over the stale beer—warm and faintly spicy, and entirely too easy to lean into. I look up at him and feel suddenly, inexplicably out of sorts. This is vacation Rose and Logan, and vacation Rose and Logan are just two people in a bar, riding out a storm.
The thought does diabolical things to my body, and I have to shake my head clear of them. I loathe this man, I have to remind myself.
I order a cider and, shocker, Logan orders a bourbon, neat. He pays, even as I argue, then takes my hand and pulls me away from the bar, further from the jukebox. The crowd thins as we go deeper into the building, opening up into a back room I hadn’t expected—low ceilings, round tables packed with people leaning into each other over their drinks, a small empty stage at the far end. A handful of people dance in the open space in front of it. Logan steers me past them to a small table at the edge of the room.
We sit, and my mind quiets. The jukebox has switched to something slower, and the neon bleeds across the table between us. I wrap my hand around the cold bottle and take a long sip. My wet hair from the rain sticks to my cheek. The humidity makes my shirt feel tight and damp. Despite all the chaos over the last two days, I feel more settled in this moment than I have in months.
Logan watches me.
“What?” I finally ask. His eyes drop to my lips when I tilt the bottle back.
