Hey. I'm glad I fell off that platform today.
I hit send before I can talk myself out of it. Then I sit in the parking lot of Lime and Salt staring at the screen like an idiot until — twenty seconds later — the three little dots appear.
I grin. The dots disappear. There’s no reply.
I wait. Thirty seconds. A minute. The dots don't come back. Huh.
She’s still driving and she’ll text when she's parked. I start the Jeep and drive off, grinning.
FIVE
Leilani
The drive home from Lime and Salt takes about ten minutes and I spend most of them arguing with myself.
I do not need Remy Hastings. Not now, and probably not ever.
I have a bar to open. I have a town I'm trying to settle into. I have a man I just escaped from who took two years of my life and a third of my body weight in confidence. I have a million things to do that are not falling for a Florida fisherman with a cocky, lopsided smile that should come with a warning label.
NOPE.
That kiss was a mistake. A beautiful, ridiculous mistake. Some kind of water magic, maybe. Or mocktail magic. What was in that drink that Kate made, anyway? There’s no universe in which getting involved with a man who is that attractive that fast is a good idea.
I’ve made this exact mistake before and I’m not making it again.
My phone vibrates on the passenger seat, so I pull over because I’m a careful driver.
Hey. I'm glad I fell off that platform today.
I read it three times, start to type the letters LOL, then delete.
I look at his name on my phone: REMY HASTINGS. He must have entered it that way himself when he handed me his phone, like he was already staking a claim in my life.
“Nope,” I whisper as I delete the contact.
The text disappears with it. Like he was never there.
Then I sit on the shoulder of the river road, staring at my own steering wheel, and say, out loud, to no one: "What is wrong with me?"
When I get home, I’m going to make a new list. I know exactly what's going at the top of it.
1. STOP THINKING ABOUT REMY HASTINGS.
SIX
Remy
"Dude, what’s gotten into you?" Tate says to me, then turns to our other brother, Max. "Check this out. Our normally upbeat little bro here is Mr. Crankypants."
Trying to ignore them, I stuff the rest of my chicken salad sandwich in my mouth. It's Wednesday afternoon, which means the three of us are sitting at our favorite table at the Haunted Hearth, Cypress Grove’s best lunch spot. Usually, our sister Natalia joins us, but she's in Orlando for some big jewelry show and is buying beads or stones or whatever for her business. I can't keep track of her because she's like a tornado.
Max smirks. "Yeah, Remy's been uncharacteristically silent today. And I noticed he didn't flirt with the new waitress. Are you feeling okay?"
He reaches to feel my forehead and I lean away from him, grimacing.
"Is it Damien? You worried about him?" Tate asks, a line of concern creasing his forehead. Like the rest of my family, they know about my tight bond with my twin. Even though we're nothing alike, we're inexplicably, even psychically, linked.
Tate shows his concern for me because he's always been the kindest of us five Hastings kids. Max and Natalia are both snarky. Damien's brooding. I'm the joker.
