Page 3 of Crossing the Line

Ford was a friend whom Ryan met when he ended up in the hospital a couple of years ago because he fell through a weak spot during a roof ventilation. Ryan had a broken leg, and Ford was the doctor that treated him for the injury, along with Ryan’s sister, who was a nurse at the same hospital. Ever since that injury, Ford and Ryan met up for drinks every couple of weeks. I often tagged along, so I considered him a friend as well.

Ryan sat on Ford’s other side, and I watched as he flipped open a cooler at his feet, grabbing four bottles of beer. He passed out three of them before twisting the top off his own and lifting it into the air with a grin.

“To true love,” he said.

Jake snorted. “Seriously?”

I nudged him in the side with my elbow. “Of course, he’s serious. That’s the whole reason we’re here.”

We all tipped back our beers, and I enjoyed that mine was deliciously cold.

Looking out over the water, I focused on Sirona Isle. It was a mass of deep, overlapping greenery. The resort itself wasn’t visible from this side of the island. It was all rainforest and vertical rock faces, except for a thin, blindingly white ribbon of beach where I could just make out the small figures of people walking around.

The island was a tropical paradise, and I couldn’t think of a better location for a destination wedding. Ryan and Leanne wanted to do something truly special for their wedding, and they were lucky to have the resources to pull it off. Ryan might’ve been a firefighter like me, but he came from a different stock than anyone else in the firehouse. His family had old money, the kind built on generations of careful inheritance and the quiet callousness the obscenely rich needed to keep it growing.

Ryan lived a simple life himself, but his father was footing the bill for everything this week. The rooms we were staying in, the excursions we’d go on over the next few days, the wedding itself—even our travel arrangements.

Ryan didn’t make a big deal of it, but I got the impression that the old man was trying to make up for being mostly absent in his son’s life when he was growing up. His dad ran one of the biggest automaking companies in the world, which helped to increase the family’s already huge bank accounts but also kept the man too busy to be much of a father. I didn’t know the details of Ryan or Jake’s complex relationship with their dad, but I knew that he wasn’t on the island like the rest of the families and the wedding party, despite the fact that he was paying for it all.

“Look at that.” Jake let out a whistle as we passed a skiff. It was considerably smaller than our boat, but it also had four passengers, all of the women in string bikinis. Jake called out to them, “Looking good, ladies!”

The women waved at us, and I politely lifted my hand in response, but I wasn’t nearly as excited to have their attention as Jake was. In fact, he was the only one on our boat ogling the women. Ryan just shook his head as he sipped his beer, and Ford’s attention was on his phone.

I was used to him having that thing in his hand because he was a doctor that was often on call, but this was a vacation. Whatever was monopolizing his attention couldn’t be related to work.

Frowning, he placed his phone facedown on the seat beside him with a sigh.

“You good?” I asked.

Jake was still shouting at the women on the skiff, telling them to come by the bar at our resort tonight so he could buy them all free drinks. It was typical Jake behavior. He was a player that was always looking for a new woman—or four, in this case—to warm his bed.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Ford said, but his smile was stiff.

It was an obvious lie, but I wasn’t going to push him for an honest answer. I had shit I didn’t want to talk about too.

Looking back out over the water, my mind drifted to last night.

When I woke up this morning, it was a shock to see Kelsie in my bed, and I had no memory of what happened the night before. But in the past couple of hours, the fog in my mind had started to lift. I couldn’t remember everything, but when I reached for the memories, snippets started to come back to me.

We’d both been drinking, and I was clearly out of my mind, but the recollection was sharp as I remembered stumbling toward my bed together. Kelsie’s tongue tangled with my own, her hands roamed my body, and I grabbed her luscious ass. When that memory hit, my breath left me in a rush. I could hardly believe that I did that with my best friend.

Later, more came back to me. Breathy moans, pleasure flooding my body, and wrapping my arms around her from behind while breathing in the scent of sun and ocean in her hair.

The desire that I’d never allowed myself to feel for her before overwhelmed me last night and, thanks to the beers I had around the bonfire, I wasn’t able to suppress it. I wasn’t able to pull myself away from her or remember why I should.

In the harsh light of day, with a sober mind that was able to think clearly, I knew that what had happened between us was a mistake. It didn’t matter how good it felt or how much I longed to do it again. Even now, sitting on this boat surrounded by three other guys, my body hummed like a live wire. I wanted to find Kelsie the moment we returned to shore and take her back to my room so that I could lose myself in her again, and this time I would remember everything.

But that wasn’t going to happen.

Kelsie was my best friend, someone I relied on and trusted. She was the first person that I called when I barely made it out of a house fire earlier this year. She went to basketball games with me, cheering for the Bulls at my side until her voice was hoarse. I’d seen her cry over sappy romantic movies and laugh until she could barely breathe.

She was important to me, and I needed everything to stay the same between us.

I couldn’t let things get ruined by shifting our friendship to a romantic relationship. Those often didn’t work out, and even when they did, they tended to come with drama that I didn’t need.

My friendships were what I valued in life, far above any romantic entanglement I’d ever had. Among those friendships, the one I shared with Kelsie meant the most. I couldn’t risk losing her for anything.

So, I pushed all thoughts of repeating last night to the back of my mind. I just hoped that I hadn’t already fucked everything up by sleeping with her in the first place.