Page 30 of Seven Rules for Breaking Hearts

“Do you know CPR?”

“Of course, I—” I broke off when I glanced over my shoulder, and saw he was grinning at me. Rolling my eyes, I faced forward again. “You’re shameless.”

“What am I doing?” he asked innocently.

“It’s the same line every guy tries on lifeguards.” Not to mention I’d heard just about every pickup line in the book, lifeguarding aside. “And no, I’m not going to perform CPR on you. Unless you’re, you know, actually dying.” Flirting worked in my favor, but CPR wasn’t exactly sexy. Not if you knew what you were doing.

“Bummer,” he sighed. I’d come to expect he would try to push my patience to the very limit, so I was surprised when he changed the subject. “I wanted to talk to you about your plans for the bachelorette party tomorrow. I wasn’t sure what you had in mind, but—”

“That’s for the girls to know and you to wonder about,” I interrupted.

“That sounds like something someone with no plans would say,” Declan shot back. “Peter mentioned that he’s not all that interested in spending time with the guys. Sounds like he’d honestly rather spend the evening with Jo.”

I huffed. Of course he would, because apparently, Peter could do no wrong. My feelings toward Jo getting married would be a lot less complicated if the guy she was marrying was a total douche. “Don’t you worry. I’ve got it taken care of.”

“Big plans, huh?”

“At least five strippers,” I invented wildly. “All of them dressed in maid outfits. Jo has a thing for it, but don’t tell her I told you.”

“As much as I appreciate the picture you’re trying to paint here, I’m pretty sure there aren’t any strippers on this island.”

I pulled a face. “No male strippers? Are you sure about that?”

“I said no strippers. My research is nothing if not thorough.”

“Right. You’re a scientist or whatever. I forgot.”

“Engineer,” he corrected me. I rolled my eyes without turning to look at him, but I could practically hear the arched eyebrow. “And why do you say it like that?”

“Like what?”

“Like it’s a bad thing. You say scientist the way normal people would say … I don’t know, asshole, or something.”

“It’s just that STEM people always rag on everybody else. Like their field is the only field that matters.” I remembered how hard my dad had pushed me to go into any field other than music. He wasn’t even a STEM major himself—he’d majored in communications or journalism or something—but he always had this vision of a high-powered doctor or rocket scientist for a daughter, like it was somehow my responsibility to fill the shoes he hadn’t bothered to fill himself. “I mean, obviously, I recognize how important scientists and engineers are to our everyday life. But how bland would the world be without artists and musicians and—”

“Podcasters?” Declan offered, but when I shot him a scathing look over my shoulder, his expression wasn’t mocking. I didn’t know what it was. He was frowning slightly behind his sunglasses, his mouth set in a hard line like he was focused on something—on paddling or on what I was saying, I didn’t know.

I didn’t know what to say to that, so I changed the subject as we paddled past Hamilton Cove, a mass of white Mediterranean-style vacation rentals and private villas, tiered like a wedding cake. “So much for this being a group bonding activity,” I lamented. Jo and Peter were so far ahead, I doubted they would have heard me if I shouted at the top of my lungs. Jo had been asking me to take her kayaking for years, and I’d been avoiding it. My own kayak was rotting away in the outdoor storage at my mom’s apartment complex, the plastic probably cracked and brittle from the heat.

“We’re bonding,” Declan pointed out.

“Ew,” I said automatically.

In one swift motion, he pulled his paddle out of the water and thwacked me over the head with the wet end of it. “You didn’t seem to mind back there on the beach.”

My stomach flipped traitorously. “Asshole,” I said, rubbing the spot on my head where the paddle had walloped me. I jabbed back at him with my own paddle. He parried the blow, and the whole kayak rocked threateningly. I gripped the side of the hollow plastic to steady myself, my heart shooting up into my throat.

“Watch it,” he growled. We were still drifting in the same general direction as the rest of the wedding party, but with our boat veering sideways and neither of us paddling, it would soon be up to the tide which direction we were headed.

“I’m not watching it, you watch it, you hit me first—”

It was more like a slap fight than a sword fight, the way we smacked at each other with the ends of the paddles like wet, rubbery pummel sticks. I landed a particularly solid slap across Declan’s face, and even I flinched at the loud thwack it made against his skin. He reached to touch his cheek, eyes wide with shock. Then he gave a wide, vengeful swing of his paddle, overestimated, and the kayak lurched sideways, and—

And I was submerged in cold water.

My life vest kept me from going under completely, but I had managed to land headfirst, which meant I got a nose- and mouthful of briny seawater that burned in my sinuses. I surfaced, buoyed by the vest and coughing as I peeled a lock of greenish hair out of my eyes. The water was choppy from our little accident. My legs felt like a couple of dangling Slim Jims, taunting the hungry sharks I imagined were circling not far below. Our kayak was flipped upside down but still buoyant. Declan clung to the side of it, looking as soaked as I felt, his red hair dark and soppy against his forehead. His sunglasses were gone. Lost somewhere in the water below, and who knew how deep that was? My stomach lurched at the thought and I splashed over and flung my arms over the keel for support.

In the distance, the other kayaks were rounding another bend, hugging the cliff-line. No one seemed to notice that the best man and the maid of honor had managed to capsize their rental. I turned back to Declan. He’d also been looking over at the others, but he turned and met my eye over the keel. We came to a silent, mortified agreement. We flipped the kayak and—after a few failed, flailing attempts to climb back aboard—we swam to the nearest shore, dragging it along with us.