Page 29 of You Know You Wanna

“And I don’t understand how you’re so pessimistic and grumpy all the time. Is being happy a bad thing?” I asked playfully, giving him a little nudge.

His abs were rock hard as I poked my finger into them, and my mouth started watering a little bit when I imagined licking them instead.

Remington didn’t crack, though. Not to smile or even to swat my hand away. I sighed, squirted some water into my mouth, and swallowed to give him some more time to think about it, but when he still hadn’t answered any of my questions, I broke.

“The simpler things in life have always made me feel more at peace than the complicated things,” I said. “I have everything I need right here. Why would I leave?”

He gave me another long, silent look before he nodded. “I guess you wouldn’t.”

Some of the tension melted out of his posture as we continued on our walk at a much easier pace. The silence between us was comfortable as we made our way deeper into the mountain trails. I glanced at him as he climbed up a rock and tried to get a good look at where we were.

Craning his neck, he put a hand to his forehead and stood comfortably on the smooth surface. His feet were as sure as a mountain goat’s as he hopped higher up to get an even better vantage point. “It really is beautiful out here.”

I smiled at his soft words, nodding my agreement. I drank some more water while he looked out at the view. “That’s another reason why I stayed. It doesn’t get any better than this. Why would I want to look at buildings or a city when I could be waking up to this every day?”

Dark clouds were rolling in, but neither of us paid them any mind. Remington sat down on his rock and looked at me. “Now there’s a multimillion-dollar question. Why would anyone want a city view if they could have this?”

I frowned at him. “Is that what your fight with Laurene was about? Does she still want to go to the Hamptons?”

After blowing out a long breath, he gave me a curt nod. “She didn’t mention the Hamptons specifically, but she claims she wants to go home. The thing is that I don’t think she really does. She seems to be having fun here, but I took a few meetings and she lost her mind.”

I leaned against the rock he’d been on first, twisting my body so I could keep looking up at him. “You can’t blame her for that. Even if she is having fun, she thought you were coming out here to spend time together. If you’re going to be working anyway, I guess it makes sense that she’d rather be spending the time with her friends while she still can.”

“While she still can, huh?” He barked out a dry laugh. “I didn’t think about it that way. Her friends are snooty brats, but I suppose they are her friends. It’s just that not even Jacqueline thought they were friends worth keeping her here for.”

“What’s she like?” I asked suddenly, indulging the weird curiosity I’d been fighting about his ex. “Jacqueline, I mean. She sounds like a real piece of work, but there are always three sides to every story.”

He shook his head. “I don’t want to talk about her too much. She is a real piece of work, though. Now, at least, but I don’t think that’s always been true.”

“What do you think, then?”

He shrugged. “Her parents are unbelievably well off and they were pressuring her to settle down, but she wasn’t ready. Neither was I, for that matter. We got married young. There were times, early on, that I think she did love me, but ultimately, she’s a socialite who never wanted to play rich housewife and so she didn’t.”

Taking a moment to just look at him, I couldn’t help but notice that his jaw wasn’t clenched, his teeth weren’t grinding, and his expression seemed surprisingly open. “You don’t seem to be too bitter about it.”

He chuckled. “Right now, I’m not. I was. I’ve wished more times than I can count that she just would’ve quit trying sooner, but she doesn’t carry all the blame for our marriage not working out. Like I said, we got married young. People don’t always want the same things at thirty-five that they did at twenty-one.”

“I’m surprised you’re so honest about this,” I said. “I wouldn’t have taken you for the sharing type.”

“I’m not the sharing type, but I haven’t really talked about any of this at all. No one has asked. You asked.”

I arched a brow at him. “No one has asked? That seems unlikely.”

“Have you met me?” He gave me a deadpan look. “Apparently, I’m intimidating as fuck. Maybe I’m just less so now that I’m relaxed and out of the city.”

“Oh, no. You’re still intimidating as fuck,” I said easily, cracking a smile and even winking at him. “I just don’t scare easy. That has to be tough, though, if people are too scared to ask how you’re doing.”

“Nah, I prefer it that way.” He blew out a heavy breath. “Contrary to how I’ve been since I’ve been here, I’m really not the sharing type. It’s nobody’s business but mine.”

“Well, I’m glad being here has helped you open up. Everyone needs to get things off their chest sometimes. It’s not natural to keep it all bottled up.” I glanced up at the sky again, realizing that those dark clouds were now a greenish black and right above us. “You ready to head back?”

Remington followed my gaze, nodding as he got up. “Yeah, I guess we should. It looks like there’s another downpour coming.”

Hopping off the rock, he waited for me to fall into step beside him before we took off back down the trail we’d taken up here. Going a little faster than we had before, but not as fast as we had been when we’d started this walk, we made it about halfway back to the resort before the heavens let loose.

It started raining. Hard. I shrieked with laughter as I broke into a sprint, trying to shield myself from the deluge while I searched for cover. I felt Remington behind me, but even though I knew he could, he didn’t overtake me, finally cutting a sharp right when I did to take refuge under a tree.

We’d made it back to the more wooded part of the trail, and though we were still getting rained on, at least the canopy of leaves made it so it wasn’t bucketing down on us anymore. Both breathing hard, we ended up almost chest to chest as we stuck as close as we could to the trunk of the tree.