Page 71 of Spring Break Fling

I nodded. “Yeah. My parents… I don’t know.”

“They just let it happen?”

I nodded, the familiar ache in my chest flaring up. “They thought they were doing the right thing. They were young and naïve and thought they’d get us back eventually. But for that year… they were free. They traveled. They stayed on the farm. They just let us go. They didn’t care.”

I felt the tears building, and before I could stop them, they spilled over. Nikko was out of his chair in an instant, wrapping his arms around me and holding me close.

“I hate that that happened to you,” he murmured, his voice rough with emotion.

I leaned into him, the warmth of his embrace chasing away some of the cold that always lingered when I thought about that time. “I don’t talk about it, usually.”

“I get that,” he said, his hand rubbing soothing circles on my back. “I don’t like talking about my shit either.”

We sat like that for a long moment, the sound of the ocean in the background. Finally, I pulled back just enough to look up at him.

“Thank you,” I said softly.

“For what?”

“For letting me fall apart,” I said with a small, watery smile. “And for not running away.”

He cupped my cheeks, his thumbs brushing away my tears. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

24

HANNAH

Iwoke up to the sensation of being slow-roasted alive. Sunlight streamed through the curtains, illuminating every inch of the room in a relentless golden blaze. My eyelids felt like sandpaper, but it wasn’t just the light that had me disoriented—it was the arm draped over my waist.

Nikko.

I glanced down at his tattooed arm, still solidly wrapped around me, then turned to see his face pressed into the pillow, his hair an absolute disaster. Memories of the night before rushed in. The deep conversations, the vulnerability, the everything. My chest squeezed in a way that was both thrilling and terrifying.

If Tara knew about this, she would fly down here just to knock some sense into me. “Hannah,” she’d say, “you are a career woman. You don’t fall for tattooed bad boys with smoldering eyes. You conquer advertising campaigns. It’s a revenge plot. You’re ruining everything!”

I was mentally composing my excuses for Tara when my phone began blaring its obnoxious ringtone from somewhere in the room. Half-asleep, I sat up, disentangling myself from Nikko’s heavy arm in the process. He groaned in protest. I blindly reached out, remembering I put my phone on the charger on the nightstand.

“Hello?” I answered, voice hoarse, not bothering to check the caller ID.

“Hannah!” Clarke’s clipped, exasperated voice stabbed through my eardrum. “Where the hell are you? You’re supposed to be presenting to the client right now!”

“Oh my god.”

I launched out of bed like someone had lit it on fire. My ankle caught on the edge of the blanket. I reached out trying to catch my fall and accidentally slapped Nikko’s chest before I crashed to the floor. My phone slipped out of my hand and flew onto the balcony.

“Dammit!”

I had left the door open so I could hear the sound of the ocean last night.

“What the hell?” Nikko bolted upright, wide-eyed and already scanning the room like a bouncer ready to eject trouble.

“I’m late!” I gasped, crawling after my phone on all fours. “I’m so late!”

“For what?” Nikko got to his feet, his hair sticking up in every direction, eyes darting around like he expected an intruder to leap from the curtains. “What’s wrong? Did something happen? Did someone die?”

“No one’s dead!” I snapped, clutching the phone. “But my career might be!”

Clarke’s voice crackled from the receiver. “Who do I hear in the background? What are you saying?”