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“I feel like we should have used protection.”
I turn to confirm what I’ve heard in his voice—repressed laughter again—and catch him smiling, still facing the wall.
“You can turn around now,” I say. “I’m decent.”
“Are you ever really, though?” he asks, turning and blushing and grinning at me. It’s a lot to take in.
I wait for the annoyed reaction, but it doesn’t arrive. Instead, I realize with surprise that seeing his real smile aimed my way feels like getting a paycheck. “You make a good point.”
He seems equally surprised that I haven’t snarked back at him, and reaches past me to unlock the door. “I’m feeling queasy. Let’s get out of here.”
We emerge, red faced for reasons that are immediately misinterpreted, and Ethan gets a high-five from a couple of men we’ve never met. He follows me to the bar, where I order a margarita and he orders a ginger drink to help his stomach.
One glance at him tells me that he wasn’t kidding about feeling queasy—he looks green. We find seats inside, out of the sun but near a window, and he leans forward, pressing his head to the pane, trying to breathe.
I blame this moment right here, because it creates a tiny fracture in his role as nemesis. A true nemesis doesn’t show weakness, and for sure, when I reach out to rub his back, a true nemesis wouldn’t lean into it, moaning in quiet relief. He wouldn’t shift so that I could reach him more easily, and he certainly wouldn’t scoot down the bench and rest his head in my lap, staring up at me in gratitude when I gently rake my fingers through his hair, soothing.
Ethan and I are starting to build more of these good moments than bad; it sends the balance swinging into an unfamiliar direction.
And I think I really like it.
Which makes me incredibly uneasy.
“I still hate you,” I tell him, pushing a dark curl of hair off his forehead.
He nods. “I know you do.”
chapter nine
Once we’re back on solid ground, most of his color returns, but rather than push our luck—or risk having to dine with Sophie and Billy—we decide to turn in early and order room service.
Although he takes his dinner in the living room, and I take mine in the bedroom, it occurs to me somewhere between my first bite of ravioli and my fourth episode of GLOW that I could have sent Ethan back to the hotel and gone out myself. I could have done a hundred different things without
even leaving the hotel grounds, and yet here I am, back in the room at night because Ethan had a rough day. At least now I’m only a room away if he needs someone.
Needs someone . . . like me? I want to point at and tease myself and this new tenderness for thinking Ethan would seek me out as a source of comfort at any time other than when we’re trapped on a boat. He wouldn’t, and that’s not what we’re here for anyway!
But as soon as I start shadowboxing myself into a mental froth about needing to enjoy my vacation and not slide into liking this guy who has only been quasi-friendly to me in paradise but never in real life—I remember what it felt like underwater at the crater, how his front felt all along my back up on the deck of the boat, how it felt to run my fingers through his hair. My heartbeat goes all haywire thinking about how his breathing started to sync with the pace of my nails scratching lightly over his scalp.
And then I burst out laughing remembering our naked Twister in the Bathroom of Doom.
“Are you laughing about the bathroom?” he calls from the other room.
“I will be laughing about the bathroom until the end of time.”
“Same.”
I find myself smiling in the direction of the living room, and realize that staying firmly on Team I Hate Ethan Thomas is going to be more work than it may be worth.
• • •
MORNING COMES TO THE ISLAND in a slow, blurry brightening of the sky. Yesterday morning, the cool overnight humidity was gradually burned off by sunshine, but not today. Today, it rains.
It’s chilly as I shuffle out of the bedroom in search of coffee. The suite is still pretty dark, but Ethan is awake. He’s stretched along the full length of the sofa bed with a thick book open in front of him. He wisely leaves me alone until the caffeine has had time to work its way into my system.
Eventually, I make my way into the living room. “What are your plans today?” I’m still in my pajamas but feeling much more human.
“You’re looking at it.” He closes the book, resting it on his chest. The image is immediately filed in my braincyclopedia as an Ethan Posture, and subcategorized as Surprisingly Hot. “But preferably at the pool with an alcoholic beverage in my hand.”
