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But from this week’s latest jerk face or a new problem?
My sister fell hard and fast for “bad boys.” Did she have anxious attachment issues? Probably. And with how our lives had been for the last eleven-plus years, I didn’t blame her.
I tightened the towel around my breasts, preparing myself for a delicate lecture. “Lucy, you know I’m all about ‘catching flights not feelings,’ but before we discuss the impromptu vacation, I need some honesty here. Tell me the truth. What’s wrong?”
Lucy positioned her back to the counter and folded her arms over her plain white tee partially tucked into her denim shorts.
When she didn’t open her mouth, I focused on her phone wedged in her front pocket. “When your mood starts depending on whether a guy texts you or not—”
“Why do I do it?” She slowly worked her eyes up to my face. “Let some guy’s texting habits impact my mood? So what if he leaves me on ‘delivered’?” She lifted her hand and tossed it in the air. “Or worse, on ‘seen’? I’m too good for ninety-nine percent of these men, and yet, my stomach hurts whenever it happens.”
I closed the space between us and wrapped her in my arms. “You know why. But that doesn’t mean you have to keep letting your past dictate the present. Your future.”
“How come you’re not like me?” she asked once I freed her from the hug. “You couldn’t give two fucks if a guy doesn’t message you back. Hell, you ghost, not the other way around.”
“I don’t ghost.” I frowned. “Not on purpose, at least. We just move a lot. So, why get emotionally invested in some guy?”
“Oh I don’t know, because you’re over thirty now, and maybe you want a family of your own one day?”
“You’re my family,” I protested.
“But I’m not your daughter. You took on that role eleven years ago, but I’m twenty-five. I’m all grown up if you haven’t noticed.” Another pout from her, and she knew what those did to me. “Even if I don’t always act like an adult, because yeah, maybe I do put these undeserving men on pedestals when they don’t even pull out the chair for me.” She sidestepped me and abruptly snatched the suitcase and held it between us. “I need to get away, and I want you to come with me. Plus, this is kind of for work. In fact, they extended the invite to me because of my social media following and my adventure series. I guess you need certain skills for this show, so . . .” She paused for a moment. “With them being so eager to get me to join, I used that to my advantage to bargain. I told them I’d only go if they offered you an invite as well. I explained you have survival skills like me, too.”
“An invite? Survival skills?” What? “We just moved to Spain. I can’t up and leave, especially not for some online thing.” Maybe in six months, sure. “I work three freaking jobs to make ends meet.”
“Exactly why we should do this. And it’ll be great material for my TikTok and YouTube channels. It’s, um, well, a dating game hosted in Brazil this season. In the Amazon rainforest, actually. It’s their seventh event, I think. And the location is always somewhere new with different challenges. Plus, if one of us wins—a million bucks split between the winning couple. Can you imagine?” Her cheeks went pink.
I was seconds away from snatching her arm and demanding she look me in the eyes. Because what if this was a trap? The event simply bait to catch us?
But her excitement and the way her eyes lit up about the trip had me resisting the urge to speak my thoughts.
“With that kind of money, maybe we could settle down in one spot for more than a year?”
That was a kill shot I hadn’t seen coming from her. My shoulders dropped. “Since when do you want to be in one spot for long?”
“I don’t know, maybe the only way I can get over my issues is to stop doing what I always do . . . what we always do. Let’s stop running.”
“I’m sorry that’s been our life for eleven years.” I sighed. “But what choice do we have?”
“Your paranoia is why we run, Charley. No one is going to find us. It’s been forever. We don’t look anything like we did eleven years ago.”
“But with advanced technology, what if someone did discover it’s you on that TikTok account? And since they can’t get our location, they’re drawing us out?” There. I said it. And no, I wasn’t being paranoid, I was being careful.
Her dramatic eyeroll she’d perfected over the years left me shaking my head. “It’s not. No freaking way. Come on.” She shook her head right back at me. “You know, I’d just been getting used to Cape Town, and poof,” she said while snapping her fingers, “you made us move.”
I was pretty sure that situationship of hers from Cape Town was the real reason she’d been pissed when I demanded we “get out of Dodge” so fast and come to Spain. Screw that asshole and how he love-bombed her only to pull away and make her miss him.
“Why is it harder to get over someone you were never even in a relationship with?” Lucy had asked me last week as if I’d know the answer to that. I had no advice to give in that department, because I was still hung up on a guy I had no business wanting.
And speaking of that guy . . .
“Someone found us in Cape Town, so we had no choice but to move again.” I snatched my suitcase from her and let it plop unceremoniously to the ground. It wasn’t exactly Louis. “I can’t go on vacation for some dating game thing. And there won’t be filters available for you, which means you’re not going either. I can’t have your face online. Not your real one.”
She waved her hands in the air, trying to shoo away my rejection. “The show won’t air until three weeks after we’ve already left, so it’s fine. And like I said, we look nothing like we did when we lived in California. I highly doubt those after us will be watching some dating game show.” She rolled her tongue along her lips, and I knew that look. She was artfully plucking the right words from her head to use against me. Well, to try and get her way. “A half a million dollars means you won’t need to bust your ass teaching yoga, taking tour groups all across the island, or dealing with assholes trying to touch your tits at the bars you work at.”
Okay, maybe not artfully chosen words. More blunt than anything. But no less accurate.
But come on, could we actually win some dating game thing? I didn’t even know the exact location in Brazil or the details, and yet, why’d I feel like I was slowly giving in to her? And what if my fears that someone had recognized her on TikTok were spot on?
