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Of what?
How do I know him? It’s not from investigating him these past few months. It haunts me, like a splinter in my memory I can’t dig out.
“What about you guys?” I arch my back just enough, letting my thin bikini top serve a purpose. “What finds you mixing business with pleasure?”
Gentry can’t help himself. He never could. His stare goes right after what he craves, my body. I swear if he lays a hand on me nowadays, he’ll pull back a broken one.
“Taking care of my friends and family.” Gentry’s arm is moist against mine and twisting my stomach. “Derek here is my cousin.” What the fuck? Don’t flinch. “He told me about the other night. About your trouble at The Pelican.”
My glance flicks toward Derek. Evil thoughts pool in his brown eyes, sliming over me, but I can take it. I’m too familiar with this; I might as well use it to my advantage.
“Careful what you believe.” I bat my lashes… because fuck these two. I want to rip their balls off. “You know Hilton Head Island floats on liquor and lies.”
“Make me believe otherwise then,” Gentry taunts. “Your little dust-up with my customers? Why were you at my bar that night?”
Of course, he wants to know. Careful.
“Just a ladies’ night out ruined by drunk men. The usual.”
Satisfaction glares from his eyes. “They weren’t too rough on you, were they?”
“A fight’s never too rough for me.”
“Is that so?”
I want to puke at his lean toward my ear. At his pussy-parching preppy clothes. At his hair in a slick part. At his traditional wedding band as he perverts my ear…
“I’d love to feel it again, Cade. Just how hard you fight back. How much will it cost me now?”
That memory flashes, but I bite back the rage in my blood.
You didn’t come this far to fuck up now.
I turn eye-to-eye with him, inches from his thin, chapped lips… and smile like a priest.
“Your life.”
Walk away before you do it. Right here. Breaking this beer bottle in half on the bar, stabbing the jagged edge into his jugular, and twisting it with a laugh. Because I want to so much.
It hits me so hard that I have two choices—move or murder.
It has me in a blur, my steps aiming away from the crowd at the deck bar toward the park across the sandy parking lot.
My pulse is in my ears. My heart wants to rip out of my chest and turn back, committing the bloody crime.
Because all I can see…
Is that night.
How Redix and I held hands by Coligny Park. I was wearing a yellow dress I borrowed from Pamela, wanting to be cute that night for him.
He goes back to buy us another ice cream cone because he wants more lemon kisses. I do too. I’m smiling, watching him from a distance, standing by the curb, and waiting for the love of my life to return.
“Hey, gorgeous.” A hand grabs my wrist. It was ten years ago, and I can still feel its cold clamp over my flesh and heart.
Turning around, I yank it away.
“TJ, leave me the fuck alone.”
