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Exhaling, I drag my fingers through my messy hair and steal a glimpse of her pillow-soft lips, debating if I should kiss them one more time for the road . . .
There’s one thing I didn’t mention all night—something I probably should have told her before now.
I’m set to fly back later today.
While the rest of the group is staying a few more days, my plan was only ever to fly in for the party and fly out the very next day.
But screw it.
I can’t leave now.
I can’t leave her . . .
Not yet.
“Two o’clock, right?” I ask.
Her sapphire blues light up. “I’ll save you a chair.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
DORIAN
Present Day
“Can I just say, there’s something about Briar that rubs me the wrong way.” Nicola keeps her voice low. “I can’t put my finger on it . . . it’s like she’s trying too hard or something.”
We finished dinner a half hour ago. While Yvette took the kids upstairs for their nighttime routine and my father retired to his room for the evening, I made the rookie mistake of agreeing to polish off a bottle of dessert wine with Frick and Frack.
“For Christ’s sake, Nic, she’s barely been here twenty-four hours,” Dashiell says. “Cut the poor woman some slack. She’s got to be nervous as hell, trying to impress us all. Your family can be intimidating, and to someone from the middle of nowhere, she probably doesn’t know what to make of all of this.”
My sister rolls her eyes. “Here we go again with the whole fish-out-of-water thing that you apparently find so endearing. Please, enlighten us, Dash. Tell us what else you find so charming about this midwestern Kate Middleton.”
Shoot me now . . .
“Oh, stop,” Dash snips back. “Not playing that game with you again.”
Right, because he knows he’ll lose . . .
“He doesn’t look at her the way he looked at Audrina,” Nicola continues. “With Audrina, it was like . . . he was utterly smitten, captivated. With Briar, it’s like . . .” Nicola shrugs, making a take-it-or-leave-it face. “I just don’t buy it. On top of that, Audrina dumped him not even six months ago, and he’s already moving on? It takes him longer than that to order at a restaurant. It took him two years to decide on a college. Eight months to pick an apartment. You can’t tell me he got his heart broken and met his soulmate immediately after. I think she’s a rebound.”
“Be honest, dear. You just don’t want to like her,” Dashiell says. “You can admit it. You didn’t like Audrina at first either. You even told Dorian to dump her before she—”
Both of their wine-clouded gazes flick to me.
Just like that, they realize they’ve invited the elephant we never speak about into the room.
“I’m so sorry.” Dashiell looks me dead in the eyes. “I shouldn’t have brought her up in front of you.”
Nicola is speechless—for once.
I toss back the last of my wine and rise from the table.
“On that note,” I say, “good night. And go fuck yourselves, you miserable bastards.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
BRIAR
One Year Ago
The gauzy curtains framing my balcony window float on a sea-salted breeze as Dorian and I lie naked in bed, our legs intertwined.
I don’t know what time it is, nor do I want to know.
If I had to take an educated guess, I suppose it’s somewhere between 11:00 p.m. and 2:00 a.m., though I’m trying not to think about it because, for the first time in eons, I’m living in the moment, and there’s no place else I’d rather be.
Dorian runs his fingertip down my arm, leaving a trail of goose bumps in its place.
After he walked me to my room this morning, I managed to shower long enough to wash the grit out of my hair, and then I fell into bed and slept for what felt like years. I woke up just in time to change into a bikini, throw my hair into a messy topknot, and run-walk to the beach to snag a couple of chairs.
True to his word, he arrived at two o’clock on the dot.
For the rest of my life, I’ll never forget the vision of the taut, tanned Adonis strutting my way in his bright-yellow board shorts, a towel flung over his muscled shoulder. I swear my stomach climbed into my throat when he flashed me a smile from behind his polished aviators.
We spent most of the afternoon in silence interspersed with the occasional random thought or deep pocket of conversation. It wasn’t as intimate as the night before, but everything about it felt like home . . . if that makes sense.
I’ve known this man a whopping twenty-four hours (give or take), yet somehow, I feel like I’ve known him forever. Maybe it’s cliché, but there’s no denying it.
My phone chimes from the nightstand.
