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Luckily for me, Cree’s best friend, Saint Hendrix, wasn’t going with us. Cree and Saint had a similar story to mine and Lulee’s, and the few times that I’d been around them at the same time, anyone with a working pair of eyes could see how loyal they were to each other. Cree had nothing but good things to say about Saint, and it was easy to see how he always meant every word.
Saint Hendrix was also sex on a stick. He was the same height as Cree and also had dark brown hair, dark brown eyes, and a body that you could bounce a quarter off of. However, where Cree was Black, Saint was not. Saint was Caucasian but always rocked a nice shade of tan on his skin. On paper, Saint might not sound remarkable, but in person, he was hot as hell. Whenever I saw him, I thought about that model, Lucas Medeiros, and the guy also had a degree in chemical engineering, which told me that he had to have a few decent brain cells in that gorgeous head of his.
He was also a complete jackass.
After a couple of years of our best friends being incredibly in love with each other, Saint had finally asked me out, and I’d said yes like a complete moron. I’d been mesmerized by his good looks, his easy charm, and his seemingly decent character. Even Lulee hadn’t ever uttered a bad word about the guy. I’d seen no reason not to go out with him, and I had even been stupid enough to hope for a dinner date that would lead to breakfast. After all, with everyone vouching for him, his hotness had been enough to make me set my morals aside for a night.
However, all that changed during our date. Saint had taken me to a great steakhouse, which had been his first perfect move for our first date. A lot of guys went fancy for the first date, and while a lot of girls like that, I wasn’t interested in meeting a guy while he was at his very best. I wanted to meet a guy while he was being his real self. I wanted comfortable and pleasant for a first date, not fancy and awkward. I wanted the opportunity to show the real me while my date was showing me the real him.
So, with high hopes for the night, I’d actually felt giddy. Like a teenage girl with her first crush, I’d had the butterflies in my stomach and hearts in my eyes for Saint Hendrix. I’d had hope for something possible, but hope was stupid.
Saint and I had barely ordered our food when the first girl had stopped at our table to say hi to Saint, flirting with him right in front of me. Now, to his credit, Saint hadn’t flirted back, but he hadn’t been rude enough for my liking. The girl had been super obvious with what she’d been doing, and that had been cause for a little rudeness, in my opinion.
Then the second girl had approached us.
Then the third girl had made her way over.
Then the fourth girl had stopped at our table, and that’d been the last straw for me. Saint hadn’t encouraged them or flirted back, but he’d left me sitting there, feeling like an inconvenience to all the pussy that’d been being thrown his way. It’d been rude and tactless, and because I’d been raised to have some semblance of self-respect, I had tossed some money on the table before excusing myself with a lie about having had a good time.
To my surprise, Saint had chased after me, and just when things couldn’t get worse, they had. He’d gone on the defensive, pleading with me that he couldn’t help it if people walked up to him, but that hadn’t been the problem. I didn’t blame any girl with a pair of working eyes and an ounce of bravery for shooting her shot with Saint, and why would I? I’d been doing the same thing by agreeing to the date.
No, the problem had been in the polite way that he had handled each girl, and, yes, I was very aware of how awful that made me sound. Nonetheless, nothing was worse than having the competition shoved in your face. Saint had been a gentleman all the way around, and all I’d been able to envision was a lifetime of standing by while other women hit on my boyfriend because he was too polite.
So, after making it clear that there’d be no second date, Saint had been respectful enough to honor my need for space, but that’d been more because of his friendship with Cree than anything else. Just like I’d done my best to keep things civil for Lulee’s sake, he was just doing the same for Cree’s.
Grabbing another tank-top to sleep in, I made sure to pack everything that I’d need since there was no way in hell that there was going to be a convenient store nearby. We were going to be lucky if the place even had decent wi-fi.
Then again, maybe being cut off from the world for a few days wasn’t such a bad idea.
Chapter 3
Saint~
“This is going to get ugly, Cree.” I turned to look at him as he turned on the ignition. “You know that, right?”
“You’re worrying for nothing,” he replied. “She might get annoyed, but I can’t see her ruining the entire trip. Especially, considering that it might be one of the last ones that we’ll ever take together.”
“Well, that’s ominously put,” I drawled out.
He grinned at me from the driver’s seat of his silver Cadillac XT5 SUV. “You know what I mean.”
“Even if the girl didn’t hate me, no one likes being blindsided, Cree,” I pointed out. “She’s not going to like finding out that I’m tagging along.”
“You’re not tagging along,” he argued. “You were invited just like she was.”
“Now you’re just playing semantics.”
I had immediately smelled an ambush when Lulee had first invited me to the retreat. With as in love as she and Cree were, it hadn’t made any sense that she would include me on their vacation. It had made even less sense when she had informed me that it was a couples’ retreat, knowing that I was currently coupleless. To her credit, she had fessed up as soon as I had admitted my suspicions, and if I were a better man, I would have bowed out gracefully, paying her back for the room.
However, it ended up turning out that I wasn’t a better man.
Even as jacked-up as it was, this was my last chance to make something happen with Verity, so I really couldn’t stand on the steps of morality right now. Not only was this my last chance to change her mind about me, but this also gave me an entire week to do it. With everyone else hitting all the spring break hot spots, the retreat was guaranteed to be damn near empty, save for us. Amity Expectations was a five-cabin couples’ retreat that catered to helping couples reconnect. According to Lulee, it was the perfect place for me and Verity to really get to know each other.
“Even if she does get pissed off, it’ll be Lulee that she gets mad at, and I seriously doubt it’ll be enough to ruin their friendship,” Cree went on. “Besides, at the end of it all, Veritycanchoose not to go, Saint. No one’s planning on kidnapping her, so just relax a bit.”
“That’s easy for you to say,” I snorted. “You’re not the one that’s going to be shacked up with a pissed off woman.”
“Says you,” he retorted. “It’s a four-hour drive to the retreat, man. Anything can happen in those four hours.”
