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“Stella, don’t go, it’s –” Cash pulls on the skirt of my coverup, but I ignore it and keep on walking.
I hurry down the steps to the lower decks, stopping only to pull the spacers out from between my toes. Once I’m in my cabin, I throw myself onto the bed and burst into tears.
What the hell is happening to me? We’re a day short of one week on this godforsaken trip and my whole world has been turned upside down. No one told me that the Mediterranean air was an intoxicant. I feel like I’ve been drunk since the moment I found Flynn on the dock.
We’re both too good at pretending. The intertwined arms, hand holding, intimate touches. You can’tfakethose. Only the feeling behind them. And I’ve never been good at faking my feelings.
I think a sliver of this has been here all along. From the moment I met Flynn, he was my brother’s best friend. Forbidden. So, I leaned into my disdain, and pushed him away harder and harder, like a rubber band growing taut the further you pull it.
It was inevitable that it would snap back with viciousness.
Now here I am.
Alone off the coast of Corfu, falling for my brother’s best friend while he continues to pine for his ex-girlfriend.
I’m completely pathetic.
My wallowing is interrupted by a flurry of feet above me and loud shouts and greetings. The boys’ group must have returned. I close my eyes tightly.Fuck. Flynn will probably want the room for a nap and I’ll have to go back out there and deal with…them.
I push myself up out of bed and go into the bathroom.Wipe away the tears.This is all for a good cause. Just another week and then I’ll be back home. The shelter will have a fatter checkbook, Freckles will have a home, and Flynn and I will never have to speak of this again.
Fuck, pretending nothing has happened is tearing me apart.
I hear Flynn rap at the door. “Stella? Are you decent?”
“Shit,” I whisper to myself and try to straighten myself out. “Just a second!” I call out. I adjust the front of my coverup and smooth my hair, twisting my fingers through the curls.Deep breath. “Okay, you can come in.”
I hear the door open and force myself not to peek out of the bathroom to look at Flynn. I don’t want to see his sun-kissed skin and blue eyes somehow tinted bluer from the sea. That just might give me a heart attack. “How was fishing?”
“Good, Gregory caught something,” he says.
“Really? That’s amazing,” I say, feigning a good attitude. He doesn’t need to know that Adelaide was attacking me. Then I’d have to tell him what she said about him. I don’t know if Flynn could handle it.
I hear his boat shoes pad closer to the bathroom. “How was it here?”
“Um. Good. Got a pedicure. You want to see?” I ask.
Flynn chuckles. “Sure.”
Before I can step out of the bathroom, Flynn steps into the doorframe and leans against it with his forearm. Fuck, he’s tall, but the low ceiling makes him look even taller. He smells like coconut sunscreen and sweat.Delicious. And his shirt… holy shit, it’s like halfway unbuttoned, revealing more of his chest than I’ve seen in a couple of days.
“Blue! Nice,” he says.
Right, he’s looking at my toes. I glance down at my feet. “Yeah, turquoise.”
“Oh, sorry, turquoise,” he replies.
I look at him hesitantly. Why does he have to stand so close? “Yeah, you know, I like to teach you a thing or two every now and then,” I say with a half-smile.
Flynn’s smile fades. I hear him gulp, his Adam’s apple bobbing. His blue eyes fall from mine. “Were the girls okay?”
“Oh, yeah. They were fine. I don’t know if they like me but yeah, they were fine.” I give a final sigh. “Could you move?”
“What?”
“I’d like to leave the bathroom?” I say, suddenly feeling claustrophobic from how he’s looming in the doorway.
Flynn swallows hard. It’s… stirring. Is that weird? It does something to me. “Um, I… I can’t do that.”
