“All what stuff?”
“Oh, you know: true love, happy ever-afters. Fairytale endings. The Summer Brookes Guide to Life.”
He smiles sadly, and my heart contracts with the need to make him feel better.
“Of course you can have all of that,” I tell him firmly, even though I’m not totally sure I still believe it myself. “This is just a tiny little setback, that’s all. You’ll still get your happy ending. I’m sure of it. You just need to figure out how to do it, that’s all.”
“Maybe I should write a list? One without Jamie Reynolds on it, though, obviously.”
He grins, trying to pretend he’s making fun of me, as usual. But there’s a crease between his eyebrows that I want to reach up and smooth out with my hands, before wrapping my arms around him and holding him tight.
I don’t actuallydoit, though. Because although the man standing next to me has somehow shape-shifted into someone other than the person I thought he was — the person he’s been since the moment I met him — he’s still Alex Fox: prickly, difficult, Alex Fox, who is patentlynotthe kind of man you justhug.
No matter how much you might suddenly want to.
“You can put anything you want on your list,” I say lightly, looping my arm through his instead. “I’ll help you, if you like. And I think we should start by getting off this beach before it’s totally dark, don’t you?”
Twenty-Three
“Oh my God,” I say, as Alex and I climb up the steps that lead from the beach to the hotel. “I’ve just thought of something.”
“It’s not something to do with Whatshisface, is it?” says Alex, who seems to be back to his usual self, after his unexpected moment of vulnerability on the beach. “I think I’ve had enough of him for one day.”
“No, it’s not Jamie,” I reply. “It’s you. Your eye.”
“My eye?”
“Yeah. The bruised one. Was that the best friend you mentioned? Did you try to fight him, and he gave you a black eye? Were you fighting over Rebecca?”
Please say you weren’t fighting over Rebecca…
Alex laughs mirthlessly.
“No,” he says matter-of-factly. “We weren’t fighting over Rebecca. I told you they were welcome to each other, and I meant it. We were fighting over my dog.”
“Your… your dog? Yourdogwas at the wedding?”
We’ve reached the stop of the steps now, and I sit down to put my sandals on, imagining a shaggy-haired dog wearing a bow tie and standing next to Alex at the altar.
“No, he wasn’t at the wedding. He was at the best man’s house; that’s the friend who… well, you know.”
I nod, and he sits down to join me.
“I left him there because we were supposed to be coming here the day after the wedding, and Luke said he’d take care of him while we were away. But then I found out he’d been sleeping with my fiancée. The best friend, I mean, not—”
“I get it.”
“I told him I wasn’t going to stand in his way with Rebecca, but there was no way he was getting Brian, too. No way.”
“Brian? Your dog’s called Brian?”
I have no idea why this is amusing to me, but Alex just nods, as if men like him always have furry friends named Brian.
“Anyway, I went round there to get him back, but the house was in darkness, so I used the spare key Luke had given me to get in, and, well, I guess he thought I was an intruder.”
“So he punched you.”
“He did. And I punched him back. But I did get my dog, so that’s the main thing.”
