But then came the reception and I couldn’t explain away her aloofness anymore. I mean, seriously, why didn’t she sit at my table for dinner? For fuck’s sake, she’s been sitting with me and my family at dinners all week long—and, now, at the biggest dinner of all, she’s suddenly gotta sit with William Faraday and a bunch of Josh’s boring work friends? Yeah, I know that’s what the official seating chart said (what the fuck?), but surely Tessa of all people could have defied the seating chart and sat with me and my brothers at our table? Or, fuck it, she’s The Mighty T-Rod! The Woman Behind the Curtain! Couldn’t she have gotten herself assigned to any table of her choosing in the first place? I just don’t get it.
I stare at her across the room for a long beat, and to my surprise, she looks over at me, meets my eyes...and instantly looks away.
Fuck!
So, I’m not imagining it. The look on her face just now told me everything I need to know: she can’t even stand to look at me.
What the fuck is going on? This entire night feels like a train coming off the tracks and I can’t understand why. When I imagined tonight, I pictured us having a blast together, celebrating and laughing and dancing the night away, and then, finally, when Tessa and I were high on life and champagne and dying to maul each other, I planned to lead her to the moonlit beach, take her into my arms, andfinallybare my soul to her, without holding back. But how the fuck can I do any of that now, when she’s been giving me the cold shoulder all day?
“So, okay,” Josh says into the microphone. “Mrs. Faraday says enough talking about our fucking feelings—it’s time todance.”
Josh cues the band and off they go, loudly kicking off their first song of the night (a dance-remix-cover of Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You”), and, immediately, almost everyone in the room beelines to the dance floor.
I get up from my table, my heart pounding and my mouth dry, and stride around the edge of the bustling dance floor toward her. I don’t know what the fuck’s going on in her head—or if I truly want to find out—but there’s no turning back now.
Right before I reach her table, Tessa rises from her seat, wipes her eyes, and turns on her heel like she’s planning to get the hell out of Dodge and never come back, so I pick up my pace and, thankfully, reach her before she’s gotten too far. In a flash, I’ve got her elbow firmly in my grasp and her trembling body pressed into my side.
“We need to talk,” I say, gripping her fiercely. “Let’s take a walk.”
63
Ryan
Tessa’s body language is tight and closed off as I pull her past the dancing bodies on the dance floor, out the front doors of the reception hall, and straight into the warm, starry night, and then, on a sudden impulse, wordlessly continue walking with her toward the private beach about a hundred yards away.
When we reach the entrance to the beach, Tessa kicks off her heels and marches onto the sand without looking back. “I don’t know why you led me all the way out here,” she mutters. “We don’t need to take a moonlit walk on the beach to say, ‘Thanks for the memories.’”
I take two loping strides to catch up to her, grab her by her arm, and force her to stop marching away from me. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” I bellow, panic welling up inside me. “‘Thanks for the memories’? Is that what you think is on the tip of my tongue tonight? Tessa, I’m not your prick of an ex-boyfriend, okay?I’m not him. This has been the best week of my life and all I want is to keep going when we get back home.”
“Keep going? What would be the point when all you’re gonna do is telepathically break up with me the minute some other woman makes your dick hard?”
“Jesus, I thought we were past this. I told you I’d broken up with Olivia by the time I met you and that—”
“This isn’t about Psycho Barbie,” she grits out. “And this isn’t about my stupid ex-boyfriend, either. This is about you and the woman you’ve been dating for the past few months—the woman you’ve been ‘obsessed with’ right up until you arrived in Maui.”
The starry night buckles and warps around me.Shit.
“Tessa, I don’t know who you’ve been talking to, but they gave you some wrong information. There’s no other woman but you and there hasn’t been since the moment I laid eyes on you. I haven’t even touched another woman since I met you that night at The Pine Box.”
She looks at me like I’m scum. “Stop with the bullshit, Ryan. I talked to Josh and Jonas. They told me everything.”
“What did they tell you? Whatever it was, they’ve got it completely wrong. Tessa, the woman I’ve been ‘obsessed with’ for months isyou.”
“Yeah, everyone’s always got it ‘completely wrong’ when it comes to you, huh? You’ve always got a nifty explanation.”
I grab her shoulders, practically hyperventilating with panic. “What did Josh and Jonas say to you?Tell me.”
“Let go of me,” she commands.
I release my grasp.
Her eyes are wild. “Josh and Jonas saw sparks between us. They have no idea we’ve gotten together, but they felt the need to warn me that, if I’m possibly gonna start something with you, I should be careful because, although they generally think you’re the greatest guy ever and they love and respect you, when it comes to women, you seem to hop from one to the next at breakneck speed. Case in point, they told me you’d been obsessed with some woman for months prior to coming here, right up to the very day you arrived at the resort, and that, in fact, the afternoon you arrived—the same day we fucked for the first time—you were still totally into this other woman, which they knew for a fact because at the opening night party you were talking about how you’d desperately tried calling her that afternoon.” She crosses her arms over her chest. “So I have a question, Ryan: did you break up with this woman before you fucked me, or did you just do ittelepathically,like you always do when you’re ready to move on to your next conquest?”
“Oh my fuck.” I sigh. “Sweetheart, Josh and Jonas meant well, but they were completely clueless. Baby, look at me. When they told you about that other woman, they were talking about ‘Samantha.’That’swho I’ve been obsessed with for three months.Samantha.”
She looks utterly flabbergasted.
I take her hands in mine and, thankfully, she doesn’t resist my grasp. “Baby, after everything went to shit at The Pine Box that night, I went straight to Josh and Kat’s house and we hung out with Jonas and Sarah, and I told all of them about this amazing woman I’d met that night—Samantha the Flight Attendant. I told them we’d had a soul connection—that I couldn’t stand the thought of never seeing her again, that I couldn’t stand the thought of her being out there in the world, thinking I was a lying, cheating scumbag. And that’s when the Faraday brothers hooked me up with Henn to help me track Samantha down.”
