That the accident hadn’t broken me.
That I was better than I ever had been before.
“Come on. Let’s get back to the room.”
Ryan’s brows went up. “You don’t want to go do resort things?”
“That can wait,” I said, my voice dropping. His pupils widened as he caught my meaning. “I have better things to do with you.”
“Race you there,” he said. “First one to the room gets to suck a dick!”
I burst into laughter when, instead of hanging back to let me win, he took off faster than I could ever be.
Fifteen
RYAN
For a short while,I thought the presence of Gracie and Hasan, added to Atlas’s brother and friend, was going to ruin everything. But we spent half the morning with Atlas sucking me off in the room without a care in the world, and the second half at the pool with drinks and an endless flow of whatever snack looked good on the appetizer menu.
We agreed to go without our phones, which meant if the other four needed something, they’d have to track us down.
It felt oddly indulgent, almost like we were on another planet. I’d never in my life wanted to be cut off from the few people I cared about, but now I was reluctant to go back to the room and check to see if anything had gone wrong.
“I’m going to shower,” Atlas said as I slung the beach bag over one of the chairs. “I’m going to get properly clean, so you have to stay out.”
I might have been insulted if every shower we’d taken together so far hadn’t led to us getting so distracted we neglected behind our ears and in between our ass cheeks. I kissed Atlas as he dropped his crutches against the wall, and he kissed me back.
“Enough,” he said when I started to get a little hard. “This is getting kind of ridiculous, and I’m going to run out of Viagra if we keep this up.”
I wouldn’t apologize. We had so little time together. Each minute that passed felt heavy. Each hour that went by was a vicious reminder that this would all, eventually, be over.
I wanted to fill every single moment with Atlas.
But a shower was necessary, and I would need one after him before we did dinner with everyone else. The ocean was a good way to wash off all the evidence of what we’d been doing, but I was pretty sure we smelled faintly of come and sweat at this point.
And I’d left those days behind in my teenage years.
Flopping on the couch, I pulled my phone off the charger as I heard the shower go on, and I jumped on Instagram. Gracie and Hasan had uploaded a bunch of photos of their tour. They’d gone snorkeling, had seen starfish, and had gotten a video of a dolphin pod. I could see the resort in the distant background, and I felt a little bad for skipping out on it.
If this had been any other time—any other vacation—I might have had serious FOMO. But not now. Not when I had such little time with Atlas.
I needed to talk to him about it. I needed to figure out if this was going to end the moment we walked out of the hotel doors for the last time. My flight was sooner than his, so my countdown was shorter.
Swallowing past a lump in my throat, I tapped my email icon and began to scroll. I had several from the school, which I refused to acknowledge until I was back on duty, and more spam than I cared to see.
And just when I was about to exit, I saw an email with my brother’s name as the sender.
Callum.
Subject: You should be here…
My heart began to hammer in my chest. It was obviously sent to just me. There was no one else cc’d on the form. This was a pointed email for my eyes.
I couldn’t bring myself to believe any of them regretted not having me along for the trip. They had never wanted me. Not once in my life. How could it possibly be different now? What I really needed to do was delete the damn thing.
What I did instead was open it because I was still a fucking glutton for punishment when it came to my family.
Ryan,
