“I’m sorry,” she blurted out. “I don’t know what I was thinking up there. I mean…” She swallowed, hugging her arms around herself. “Well, I have a boyfriend, and…”
The words sliced through me. Of course she did. Why wouldn’t she?
I forced my jaw to unclench and tried to play it cool, even though my pulse was still going nuts from everything that had happened in the past ten minutes.
“Right,” I said flatly. “It was just…” I shook my head. “Something to do. Passing time. There’s not much to do in Windy Harbor…you were there.”
Fuck, the more I said, the worse it got.
Her lips tightened. “Yeah. Exactly.” She laughed sharply. “God knows I feel absolutely nothing for you either. It was just a lapse in judgment…on both our parts.”
My brain was roaring that there’d been no lapse in judgment where I was concerned, but how emphatically she’d stated that she felt nothing for me forced me not to let that out.
“Don’t worry about it. We all lose our way at one point or another.”
She let out another laugh that felt more like a slap.
“Youdon’t worry,” she said. “I’ve found my way again. Won’t make that mistake again.”
“Guess that boyfriend isn’t doing the best job if you’re looking for kisses elsewhere.”
“Nah, more like I was missing him, and you were there.”
She walked away, leaving me standing there with the rubble. We’d not only destroyed the tree house…we’d torched our short-lived reconciliation.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
FILLING THE AFTERNOON
JULIANA
Present
I get a call later in the afternoon. Camden.
I look around before I answer. It’s the afternoon lull, so the cafe is quiet. Papa Hector is in the kitchen, and last time I checked, he was reading the paper at the little table back there.
“Hello?” I say.
“Hey, beautiful. So…there’s been a slight change in plans,” he says. “I’m sorry. I don’t know if you’ve heard from Jackson yet because he’s been here all afternoon, but he’s throwing an impromptu party tonight at the restaurant…with both our families.”
My phone buzzes, and I hold it out. “He’s calling now.”
He laughs. “I figured he wouldn’t waste any time. I really tried to push it back, to say I couldn’t do tonight, but you know how he gets when he’s got something on the brain.”
“Oh, I know how he works.” I sigh. “Well, it’ll be good to hang out with everyone.”
“I really wanted you all to myself,” he says.
My heart warms and I smile, but I try to be nonchalant when I say, “It’s probably for the best. I need to get to bed earlier tonight anyway.”
“I can’t convince you to stay over tonight?” He sounds disappointed.
“You think we’ll keep things a secret if I stay for the night?”
He groans. “I didn’t have enough time with you last night…and I’ve been thinking about you all day.”
I want to be with him too, more than anything, but I’ve thought about him obsessively all day, and I worry that I’m just a way for him to get all his sexual energy out. We’ve moved from enemies to peace to sex pretty fast, and I feel like I need to keep my wits about me, even if those wits are barely hanging on by a thread.
