“Daph,” he hissed as he let himself into her room. “Daph! Where are you?”
Daphne leaned out of the bathroom. She had relocated to her own room after Max passed out, according to the text she’d sent while Benji was pelting down the hall texting furiously.
“Hey,” Daphne called, rubbing a towel through her wet hair. “Did you see this? I have my own hot tub!”
“That’s great,” Benji said dismissively. He closed the door behind him and marched over. “Daph?—”
She cut him off, flopping down onto her bed excitedly. “This is the best thing I’ve ever slept on! Remember that memory foam from that mattress store in high school, and the owner kicked us out because we wouldn’t stop lying on it? This is better.”
“Sure,” said Benji. “Daphne?—”
Daphne sat up again, tightening her robe. “Max said something about a spa treatment? Do you want to go at lunch? There’s this dolphin tour just before breakfast, but if you want?—”
“Daphne,” Benji said over her. “He proposed again.”
Daphne blinked. He’d forgotten how young she looked without her eye makeup—like she was in high school all over again, waiting for the bus to come so she could apply it in the reflective window.
“Oh,” Daphne said. “Huh! I thought he wasn’t doing that for a while.”
“He said he wasn’t!” Benji sat down next to her on the bed, groaning into his hands. “I can’t keep doing this!”
Daphne rubbed his back uncertainly. “If you say you don’t want to right now, I’m sure he’ll back off.”
“That’s not the problem,” Benji spat. Then he winced. Daphne’s hand stilled on his back, her shrewd eyes watching him with a keenness he wanted to shrink away from.
“That’s not what I meant,” Benji started, but she was already talking over him.
“Ben,” she said. “Do youwantto marry him?”
Benji spluttered helplessly. He was wearing yesterday’s jeans, which it was far too hot for, one sock, and one of Noah’s shirts since it was the first thing he saw. But he suddenly felt naked under her gaze. Like she could tell he’d been wearing Noah’s collar a minute ago, and that taking it off had felt like removing a limb.
“So what if I do?” Benji replied harshly.
Daphne’s lips flattened out. She gave him a disappointed look that he didn’t get very often—mainly because she was a massive people-pleaser during their first years of friendship, but then because his aunt was dying, and then again because his aunt was freshly dead and he was working a string of shitty jobs while still trying to succeed at community college and take care of his little brother.
She’d been letting the disappointment through more lately. He would be proud of her if it didn’t make his hackles go up so fast.
“Benji,” Daphne sighed.
Benji scoffed, pushing her hand away. “I can’tactuallymarry him, Daph! That’s not how the world works!”
“Why?” Daphne demanded.
“Because it’snot,” Benji snapped. “Okay? The sky is blue, at some point youwillget your coffee confused and drink the paint water mug instead, and Benji Caulfield doesn’t marry a gorgeous BDSM billionaire!”
Daphne laughed, pushing herself off the bed with an almighty bounce. “Benji! We’re inBaliright now! Forfree! Sometimes good things happen!”
“Sometimes good things happen,” Benji repeated furiously. It was an old argument: Daphne, the ever-present optimist, and Benji, the distrusting cynic. Most of the time, Benji rolled his eyes and ignored her. But sometimes her determined cheer rubbed him the wrong way, even to the point of pain. Like she was being dense just to piss him off.
Suddenly, the retort he’d been wanting to say for years poured out of him, sharp and harsh.
“Nothing good happened for the first nineteen years of my life,” he barked. “My mom and dad both abandoned me, my aunt died, and I got stuck looking after my baby brother? What good thing fucking happened in that?”
Daphne’s smile dropped. Something steely and fed up appeared in her eyes, a look he hadn’t seen since she poured coffee over Dillion Thomas’s head last semester.
“You met me,” Daphne said fiercely.
Benji groaned. “Daph?—”
