I smirked. “If you mean cute, just say it.”
“You’ve always been cute.” She turned away as if suddenly shy, and I did the same, my stomach fluttering.
“I know it’s only been a few days, but—” She hesitated. “I sound ridiculous, right? God, how embarrassing.”
We didn’t need to be embarrassed. We were in this beautiful place, finally able to take a breath after a day of hell and a day sending off the people we cared about the most. When I looked back up, Hailey was watching me intensely, and I immediately felt shy, something I wasn’t familiar with. I got lost in her eyes and how the sun didn’t seem to reflect in them. I took in the light curve of Hailey’s lips that looked so pronounced when she wore her red lipstick.
“I can get used to this side of you.” She nudged me and I nudged her back, feeling the warmth radiating from her body.
The butterflies again. I was finding it hard to keep looking at her because every time I did, I was afraid I was smiling too hard when I wanted to play it cool.
“What’s that?”
“The soft side.”
That was a first. “I have many sides.”
“I think I’d like to get to know them. Is that weird?”
Not weird. But maybe not possible either. I didn’t think it was possible to know all of someone else. But I would have said yes to just about anything Hailey asked, the way she was staring me down, hovering over me with her hypnotic eyes. I took a hand and brushed back the lock of long, brown bang covering her face because I wanted to see it clearly.
“It’s easier to be this way around you,” I told her, meaning it.“You don’t expect things of me. I don’t have to be on all the time with you. I can just chill.”
She trailed a finger in the sand, making large loops of it.
“I know the feeling,” she said. “Being part of my family feels like I’m always running a gauntlet. They loved my brother because to them he was perfect.”
“And you?”
“And I was,” she said, sighing, “the rebel. I moved down here when they wanted me to stay in Martha’s Vineyard. I tried to fight working at the Endowment. Always being ‘on the job’ is exhausting. But what was I gonna tell my uncle and parents,no?”
I nodded, finding it hard to pay attention to what she was saying. Her lips were distracting and I could only think about wanting to kiss them.
She brightened. “What about if we make a pact to always be ‘off’ with each other. Deal?”
Her hand stopped playing with my shirt and she held it out to me. I considered her offered hand as it waited for me.
“Pacts mean something here,” I said. “It’s not a joke to make a promise to someone. It’s for real.”
She laughed. “What? Does it mean we’re married?” Her laugh trickled off when she saw I was serious. “I’m joking… about being married,” she said when she saw I wasn’t. “Not about the pact. I always want to be real with you.”
We were a people built on ceremony and tradition. We didn’t bind ourselves to others so easily. But something about Hailey made me see her in a different light and give in. Just this once. Even though everything about me said not to.
I took her hand, tugging it toward me, throwing her off balance so her eyes rounded. She crashed into me and I crashed my lips into hers, finally able to do the thing I’d desperately wanted to do all afternoon, all day. Her lips were incredibly soft and she tasted like peach moonshine. Her feathery soft hair curtained us, putting us in this tiny private space of just her and me. The feel of Hailey’s body alongside mine, the growing heat as we kissed, was exactly what I’d been needing. To get away. To think of nothing else for just a few minutes. No responsibilities or expectations. No monsters. No death.
Just her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Their voices carried as I approached Hailey’s room later that evening, and I recognized them immediately: Sekou’s deep growl, with occasional squeaks when he was shocked or adamant, and Hailey’s low tone that seemed to rise a notch with each passing second.
I burst in without knocking, and they both spun around to face me, standing in the open doorway.
“What are you doing here?” I asked Sekou.
The air in the room crackled with tension I couldn’t figure out. Sekou, tall and lanky and practically towering over Hailey, glowered down at her, his lips set so firmly in a line that they were nearly nonexistent. I didn’t think I’d ever seen him this mad. Not even after my big blowout with Naira the night before… and the day… she’d left. He practically hulked over Hailey, who stared back at him, her eyes speaking volumes I couldn’t understand.
She looked, I don’t know, worried. Pissed even. Her eyes flashed as she stood up to him.
