"Brooks," she breathes.
"I'm jealous, Ivy," I admit, the truth feeling like a surrender. "I'm jealous of the waiters you smile at. I'm jealous of my fatherbecause you laugh at his jokes. I'm jealous of a slimy hedge fund manager because he got within two feet of you."
I reach out. My hand hovers, then lands on her waist, where Carter touched her. But I don't just touch skin. I pull her in.
"Tell me to stop," I say, my voice low, dangerous. "Cite the contract. Tell me to go to hell. But do it now, because in about five seconds, I'm going to forget every rule we wrote down."
She stares up at me. Her chest is heaving. Her heart races against mine. She puts a hand flat on my chest, over my own thudding heart.
"The end is coming up fast," she whispers.
"I know."
"If we do this... it ruins everything. The leverage. The clean break. It all gets messy."
"I know."
She rises on her tiptoes. Her hand moves from my chest to the back of my neck, her fingers tangling in my hair.
"Screw the clean break," she whispers.
And she kisses me.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
IVY
The kiss does not end like a movie. There is no fade to black. There is no swelling orchestra.
There is just the sharp, stinging realization that I have set fire to the only safety net I had.
I pull back, gasping for air. My lips are tingling, swollen and sensitive. My heart is hammering a rhythm against my ribs that feels less like a heartbeat and more like a warning siren.
Brooks is staring down at me. His eyes are blown wide, almost black in the twilight. His hand is still on the back of my neck, his fingers tangled in my windblown hair, holding me like he's afraid that if he lets go, I'll disintegrate into sea foam.
"We have to go," he says. His voice is rough, a jagged thing.
"The party," I whisper, though I can't remember why the party matters. "Your parents. The senator."
"Screw the senator," Brooks says.
He grabs my hand. It's not the polite, performative grip of a fiancé. It's a clamp. He pulls me toward the stairs, moving with a single-minded urgency that scares me a little and thrills me a lot.
We bypass the main deck. We bypass the bar. We practically run down the gangway to the tender bobbing alongside the yacht.
The sky above us cracks open.
The summer storm that has been threatening all afternoon finally breaks. Fat drops of rain pelt the teak, turning it slick.
“Perfect,” Brooks mutters.
He helps me into the small tender. The driver looks startled to see us.
“Take us to the dock,” Brooks orders. “Now.”
The ride back to the mainland is a blur of wind, spray, and silence. I am shivering, though I'm not sure if it's the cold rain or the aftershock of the kiss. Brooks takes off his jacket and wraps it around my shoulders. He pulls me into his side, shielding me from the spray with his body.
He doesn't say a word. He doesn't have to. The heat radiating off him says everything.
