Alec wants to pretend there’s nothing between us? Fine. Let him pretend. But I refuse to waste my vacation obsessing over what he thinks of me or why it stings this much. I came here for sunshine, not for some man to make me feel like I’m too much. Again.
The water touches my feet and I walk in without looking back.
CHAPTER 13
ALEC
Seven hours.
That’s how long it took me to violate the terms of my own agreement. I delivered the “roommates” speech to Ella at eleven this morning with the solemn conviction of a man presenting a quarterly forecast to the board. By noon I was sitting at the beach bar with a sparkling water I wasn’t drinking, watching Ella’s surf lesson through my sunglasses like I was conducting field surveillance on my own bad decisions.
I told myself I was just keeping an eye on things. Situational awareness. The distinction between that and jealousy matters to absolutely no one, including me, because what I was actually doing was tracking every place Kai’s hands went. His palm on her waist when she lost balance on the board. His fingers steadying her hip as a wave knocked her sideways. The spray of water catching sunlight across her skin while her laugh carried over the surf to where I sat, white-knuckling a glass of Perrier like a jealous boyfriend after I’d just finished telling her we should only be friends.
I lost track of her after the lesson. I wandered to one of the resort restaurants and ate lunch alone—grilled chicken and steamed broccoli—the culinary equivalent of a tax audit.Spent the afternoon in the suite pretending to read a book on cybersecurity trends while listening for the click of her keycard in the door. She never came.
I missed her today. Admitting this, even to myself, violates the terms of the agreement I drafted this morning, and I’m already in breach on at least four other counts.
Now it’s early evening and I’m letting myself back into the suite with a plan that I’ve workshopped for the past hour: invite her to dinner and break the ice. Casual. Nothing that contradicts the protocols we agreed to. Except every layer of my reasoning is a lie, and I tally the lie the same way I do risk assessments, which is to say, thoroughly, and with full awareness that the numbers don’t work.
The suite smells like burgers and greasy fries. My mouth immediately waters, and not only because of the olfactory punch of forbidden food.
Ella is on the couch, which is also my bed, a fact neither of us has named out loud. She’s sitting cross-legged in the center of it, surrounded by a room service spread ambitious enough to suggest she’s feeding a rugby team. I count a burger with the works, a second burger missing two bites, a mountain of fries, some kind of grilled shrimp plate, a bowl of fruit she hasn’t touched, and a big slab of chocolate cake that looks even more decadent than the one she ate on our first night in the suite. She’s in an oversized T-shirt and soft lavender shorts, her dark hair twisted up in a knot that’s losing its grip, and her shoulders and the bridge of her nose are pink from the sun.
She’s not wearing a bra. I know this because the T-shirt shifts when she reaches for a fry, and the soft outline of her breasts moves with the fabric in a way that sends a targeted signal to the part of my brain responsible for terrible decisions.Hello, nipples.The hard little peaks grab my attention and won’t let go. I force myself to look away. At the food. The TV, which is playinga scene with a lot of blood and screaming. Thankfully, she’s chosen something other than a romance tonight or this would be even more awkward.
“Hey,” she says without looking up. The word is flat, pleasant, perfectly hollow. I recognize it from our conversation on the beach. The kind of greeting a waitress gives a customer whose name she can’t be bothered to remember.
What’s wrong with me? This is what I asked for. Friendly but defined. Seeing it in practice feels like a prison sentence I wrote myself and now have to serve.
“That’s a lot of food,” I say, because apparently my opening move is commenting on her room service bill. “Planning to feed the whole floor, or was there a three-for-one room service special?”
The joke is meant to be light. It comes out with an edge I didn’t intend, the kind of observation that assumes she can’t afford the spread. Which I do assume, because she’s a waitress from Sedona, and two entrées plus sides plus dessert at resort prices would eat a significant chunk of most servers’ weekly take-home. I’m not trying to be condescending. I’m trying to make conversation with a woman who won’t look at me, and I’m doing it badly.
She shrugs one sun-pink shoulder. “I was hungry.”
That’s it. No comeback. No teasing. No cheerful jab about my dietary protocol or my inability to enjoy anything. Just a shrug and three words, and the absence of her usual warmth is louder than anything she could have said. I’d take her sarcasm over this vacancy. I’d take her calling my dinner “sad” over this careful, curated nothing.
She gestures vaguely at the couch with a fry. “I can clear out if you need your space. Since this is your, you know.” She glances at the throw blanket folded at one end. “Bedroom.”
The word sits between us. She’s not being cruel about it. She’s being accurate, and the accuracy stings worse than cruelty would, because it forces me to hear what the couch arrangement actually sounds like from her side. A man who kissed her senseless and then couldn’t get far enough away.
I should take the out. Accept her offer. Let her relocate to the bedroom while I sit here alone with my protocols and self-prescribed distance.
I sit down instead.
Not on the far end of the couch as I should. Close enough that her bare knee is maybe two feet from my thigh. I nod at the TV. “What are you watching?”
She blinks at me. A flicker crosses her face, too quick to read, before she schools it back to neutral. “Zombie movie. I think it’s calledDead by Dawn.”
“I’ve seen this one.” I settle back against the cushions, ignoring the muscle knot in my lower back that greets me like an old enemy since the first night I slept out here. “It’s actually a good movie.”
“You like zombie films?” The skepticism in her voice is the most personality she’s shown me since this morning.
“I like a lot of things. Contrary to popular belief, I’m not exclusively powered by spreadsheets and disapproval.”
Her mouth twitches. Not a smile. The minimal start of one, quickly suppressed. She turns back to the screen.
We watch without speaking for a few minutes. On the TV, a woman with a shotgun is barricading a farmhouse door while something undead and hungry throws itself against the other side. It’s a solid scene, well-paced, and I’ve seen it before so I know the jump scare is coming in about forty seconds. I consider warning Ella. But I don’t.
