That was what I told myself anyway.
Across the pool, Destiny bent to straighten the towel she’d laid over one of the loungers, her dark hair spilling over one shoulder, the sun catching the new warmth in her skin. Four days of salt water had done what sleep and medicine hadn’tquite managed. Her color was better. The bruises along her arms had started fading from ugly purple into greenish yellow. The swelling around her cheek had gone down. The ocean had put life back into her body in small pieces.
She looked healthier.
That was what I noticed.
That was all I let myself notice.
Then she shifted, tugging at the edge of the towel, and my hand tightened around the beer bottle hard enough to make the glass creak.
I turned my head toward the ocean.
“Regan bought that suit to torture me,” I muttered under my breath.
The worst part was Destiny knew it too.
Not the torture part. Not fully. But she knew I was trying not to look. She knew because Destiny had always been too sharp for her own good and too wounded to let any weakness in a man pass unstudied.
She adjusted her sunglasses, glanced my way, and smiled like trouble had learned to wear sunscreen.
Four days.
Four days until eighteen.
That number sat in my skull like a lit cigarette.
It didn’t change a damn thing today.
It didn’t erase what she had survived. Didn’t erase the fact that she was raw, hunted, healing, and surrounded by men making decisions over her head because every adult in her life was scared enough to become controlling.
It didn’t erase Edge.
It sure as hell didn’t erase me.
I looked down at the burner phone on the table when it buzzed.
Callum.
I answered and kept my voice low. “Yeah.”
“You alone?”
I glanced around.
Nate was at the outdoor bar flirting with a waitress for information and two extra limes. Regan was inside with Destiny’s lawyer on video. Destiny was still by the pool, pretending not to watch me pretend not to watch her.
“As alone as I get,” I said.
Callum grunted. “Give me the grave.”
My jaw tightened.
The ocean moved below the cliffside villa, blue and careless.
I took one drink of beer before answering. It went down cold and bitter.
“Defaced,” I said. “Red spray paint. Across Mandy’s name.”
