I leaned back and lowered my voice. “Careful.”
“Or what? You’ll hit me in your frat boy shorts?”
I almost smiled.
He didn’t.
That was worse.
“Dylan,” Nate said. “I’ve ridden with you. I’ve bled with you. I know how many club girls you’ve walked away from. I know how you don’t let anyone in. I know you can flirt with a room full of women and leave alone because some part of you is locked up so tight even you don’t have the key.”
I looked away.
“And now that girl gets one kiss at a grave and you’re sitting here watching the ocean like it owes you answers.”
“She’s trouble with a capital T.”
“She’s way past capital T. She’s the whole damn alphabet.”
“She’s also hurt.”
“I know.”
“She’s young.”
“I know.”
“She’s leaving everything she knows because grown people made a mess big enough to swallow her.”
“I know that too.”
“Then stop telling me to find a hookup like this is spring break.”
Nate was quiet for a second.
Then he said, “Maybe that’s exactly why you should.”
My eyes cut back to him.
He lifted his bottle slightly. “Not because you need one. Because she does.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“It means maybe she needs the memo in a way she’ll actually believe. You go flirt. You find some woman at the pool. You disappear for an hour. Nothing dramatic. Just enough to show her and Regan that you are not waiting around for a seventeen-year-old girl to turn legal so you can?—”
“Finish that sentence and I break your nose.”
Nate stopped.
The air between us went sharp.
I leaned closer, voice low and even. “I am not using some woman’s body as a message. I am not humiliating Destiny because you think pain teaches faster than words. And I am sure as hell not putting on a performance in front of Regan like I need witnesses to prove I’m not a creep.”
Nate studied me.
Then he nodded once.
“Good,” he said.
