* * *
Me: I’M NOT A HOARDER.
* * *
Rhett: OKAY SO…
* * *
Me: THE PLACE WHERE I’M STAYING ... IT DOESN’T BELONG TO ME. I DON’T FEEL COMFORTABLE HOSTING.
* * *
There. Boom. Perfect. So simple! Why didn’t I think of that before? Plus, it’s the truth.
* * *
Rhett: OKAY FINE. YOU LIKE HOTEL SEX?
* * *
Me: YES, BUT I DON’T WANT TO FEEL LIKE AN ESCORT OR A MISTRESS, SO YOU’RE GOING TO HAVE TO BUY ME DRINKS FIRST, AND SINCE I DON’T LIKE TO DRINK ON AN EMPTY STOMACH, YOU’LL HAVE TO BUY ME DINNER BEFORE THAT.
* * *
Rhett: YOU WANT THE BOYFRIEND EXPERIENCE?
* * *
My stomach swirls.
* * *
Me: I DO. AND AREN’T WE DATING? I LIKE YOU. YOU LIKE ME. SHOULDN’T YOU TAKE ME ON DATES AND STUFF NOW?
* * *
Rhett: YOU SHOULD KNOW I’M NOT A WINING AND DINING TYPE OF BOYFRIEND.
* * *
Me: SO IT’S OFFICIAL? YOU’RE MY BOYFRIEND?
* * *
Rhett: SMOOTH.
* * *
Three bubbles fill the screen, and he takes forever and a day before sending his next text.
* * *
Rhett: YES, AYLA. I’M YOUR BOYFRIEND.
* * *
I’m grinning so hard my face hurts. Rhett Carson is my boyfriend. It’s a weird, cozy little feeling I never saw coming in a million years.
* * *
Rhett: I’LL PICK YOU UP AT EIGHT.
Twenty-Four
Rhett
* * *
Ayla’s wrapped in a hotel bedsheet, her dark waves brushing against her shoulder as she stands at the balcony of our hotel room. The sliding door is open, ushering in a warm August breeze that ruffles her hair. We’re on the top floor, the penthouse suite, where we’ve been going at it like rabbits for hours.
I can’t get enough of this woman, tasting every inch of her, my hands in her hair, my name like breathless sighs on her tongue…
Slipping my arms around her waist, I kiss her neck, and her cheek billows while she smiles.
“You wore me out,” she says, leaning against me for support. “And now I’m starving.”
“Room service is coming.”
“They deliver at three in the morning?”
“Here they do.” I hold her tighter. “I’m sorry I couldn’t take you out somewhere.”
She’s quiet now, but she said she understood earlier, when I told her I didn’t want people taking pictures of us. I don’t want our relationship to be tabloid fodder, and I don’t want people wondering how the hell I could move on so quickly, so we had a private roof top date before coming here.
No one could possibly understand any of this because I don’t even understand it.
I stopped asking questions.
I stopped trying to figure it out.
I stopped trying to control it because as it turns out, your heart tends to do what it wants and doesn’t give a shit what your head thinks.
I think about Damiana sometimes. It’s rare, but I do. I miss what I thought we had, when I thought I knew who she was. I realize now that she was good at pretending to be everything she thought you wanted. One of these days, I hope to forgive her, but I’ll be damned if I sit around and dwell and sulk and feel sorry for myself because of what she did.
I don’t know if there’s an appropriate length of time a man is supposed to wait between these kinds of things, all I know is that when you find someone like Ayla, you don’t worry about the fine print.
You hold on.
You don’t let go.
You throw your rules out the window.
I look at her now, and I see myself falling in love with her. I feel it happening already, in still, small moments. First my heart swells, then a fullness sweeps over my body. My head feels light. And I can think of nothing else but her.
She was never supposed to mean this much to me.
“You want to go back inside?” she asks, yawning as she turns to me. Ayla threads her fingers into mine.
There’s a knock at the door, presumably room service, and she shuffles to the bathroom, still wrapped in that bedsheet.
We inhale our snack, draw the curtains, and turn out the lights. Ayla lies in my arms, her cheek pressed against my heart and her hand resting on my stomach. When she blinks, I feel the trace of her lashes against my skin.
I want this.
I want her.
Twenty-Five
Ayla
* * *
Rhett’s in the hotel shower when a call from Coach Harris lights up my screen. Nothing like a good, hard dose of reality to really get a girl going in the morning.
I’d almost forgotten.
“Shit,” I whisper, holding the phone in my hand like it’s a bomb about to detonate. I panic and freeze, and eventually the call goes to voicemail. Thirty seconds later, my phone buzzes with his message.
I make sure Rhett’s still in the shower before listening.
“Ayla, this is Coach Harris,” the voicemail says. “Just calling because we have that proceeds check for Bryce’s foundation from the skate-a-thon. We’d like to present it to you in our next team meeting. It’d be next Friday, ten o’clock in the morning. See you then.”
The bathroom door opens, and Rhett emerges in a cloud of steam, a white towel wrapped low around his waist and his rippled abs gleaming. I realize now that I’m staring, and that I’m not breathing.
I want to remember this moment. I want to remember how it felt when he looked at me like I hung the moon. I want to remember what it felt like when his taste still lingered on my tongue, when my body was consumed with a kind of magnificent soreness only he could inflict.
I thought we had more time to get to know each other—to maybe even fall in love—before I told him. My hope was that he would get to know me, and that he would know my intentions were true.
Eight days.
That’s all we have.
Twenty-Six
Rhett
* * *
There’s a girl I’ve never seen before sitting at my kitchen island when I get home from the hotel. She’s eating cereal from one of my bowls and my brother is nowhere to be found.
“Hi.” My voice is flat, unamused. I pull my key from the lock and shut the door.
“Oh, hi!” She climbs off the bar stool, coming at me with open arms and a huge grin. “You must be Locke’s older brother. He told me so much about you.”
She smells like cereal and milk, faded perfume, and day-old alcohol breath, and she’s wearing last night’s dress in a shade of nightclub teal. When she climbs back onto the bar stool, the hem rises up her thighs. I don’t think she’s wearing panties.