Total pages in book: 71
Estimated words: 65643 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 328(@200wpm)___ 263(@250wpm)___ 219(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 65643 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 328(@200wpm)___ 263(@250wpm)___ 219(@300wpm)
Noemi had taken one of the lanterns, and it lit her hand up to the wrist, but the rest of them was in shadow as they moved like ghosts through the darkness. I watched them go, marveling again at how different Noemi’s second wedding was from her first. We hadn’t been old enough to legally buy alcohol, and the cost of the license had wiped out our meager funds. We’d stopped at the drive thru of an In and Out burger on the way back and shared a large soda, fries, and a burger. And we’d laughed insanely all the way home.
I grinned, remembering.
“You look happy,” Destiny observed. “I’d have thought this would be weird for you.”
I looked over and was surprised to see that while she was still sitting beside me, Chris and Jamie had gone.
“Jamie isn’t feeling well.” Destiny answered my unspoken question. “They left half an hour ago.”
That left the couple sitting directly across from her, and the two at the end. They were already finishing the last drops out of their wine glasses, setting their crumpled napkins on the table.
“Come on, dear,” Noemi’s great aunt said to Destiny. “We’ll walk you back.”
“I’ll walk her back,” I said abruptly.
I felt Destiny’s surprise in the way she stiffened slightly and shot me a sideways look underneath her lashes, but I couldn’t detect it in her tone. When she thanked Noemi’s aunt for the offer, her voice was as smooth as butter.
The two couples meandered off, and then it was just Destiny and I left at our end of the table. For the first time in a while, I wished I still smoked. I had the urge to do something, touch something, and I knew it shouldn’t be the woman sitting beside me, her eyes curious as she watched me not know what the hell to do.
“So, you’re walking me back?” she asked, her voice testing.
“I said I would, didn’t I?”
“You did,” she agreed.
“Then come on.” Abruptly, I stood up and, for some reason, maybe because I’d just seen Noemi do it, I held out my hand. Destiny took it before I could think better and pull it back. Her slim, cool fingers closed around mine, and I pulled her to her feet.
She watched me curiously as we walked up the path. We hadn’t grabbed a lantern, and the whites of her eyes glinted in the moonlight. Her teeth glimmered when they nipped her lower lip the way they did when she was considering something.
What was she considering now?
“Which villa are you in?” she asked when we reached the first.
“Number four.” I nodded down the row. “What about you?” Half of me hoped she’d say number two, and I could drop her off in ten feet and salvage my resolve.
“Number seven. I guess I’m walking you back.”
Silence hummed between us for the last steps of our walk. Down below, we could hear the ocean, sucking in and slamming down, the waves small but loud in a night that had been emptied of all other sound. When we reached my door, Destiny’s steps slowed, but I shook my head.
“I said I’d walk you back.”
“It’s like twenty feet, Garrett. I think I’ll manage.”
But when I kept walking, she made an exasperated noise and fell into step beside me. The silence took on a deeper quality. The humming might have been in my ears now, because I could hardly hear the waves. Just the click of Destiny’s heels and her quiet breathing. When we reached her door, she retrieved the key from a pocket of her skirt and fit it to the lock. She opened it, then looked back at me over her shoulder. “Did you want to come in?”
My breath stopped in my chest. She fucking knew I wanted to come in. She knew it was taking everything in me not to. I could tell by the coy smile curling on her lips.
“No,” I said, my voice harsher than I meant. “We both know that’s a bad idea.”
“I don’t know that,” Destiny corrected, walking in and turning to face me across the threshold. “You’re like all the men in this town who want to tell me what I think.”
The injustice of the statement was a white-hot poker in my chest. “That’s bullshit,” I snapped. “If I were like any other man in this town, I’d have taken you in the middle of that Halloween party the second you gave me the invitation. But I didn’t because–”
I stopped dead.
Destiny’s face had darkened as I spoke, the storm gathering in her eyes, ready to break. Now she paused, tilted her head. “You didn’t because what, Garrett?”
I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter.”
“You couldn’t because of Noemi?” she guessed.
I rolled my eyes upward. I loved Noemi, but I was damn sick of people thinking I was still in love with her.