I pulled my wrap tighter around me and sat down on my sofa in the dark. This was my only refuge. My apartment. A place Jace had never been before. There were no memories of happier times here. Except that Tripp invaded this world each night by sitting out there, watching me.
After he’d ruined me, I’d used my body to find happiness. I’d told myself I was looking for someone else, but I’d really been trying to wash him from my memories. So I’d partied. And I’d slept with guys. I’d become someone completely different from the girl he’d left behind.
Each time I closed my eyes and gave my body to another guy, I hoped I would forget Tripp.
But I never did.
He was always there in the back of my mind. The sweet, gentle way he’d held me our first time, even as he reminded me that there was more out there. Then I would remember how much it hurt to lose that.
Jace had come along, and I’d wanted him simply because he looked so much like Tripp. He reminded me of him, too. He wasn’t like the others. At first, he used me for sex, but he kept coming back. He made me smile, and he said sweet things.
When I had decided to stand up for myself and stop giving my body away to whatever wealthy hot guy hit on me, Jace had made a move, and just like Cinderella, I’d finally found love with my prince.
I had been so scared to love Jace, but he’d made it hard not to. I’d been older than when I’d met Tripp, and I’d told myself that it had been different with him because that had been a young love. I’d fallen deeper and more intensely because I’d been young. I had lived in a fairy tale.
What I’d had with Jace was real. I’d held on to that, and for a brief time, I’d been happy. Then Tripp had come back to Rosemary Beach, and one look at him, and my heart had slammed against my chest. All that intensity I had told myself was a young girl’s fascination had swamped me, overwhelming me immediately. I hated that he brought that out in me.
I hated what he’d done to me.
I hated him.
But I faked it because Jace loved him. And Jace could never know what had happened between Tripp and me.
The sound of Tripp’s motorcycle roaring to life made me breathe a sigh of relief. He was finally leaving. I hated the dark. I hadn’t eaten all day, and I needed to fix myself something before I went to bed.
Sitting in the silence, I waited ten minutes before standing up and turning on the lights. Tripp was gone for the night. I wouldn’t have to see him again until the morning, when he’d return while I was getting ready for work.
Tonight I had acknowledged him. I had spoken to him. I had wanted to spew all the hate and pain I had inside me at him. I knew he would take it—I knew he wouldn’t look at me with sympathy. And I had been right. He was Tripp. Calm, solid Tripp.
The words I’d said tonight had been harsh and cruel. Guilt settled inside me. He didn’t deserve that, but I had said them anyway. His flinching at my words had been the only sign that they affected him. Jace would hate who I had become. But I couldn’t stop myself.
The numbness was finally gone. Life was sinking in. Reality was here. I had to move on.
Everything had changed when Harlow gave birth. Harlow was my friend and Grant’s fiancée. They’d accidentally gotten pregnant, even though Harlow had a heart condition that made pregnancy risky, and for a little while after the birth, we weren’t sure she was going to make it. We’d been camped out in the hospital lobby when Woods had walked up to me. He’d told me it wasn’t my fault that Jace was gone. He’d been wrong for holding it against me; he just hadn’t been able to accept that Jace was gone. He was still angry, but he wanted me to be happy again and he knew Jace would want that, too. Then he’d hugged me.
The numbness had begun to fade in that moment, and I’d almost begged him to hate me. I needed his hate. But the sincerity in his eyes as he’d squeezed my shoulders and told me to find happiness again had rendered me mute. Della had broken down in a fit of tears and come up to me and hugged me after watching Woods forgive me. It had all been too much.
Since that day, everything was changing. My secure world of nothingness was crumbling. And Tripp was still there, following me.
I was scared of depending on him, because this would end, too. He would leave. And I’d be left with one more thing to move on from. He needed to leave now. I knew from experience that he would only find ways to destroy me. I couldn’t live again if I had to guard myself from Tripp.
Tripp
Eight years ago
“What the hell is going on down at the beach?” I muttered as we pulled up to the condo my grandfather had given me as a graduation present. My parents hadn’t been happy about it, but my mother’s father had informed them that I needed my own space apart from them. This was his gift to me. I’d moved out the next day. Having the freedom of my own place allowed me to get the hell out of my parents’ clutches. It offered a taste of what I could have.
“Looks like a bonfire,” Woods said, stating the obvious.
“And we weren’t invited?” Jace asked.
“It’s not our crowd. We’re real close to the town limits. That part of the beach isn’t Rosemary Beach. My guess is they’re from Destin. Locals, maybe,” Woods explained.
We got out of Woods’s truck, and I grinned back at the other two. I was leaving soon, and I wanted to spend as much time as I could with Jace and his friends before I left. I didn’t know when I’d be home again. I had my own friends, too, but I could visit them when I was on the road. None of them spent summers here. I always did, because I was close to the guys from boarding school. The one year I’d spent there with Jace, Woods, and Thad had been epic. The shit we got away with because of Woods’s daddy’s influence . . . Whenever Rush Finlay came to visit Grant, we really got to have some fun. No one wanted to piss off a rock god’s son.
“Let’s go find some trouble,” I suggested, and Woods laughed as Jace whooped and jumped down out of the truck.
“I bet there’re hotties in bikinis lookin’ for a good time in that crowd,” Thad piped up as he pulled his long blond hair back into a ponytail.