it once we’re home.”
“You mean whether or not you’ll tell Dane?” I ask carefully.
“I mean whether I’ll need some time to get over you.”
This corkscrews an ache through my heart. I turn my head so that I can meet his kiss as he bends to deliver it and let the feeling of relief and hunger wash over me. I try to imagine seeing Ethan at Ami and Dane’s house, keeping my distance, and not wanting to touch him like this.
I can’t. Even in my imagination it’s impossible.
“I’m not entirely done with whatever this is,” I admit. “Even if it is a fling, it doesn’t feel—”
“Don’t say it.”
“—flung.” I grin up at him and he groans.
“That was almost as bad as your ‘on the cuff’ line at the wedding.”
“I knew that would hold a special place in your memory.”
Ethan bares his teeth on my neck, growling.
“So, I guess what I’m saying is,” I begin, and then take a deep breath like I’m about to jump off a cliff into a pool of dark water, “if you wanted to keep seeing each other once we’re home, I wouldn’t be totally opposed.”
His mouth moves up my neck, sucking. His hand slides beneath my jacket and shirt, coming to a warm stop over my breastbone. “Yeah?”
“What do you think?”
“I think I like it.” He kisses along my jaw to my mouth. “I think this means I get to do this even after our fake honeymoon is over.”
I arch into his palm, urging it over with my own hand until he’s cupping my breast. But with a frustrated growl, Ethan pulls his fingers back down to my stomach. “I wish we’d had this conversation back at the room.”
“Me too.” Because we definitely can’t fool around now: the sun isn’t visible yet, but it’s off the horizon, lighting the sky a million shades of orange, red, purple, and blue.
“Did we just decide something?” he asks.
I squeeze my eyes closed, grinning. “I think so.”
“Good. Because I’m sort of crazy about you.”
Holding my breath, I quietly admit, “I’m crazy about you, too.”
I know, if I turned back to look at his face, he’d be smiling. I feel it in the way the band of his arms tightens around me.
We watch together as the sky continues to transform every few seconds, an unreal canvas changing constantly in front of us. It makes me feel like a little girl again, and instead of imagining a castle in the sky, I’m living in it; truly the only thing we can see all around us is this dramatic, painted sky.
The gathered audience falls into a unified silence, and my own spell is broken only when the sun is high and bright and the mass of bodies begins to shift in preparation to leave. I don’t want to leave. I want to sit right here, leaning against Ethan, for eternity.
“Excuse me,” Ethan says to a woman in a passing group. “Would you mind taking a photo of me and my girlfriend?”
Okay . . . maybe it’s time to run back to the hotel room.
chapter fourteen
“Someone explain the physics to me of my suitcase weighing approximately fifty pounds more when I leave than it did when I arrived,” I say. “All I’ve added to it are a couple of T-shirts and a few small pieces of souvenir jewelry.”
Ethan comes over to the side of the bed, pressing a large hand down on my bag and helping me zip it closed, with effort. “I think it’s the weight of your questionable decision to buy Dane an I Got Lei’d in Maui T-shirt.”
“You don’t think he’ll appreciate my dark humor?” I ask. “I mean, my dilemma really is whether I give it to him before or after we tell him we’re sleeping together.”
Shrugging, he pulls the suitcase off the bed and looks over at me. “He’ll either laugh or give you the pouty silent treatment.”
“Frankly, I could deal with either of those options.”
I’m shoving things into my carry-on, so it takes me a few seconds to realize that Ethan hasn’t immediately shot something back at me.
“I’m kidding, Ethan.”
“Are you?”
I’ve been able to push this out of my thoughts for the majority of this trip, but reality is poking at our blissful vacation bubble much sooner than I’d like. “Is Dane going to become a thing between us?”
Ethan sits on the edge of the mattress and pulls me between his knees. “I said it before . . . It’s clear you don’t really like him, and