missing from those other friendships. A sense of truly needing each other. She’d needed me as a distraction and as a conscience. I’d needed her to push me out from under Jersey’s protective embrace. To prove to myself that I could stand on my own.
My heart hurt knowing I’d left her for so long.
“I’m sorry,” I said quietly into the mirror.
She looked surprised. “About what?”
“I left you.”
She adjusted her clip. “The last thing I ever wanted was for you to stay in that ghastly town, defending yourself. You out making your dreams come true…that’s what I wanted for you.”
“I know we’ve talked a lot, but I feel like you had shit go down in your life that I wasn’t there for. That you didn’t tell me about.”
When she pulled away, I pulled her back. “You can tell me anything, you know.”
Her dark eyes flooded with tears. She closed her eyes, fighting them back. “I wish that were true.”
And she pulled away.
I wanted to protest, but she was already heading to the door, all signs of weakness gone. “Let’s go. If we’re more than fashionably late, Dax gets his briefs bunched up.”
“How would you know about his briefs?” I teased, letting her move away from the topic even when I wanted to push the truth out of her.
“Honestly, I don’t,” she said, smirking. “The one time we got down and dirty, he wasn’t wearing any.”
I laughed. “The one time. Why has there not been more than one if you like him so much?”
“We could never be. Our families would kill us and themselves before they’d ever approve.”
“Why would they care? If you’re both happy?” I asked with a frown.
She sighed when she realized I wasn’t getting it.
“It’s like with a royal family,” she tried to explain. “Neither Dax nor I have titles behind our names, but it’s pretty much the same. Expectations you can’t shirk. If you want to be part of the family, you abide by their written and unwritten rules.”
I thought about her words in the car on the way to dinner. Jada had always lived in a world I couldn’t quite imagine, and her comment just proved it even more.
Dax had set up a bon voyage gathering for the two teams setting sail the next morning at a restaurant at the top of a skyscraper. Dax had rented the entire place for the evening, but there were only a dozen or so people inside when we got there. The only people I knew were Dax, Dawson, and Jada.
When I walked in, Dawson was talking to some black-haired beauty. He was just going to take a sip of the amber liquid in his glass when his eyes met mine across the room. The glass clunked to the bar top, and he stood from the stool, nearly brushing the woman from her perch.
My heart pounded and danced happily in my chest at his reaction.
He crossed the room to us. With his eyes on me, he kissed Jada on the cheek. “You look gorgeous,” he said to her.
Jada flicked him with her clutch. “I wish I could say the same for you. I need to take you shopping again, I see. Those jeans are so two seasons ago.”
Dawson was in a pair of dark jeans and a button-down. Dress shoes on his feet. He looked and smelled like the center of the world to me. Like everything should revolve around him. The other men may have been in dress pants and shirts with trendy ties, but Dawson looked more at home in what he had on. More the Dawson I’d first met and less the drug dealer he might be.
When Dawson didn’t reply but continued to stare at me, she chuckled and said, “I need another drink.”
That caused his eyes to flick after her, worry scoring his brow before he turned back to me. “How many has she had already?”
“Almost a whole bottle of sake.”
He brushed his hand through his hair. We both watched as Jada leaned across the bar top to talk to the bartender who smiled flirtatiously at her. She smiled back, ignored Dax completely, and then turned to the woman Dawson had been talking with.
Dawson’s eyes returned to me, slowly strolling their way down my bare shoulders to my breasts tied with the bandeau and then to the skirt that clung and swayed simultaneously. When he got to my toes in the metallic sandals I’d borrowed from Jada, I couldn’t stop them from curling up slightly. It felt