speaking about anything important. I don’t want to be the person who cries in your lap anymore.”
“I’ll always be there if you need to cry in my lap,” he whispered, and I swallowed hard, tears pricking the backs of my eyes.
“I know that. I totally do. And it should scare me, but it doesn’t. All I know is that I don’t want to lose this friendship. Maybe we should just see what it feels like when we get home.”
He nodded and swallowed hard. “That sounds like a plan. We’ll get home, unpack, let everybody know about our vacation so there’s no secrets—because God forbid we have any more of those—and then we’ll decide what we want and what to do.”
“Maybe the whole vacation haze made things a little easier.”
“There’s nothing easy about what we did last night,” he drolled, and I laughed.
“True. Although some things were a little easier than I thought they would be,” I said with a wink, trying to defuse the situation.
Anxiety filled me, and I wanted to shake, wanted to do something. Still, I tried to smile. Tried to pretend like I wasn’t freaking out inside.
“Okay, so we go to the airport. We go home. And then we regroup.”
“So this might be the last time I ever see you naked?” I said with a tease, wincing.
“I sure as fuck hope not,” he growled and then kissed me again.
The sheet fell, and I groaned. And then Beckett was over me, hovering. His cock was hard, pressed against my belly. I wrapped myself around him.
When my phone rang, he pulled away, both of our chests heaving as we stopped to catch our breath.
“I sure as hell hope not,” I repeated his words. I reached over and looked at the phone. “It’s Annabelle.”
“You should answer. I should get back to my room and pack.”
Something twisted inside me. Why did this feel like an ending? Though perhaps it should be. “We’re on different flights home,” I reminded him.
“We can still go to the airport together.”
And then we’d figure things out.
He left after I watched him dress. I waited to call Annabelle back.
Instead, I quickly texted her that I called her right back, checked into my flight, and swallowed hard again.
Had I made a mistake? I didn’t want to lose my friend. Something had happened last night. Something more than the sex. I wasn’t the same person I was when I started this trip.
I wasn’t even the same person I had been when I woke up. Change sure happened fast when you weren’t expecting it. I looked down at my phone. I knew I needed to pack, but I let the tears fall instead. I wasn’t upset. This emotion wasn’t for what’d happened the night before.
It wasn’t about Beckett at all. It was about me. Because things had changed. And somehow, I needed to catch up. I would.
I needed to breathe. And then I would find out who I needed to be. And if this was a moment in time that would never be repeated, I would have to be okay with that. I would have to hope that I hadn’t lied to Beckett.
About this not being a mistake. Because I had enough of those waiting for me at home. Enough choices to make.
I didn’t know if Beckett Montgomery needed to be one of them.
Chapter 16
Beckett
Eliza: Thank you for letting me know you made it home.
Me: Always. Will I see you soon?
I didn’t know why I even asked. Of course, we would see each other soon. We always did. We had a weekly Thursday night group event at Riggs’. That didn’t mean I could see her in any other capacity, though. What was wrong with me? Why couldn’t I focus?
That had been the problem with everything before I even left on that so-called vacation. And now here I was, acting as if I were outside of my body again, watching, unable to make a decision. I was lost. All I wanted was for Eliza to ask me more. And that didn’t make any sense. We were friends. She was a friend that I couldn’t stop thinking about—in ways that I shouldn’t.
There were too many obstacles between us. Marshall. What Marshall had done. Our families. Our friends. All of it. I had dinner plans with my brothers later tonight, and they would be welcoming me home before I had to go into work the next day. I knew they wanted to check on me since everybody knew what had happened. And I