“We are just about to begin our descent into Panama City….”

If I hadn’t had so much one-on-one time with heart palpitations when I was younger, I would have thought for sure I’d started having them when the pilot’s voice came over the air.

Because holy crap.

I was here. About to be here. In Panama City. Where Aaron was going to be.

I was a chicken. This was my truth. I wasn’t afraid to admit it. It was me. Ruby Marisol Santos was a certified, grade-A chicken. Not even the good kind of chicken that was grass fed and antibiotic-free because I’d been on antibiotics a few months ago. I was the worst kind of freaking chicken.

The human kind.

I wasn’t prepared for this. It wasn’t every day, or every month, year, or decade that I stepped out of my comfort zone. Flying solo to vacation with people I’d never physically met wasn’t something I did or even thought about doing. I’d been verging on freaking out for the last twelve hours. I’d sweated, chewed most my fingernails down, sweated some more, panted so hard you’d figure I’d run a mile in heels, and had my heart racing so fast I could never tell anyone that knew me, otherwise they would send me to a cardiologist.

Yet here I was. Trying my best to not be what came so naturally to me: a chickenshit.

After spending an entire lifetime trying to tell myself I wasn’t scared of things while also actively avoiding those things that might terrify me, I usually didn’t find myself in situations that had me wondering what in the world I’d been thinking, because I wouldn’t put myself into that position. That just wasn’t what I did, and it shamed me.

But someone I trusted had told me I needed to live my life to the fullest. I wasn’t brave or ballsy like a lot of people who went after the things they wanted all the time. Maybe because there wasn’t a whole lot I wanted, but I wasn’t sure. Quitting my job and coming here were the two bravest things I had ever done in my life, hands down. I’d tried being that resilient, go-getter type person once, and only once, and it had backfired on me like no one’s business. But, I’d watched my little sister fall enough times and watched her get right back up to know that you needed to do that, every single time. You needed to pick yourself right back up, even if you were bruised and hurt and just wanted to lie on the ground and stay there forever because it wasn’t as uncomfortable as you thought it’d be.

Or because you were scared of falling again as you tried to pick yourself back up.

Not that I knew from experience or anything.

Which was why and how I found myself stuck in the middle seat of an airplane, smashed between one stranger trying to hog my armrest and another stranger using my shoulder as a pillow. Not surprisingly, when you try to buy a ticket the day before you want to leave somewhere, you aren’t exactly going to find a nonstop flight at a decent price, much less score a window seat. But I’d been okay with that. All that had mattered was that I was on my way.

Nonstop from Houston to Panama City Beach, Florida.

I still couldn’t believe I was about to touch down, and my family definitely hadn’t been able to believe what I was doing either.

Yesterday, my mom and Jasmine had both taken turns yelling at me.

What is wrong with you? You’re already leaving next week!

Have you lost your fucking mind, Squirt?

“You’ve never done crazy stuff,” my mom had argued, not knowing that those words alone had backfired on her so much. It only egged me on to insist on doing what I wanted to do. And that was go.

“I’m going to” and “No” hadn’t been the right thing to answer back with because that was when they’d started yelling over each other for half an hour, give or take. At that point, I did the exact same thing I had done hours later when the older man sitting beside me in the plane had slumped over midsnore and rested his head on my shoulder: I had let it happen. Except, I had let my little sister and mom yell all the reasons I shouldn’t go.

What if something happens? My little sister had asked, one hand flailing around her face while her other hand held a chocolate chip cookie clutched in it. I didn’t need to answer because my mom had rattled off a dozen things that could happen, including but not limited to me getting kidnapped, sold into slavery, and being used a drug mule.

But I managed to keep my mouth closed and let them keep going and venting and turning red.

Until finally, I said as calmly as possible, loving them so much even though they blew my mind, “I get that you’re worried… but I’m going.”

It had set them off all over again, but after a few minutes, I turned around and walked out on them for the first time in my life instead of breaking down and agreeing that going across the gulf was freaking insane.

It was. I knew it was, but as much as it scared me, their words only made me want to go so much more. Whether it was to prove it to myself, prove it to them, or neither one, I had no clue. All I knew was that I wanted to go, even more because I was nervous.

But mostly because I wanted to meet Aaron, though it scared the heck out of me.

I wanted to meet him so I could get it over with and move on with my life, or so I told myself. I could see him and know that all I felt was friendship. I figured it would be like meeting a celebrity in person and seeing they were human instead of this imaginary, perfect person you had built up in your head.

And when my mom and sister showed up at my bedroom door after I walked out on them to start packing, I stood my ground as they still attempted to talk me out of going.

I wasn’t going to budge. And I hadn’t, despite my stomach hurting and how unnatural it felt to not do whatever was in my power to please them. Because that was what I usually did. That was what came naturally to me.

Somehow, someway, I made it to the flight that Aaron had e-mailed me the details of not even two hours after I’d agreed to go to Florida, before I’d told anyone I lived with. Even leaving on bad terms with my mom, with her husband being the one to drive me to the airport because the two I was related to by blood were too pissed off to want to take me, I hadn’t been able to stop being excited. And scared. Mostly scared. Maybe fifty-fifty.

I was about to land in Florida, a place I’d been to a dozen times before.

To vacation with my pen pal I was a little in love with and his friends.

There was no need to freak out.

According to his last IMs, he and his friends were driving overnight and should have arrived at the beach house they were renting four hours ago. After that, he was driving back to Panama City to pick me up, and then we were going back to the house. I’ll meet you outside Arrivals, he’d messaged me. So we were meeting outside of Arrivals.

Hopefully.

I hoped.

I really hoped.

This tiny part of my brain kept warning me to expect the worst. That maybe he wouldn’t show up. That maybe Aaron Hall didn’t exist. That I should be prepared for him not being there, and if he wasn’t, it wasn’t the end of the world. I could figure something out. I had a credit card. Maybe I didn’t have a lot of money in my bank account, but I had my credit card, and I’d gone to swap my coins for cash the day before and come out with almost two hundred dollars.

I was good. I was good.

That’s exactly what I kept chanting to myself as the plane landed and everyone filed off. I lugged my weekend bag through the airport, so much smaller than the one back home, and stopped at the first bathroom I could find. I used it, but while I was washing my hands, I made the mistake of looking at myself in the mirror.

I was a wreck.

The light brown hair I’d been dyeing since I was fifteen had decided it was done being straight and wanted to resemble something out of a frizzy hair product commercial. The color I usually carried from lack of sleep under the blue eyes I’d inherited from my mom had decided to darken to an almost purple. And my mascara… I almost shuddered. Beauty was on the inside, I knew that, but a little makeup never hurt anyone.

After putting on a little more foundation, blush, and lipstick, and giving my hair a brush with my fingers, which had it looking decent again, I reminded myself that I was here for my friend and not for any other reason. I’d already told him I didn’t look like my mom or Tali. If he was disappointed in my appearance… I could get over it. I really could. I would. It wouldn’t be the first time that happened.

I didn’t even believe that myself, but I needed to.

Friends didn’t care what other friends looked like, unless this was Mean Girls, and it wasn’t. As long as we got along, that was all that mattered. Our friendship had been built on our personalities. Everything could be fine.

Unless he wasn’t outside waiting for me… If that was the case, I wasn’t sure I’d ever recover.

A few minutes later, in baggage claim, my suitcase finally came around the conveyer and I picked it up, straining under the weight of 48.8 pounds of bathing suits and more clothes than I’d realistically need. Wheeling my bag behind me in one hand and clutching my weekend bag over my opposite shoulder, my heart rate started going crazy, so much I let out a deep exhale to try and calm it, but failed. Like usual. A knot formed in my throat anyway.

It wasn’t until that exact moment that I remembered Aaron had never sent me a picture of himself even though he had mentioned it.

It was fine. Totally fine. I knew he was six foot two and that he’d have a hint of a Louisiana accent in his voice. I would figure it out. Two automatic glass doors went wide as I approached them, dumping me directly outside the building and at a curb.

And… there was no one waiting.

At least there as no one waiting there that looked like a twenty-something man who had just spent the last year in Iraq. The only people hanging around were other passengers on my flight and two men dressed in black suits holding signs with names that weren’t Santos on them.

I looked right, I looked left, then I took a deep breath. There was no need to panic.

Maybe he was running late.

Maybe he was at the departure entrance by accident and making his way over right that second.

Maybe…

I looked around again and tried swallowing around the lump in my throat.

Maybe, I could grab one of the taxis parked along the curb. This wasn’t a foreign country with a language I didn’t understand. I had an app on my phone for booking hotel rooms. This wasn’t 1940.

My hand shook as I reached into my purse and pulled out my cell, taking it off airplane mode for the first time. That was how pathetic and nervous I was. I hadn’t even bothered taking it off because I’d been dreading getting a message that said plans had changed and I was on my own. It didn’t even take a minute before the icon that showed I had seventeen unread messages flashed on the display, only slightly making my stomach churn.

But none of them were from the newest number on my phone. Eight were from my mom and the other nine were from Jasmine according to my notifications.

At the sound of the doors behind me opening, I dragged my bag to the side and took another look around, hoping to see a man standing by himself in a corner I hadn’t seen, looking expectant, or maybe holding up a sign with SANTOS or RUBY on it. Or something. Something.

I could wait a little while. He said he’d gotten a crappy phone. Maybe he didn’t have service, or he was still driving and couldn’t reach his phone to let me know he was running behind.

I took a sniff. And I blinked. And then I did both all over again, glancing from side to side, standing on one foot and then the other.

One minute turned to five.

Five minutes turned to ten.

And ten minutes became fifteen.

My eyes started to sting because I hadn’t slept, I assured myself as I checked the time on my phone one more time. They weren’t itchy all of a sudden because I was feeling abandoned and sick to my stomach at the thought Aaron was going to leave me here.

Once, before Jasmine had started kindergarten, when I’d been the only Santos left at that elementary school, my mom had forgotten to pick me up. Four o’clock had come and gone, and she still hadn’t shown up. It wasn’t until closer to five, after I’d been sitting on the front steps for close to two hours that the vice principal had come out and spotted me. She’d known my mom for years thanks to my older brothers and sister basically being demons that didn’t shut up, and after asking me why I hadn’t been picked up yet, she’d tried calling my house and there hadn’t been an answer. So she’d offered to drive me home.

I’d cried on the way, feeling so betrayed that my own mom had forgotten about me. My dad had moved out by that point, and looking back on it now, I understood that that’s why I’d freaked out so hard. Of course my mom had a million other things on her mind and wouldn’t willingly forget to pick me up from school, but it had happened.

She never forgot about it and neither had I from the looks of it.

Now, standing there outside the Panama City Beach airport without a single familiar face to reassure me, that forgotten but familiar feeling settled on my lungs and my heart.

I’d been left behind.

I sniffed. I blinked. I swallowed.

More people came out of the building and more cars pulled up along the curb, but not a single one of them was there for me. Not one single car. Not a soul.

I sniffed, blinked, and swallowed some more. My mouth went dry.

He’d left me here, hadn’t he?

A family of four walked passed me, smiling, laughing and joking as they crossed the street, so happy, so freaking happy.

What had I been thinking? Why hadn’t I stayed home? I was an idiot, wasn’t I?

But why would Aaron buy me a ticket and then not show up to pick me up? Hadn’t I told him I wasn’t sure about coming? It wasn’t like this had been my idea. He’d invited me. I hadn’t invited myself.

Tears prickled my eyes, and I honestly felt like something sharp jabbed me in the stomach.

This is what you get for taking a chance, Rube, my brain egged my heart on.

He wasn’t here. He wasn’t coming. He’d left me.

He’d left me here. He wasn’t coming to get me.

I was so, so, so stupid. I knew better. I freaking knew better.

It wasn’t until something cool slid down my cheek that I realized my eyes hadn’t just started prickling, they’d gone for it all. The breath that came out of me was hiccupped and choked. Strangled.

It isn’t the end of the world, I tried to tell myself even as two more tears streaked down my cheek. Stop. I needed to stop and get it together. I wasn’t going to waste tears over being left. I wasn’t.

I had my credit card.

Plenty of people traveled by themselves.

I had a cell phone.

There had to be a hundred hotels I could stay at close by.

There were worst places to get stranded at. At least there was a beach. It was summer. I had a bathing suit and plenty of sunscreen.

I could do this.

I could—

Two more tears slipped out of my eyeballs, and I heard more than felt myself suck in a choppy breath.

I had to get it together. I couldn’t cry. It was fine. I was fine. It wasn’t a big deal that Aaron hadn’t shown up. I should have known better than to let myself get disappointed. When had I ever had good luck with guys to begin with?

Never. That’s when.

Aaron not showing up… being stranded alone in a city I’d never been with limited money… none of it was the end of the world. I wasn’t going to cry over being ditched. We were friends—had been friends—and he didn’t owe me a thing. It was fine.

I wasn’t going to dwell.

Not me.

I had my credit card, my good health, and plenty of people back home who loved me. This didn’t reflect on me. Aaron letting me down had nothing to do with me. He was the one who had chickened out, not me for once, and that was supposed to be a victory I could celebrate when my organs didn’t feel like they were getting stabbed repeatedly with an ice pick.

He’d left me, but it was going to be okay. It was.

This small part of my brain tried to tell me that maybe something had happened to him. That he wouldn’t have left me here at the airport for no reason. Part of me vouched for the man I’d gotten to know over the last few months, telling me he wouldn’t do something like this…

But the biggest part of me said I was being naive.

Three more tears came out of my eyes, and I wiped at my cheeks with the back of my fingers, fighting the urge to cry more because my body sure wanted to do that. Get it together, Ruby. Figure it out and stop standing here crying in public. You’re better than this. It’s fine.

I was getting a headache.

I had to wipe at my face twice more, and when I looked at my fingers, I found black marks from my runny mascara smeared on them, and it just made me even more upset. It made my head hurt worse, instantly.

All right. I could do this. First thing, I needed a taxi, and I could ask him to drop me off somewhere close to everything. I could find a hotel.

I had just taken a deep breath as a group of six that had been on the same flight as me walked by, when I heard distantly, “Rubes?”

I stopped breathing.

I almost didn’t look up, my vision bleary, but I made myself do it.

Standing not even five feet away, with a torn-out piece of notebook paper in his hands that said RC SANTOS in thick, scribbly red letters, was a man. Not a boy. Not a man-boy. A man I could have looked at all day for the rest of my life. With neat, short, golden blond hair on his head that I noticed first thing, and a deep tan covering every inch of his exposed skin, I stopped breathing. Deep-set eyes, high cheekbones and a mouth that was pretty darn full for any gender, seemed to tie in together to shape a face that was too good-looking.

Way too good-looking.

He looked like a model. If this was him, it was no wonder he’d had so many girlfriends and they’d all been nuts. Nobody gave up this kind of guy without a fight. But it couldn’t be him.

There was no way….

No freaking way.

Was this a joke?

I turned my head to glance over my shoulder, and then turned to look over my other shoulder like there was some other Ruby or person in the world that could go by RC Santos that this man could be asking for. Because the name was common and all that.

But when I faced forward again, the tall, very six-foot-two-ish blond man with the paper that said RC SANTOS on it raised his light-colored eyebrows gradually. I saw his Adam’s apple bob. Gulp. And in the slowest motion possible, hesitant, hesitant, hesitant, one of his hands let go of one side of the sign and both his fists dropped, paper and all. The man blinked, and I took in what seemed like dark brown eyes staring at me beneath that heavily constructed bone structure. I took in the way his lips slightly parted, and the way his whole face went slack as he swallowed again.

Then that mouth, that mouth, seemed to curve up, his smooth shaved cheeks went pink… and I realized he was smiling. At me. Brown eyes lit up as they scanned me from my face down to my gold flats and back up again.

“Ruby?” the man asked in that voice I fully, totally recognized from the one and only conversation we had on the phone in the months we’d known each other.

But I still blinked at him.

This was a joke.

It had to be.

This could’ve been straight out of a movie where I got kidnapped and taken, sold into human trafficking and my family would never see me again unless one of my brothers vowed vengeance and went to search for me. Like that would happen.

But it was the smile on the blond man’s face that seemed to just… click. To say maybe this wasn’t a prank. That I wasn’t imagining this.

“Aaron?” His name out of my mouth sounded as wary as it seemed in my head.

“Yeah,” the man my gut was 99 percent sure was the person I’d spent a year e-mailing, said.

I didn’t miss the way he looked me over one more time, or how his smile wavered. Hesitated. Flickered. Before coming back to life, lips together with only the corners arching upward.

Maybe it had been a bad idea to not send him a picture of myself after so many months.

Was he disappointed? If he’d genuinely thought I’d resemble my sister or my mom, it was his own fault for setting up those expectations. I’d told him I looked like a mix of both my parents. I wasn’t the pretty one in the family or the funny one or the talented one or the outgoing one or the smart one…

I was just Ruby.

Just Ruby. And that had to be enough. I’d come too far for it not to be.

I blinked at those brown eyes staring a hole into me. I swallowed just as hard as he’d swallowed a minute ago. Then I told him before even processing the whispered words coming out of my mouth, “Can I see your ID?”

He blinked, and just as quickly as he blinked, he smiled almost, almost tenderly and nodded. One of his hands went behind his back as his gaze bounced all over me. Something small and brown filled his hand, and he finally moved his gaze to the wallet he held. His hand was steady as he passed me two plastic cards, one was a Kentucky driver’s license and the other was a military ID with the name I knew well: Aaron Tanner Hall.

It was him. Crap on a stick, it was really him. My hands were shaking just a little as I looked at his driver’s license one more time before handing it over, thisishimthisishimthisishim going around and around my head, stealing the power from my lungs as I told him the one thing I hadn’t exactly been planning on admitting as my voice practically shook, “I thought you weren’t coming.”

Aaron—not some faker who had hacked into his account and decided to come kidnap me out of all the other people in the world that he could find—shook his blond head, still frozen in place even though his features seemed to be bouncing back and forth between a smile and an expression that might have been a surprised one or a confused one, but I didn’t know him well enough to be sure.

“I thought—” He cleared his throat, making me drag my eyes toward his bobbing, very tan Adam’s apple. “I was standing over by the lot, waiting. I didn’t know….”

He was disappointed. He was disappointed, wasn’t he?

“You don’t look like I thought you would,” were the words he used to break the silence. His pronunciation was slow, calm. He blinked in the middle of his sentence as his chest went wide with an inhale and just as quickly deflated with an exhale. I stopped breathing as those dark brown eyes of his roamed over my face and down my front all over again. His mouth did that wavering thing again, fluctuating, indecisive before settling into a weak smile as his eyes bounced all over me one last time. His voice was as wary as his smile as he said the five words we’d said to each other so many times over the last few months, a reminder of our friendship, a reminder that he’d invited me to come here. “You know what I mean.”

He was disappointed. That’s what he meant. What was new? I should have known. Should have expected….

I didn’t fight the urge to blink or suck in a breath through my nose that sounded choppy and broken into syllables that it wasn’t capable of. My heart started beating faster, nervous, more nervous than I thought I’d probably ever been before, and that had been really nervous. Tears prickled in my eyes like they had moments ago, but I didn’t let them fall. I wouldn’t. Somehow, someway I managed to clear my own throat and tell him more softly than I would have liked, “I told you I don’t look like my mom or my sister.”

The man I was sure was named Aaron made a sound that resembled a huff, almost like a laugh, but the next six words out of his mouth made me flinch. “No. You don’t look like them.” And then, while I was pinching my lips together again at the brutality of his honesty, telling myself not to cry because he’d done this to himself by thinking I was lying, he really did laugh as he took a step forward, his eyes suddenly so bright and focused, that face of his I’d just been shocked with, lit up. “You hungry?”

He asked it like it was nothing. Like he hadn’t just confirmed something I’d accepted a long time ago but never got that much easier to accept. Like I didn’t have one little tear I desperately wiped at in the corner of my eye.

“What’s wrong?” Aaron asked immediately as his eyebrows knit together, by some miracle making his gorgeous face look even more handsome, even after he’d basically admitted he’d thought I was something or someone else and was trying to process it.

I was such an idiot.

My vision went blurry, and I could sense the anxiety in my sternum and belly. “This feels weird,” I told him honestly, nervous, nervous, nervous. More nervous by the second. By the millisecond. I tried sucking in a breath that wasn’t there.

“Ruby, what’s wrong?” came his concerned question as I looked down at the ground, fisting my hands at my sides.

I swallowed. I told myself to keep it together. Reminded myself that I’d known this was going to happen and that I wasn’t going to be disappointed. So I lied as I wiped at my face again, forcing myself to look at him as I spoke. “I thought you changed your mind and I was deciding what to do…”

Those dark eyes, so at odds with his coloring and hair, widened. There was no hesitation on his face when Aaron took another step forward, a frown growing across his mouth and practically radiating throughout his entire body. “I wasn’t going to change my mind,” he claimed, steadily. His irises bounced back and forth between one of my eyes and the next, the line of his jaw going tight. “Are you all right?”

I sucked in a breath through my nose, shrugging, and gulped, reaching up to rub my palm over my breastbone. I couldn’t be having a panic attack. I couldn’t. But I tried to take another breath and there was nothing there. There was nothing there and my hands had begun sweating at some point and feeling like they were covered with ants, and my heart was beating like crazy and— “I feel like I can’t catch my breath…”

Aaron’s head jerked, and I’d swear his face paled. The four steps he took forward were immediate, leading him to stop directly in front of me before I even realized it. Aaron Hall, who was even more gorgeous than I ever could have imagined, was in front of me and I was freaking the hell out.

I was freaking the hell out.

Because I was frustrated and let down and trying so hard not to be. I wasn’t good at this crap. I should never have come.

When his hand reached for my arm, he didn’t hesitate for a second as his fingers wrapped around the delicate skin on the inside of my elbow, and before I knew what was happening, he was steering me toward a bench I hadn’t seen, one arm going over my shoulders like it was the most natural thing in the world. And the entire time he did that, he said, “You’re fine, Ruby, you’re fine. Breathe, breathe…” over and over again until my butt hit the bench and he was stooping in front of me.

And I was still losing it.

I made a circle over my heart, swallowing, feeling like an idiot but at the same time like not an idiot because this guy who said he was Aaron, and acted like Aaron and sounded like Aaron, was crouching by my knees after making me think I was on my own in a city I’d never been before because he’d changed his mind.

Hands I hadn’t even realized were cupping my knees, gave them a squeeze. “Hold on, okay? I’ll be right back.” Another squeeze. “Right, right back,” he promised me as I sat there. I blinked and felt a third squeeze, and then he was up on his feet and gone, jogging somewhere I wasn’t sure of because I didn’t keep watching him.

I rubbed the skin over my heart, my fingers clammy over the exposed skin above my shirt. My hands weren’t shaking, but it sure felt like the rest of me was. A part of me wanted to decide I’d changed my mind, go back inside the terminal, buy another ticket, go home and pretend this hadn’t happened. I could just tell everyone—

I just barely thought of “everyone” before the word fell like a wet blanket over my entire nervous system.

I couldn’t go back home. No way. My family would never let me live this trip down. They’d think something bad happened or think that I couldn’t handle going somewhere by myself and that would be it. No one would ever let me forget it. Most importantly, I would never, ever do anything that made me squirm ever again. That was the whole purpose of this trip. I wanted to do this. I’d wanted to come. I wanted to be here, and it had nothing to do with them.

I didn’t want to go back.

If I did…

Everything was fine. It was okay. I hadn’t been left. Maybe I wasn’t what he was hoping for, but he was here. Aaron was here.

Aaron who was so good-looking my eyeballs could have started hurting in the three minutes we’d been face to face if I hadn’t been flipping out internally. And it wasn’t a big deal that he didn’t look like what I’d pictured. That if I’d known he looked the way he did, maybe I wouldn’t have been making jokes about his butthole.

And then I wondered why I didn’t have boyfriends. Why I couldn’t get one person to love me like more than a friend. Why I’d given my virginity to some guy I’d thought I would marry one day and all it had done was make him apologize and blush and beg me not to tell my brother because it had been a mistake. I had been a mistake.

Aaron was my friend. I’d always known this, and I’d liked him before I’d seen him. I’d known nothing more would come of this friendship. Mostly though, I knew that none of this had anything to do with Hunter. Aaron was as different from that idiot as one could get.

I saw green Nikes and light brown hair on a pair of male legs first. Aaron’s steps were fast as he jogged slowly over to me before dropping back into a crouch. The next thing I knew, he was shoving a bottle of water at me, one hand going to the spot right above my knee where it met my thigh. He cupped it. Me. Squeezing over the tights I’d put on under my brown skirt in case I got cold on the plane.

“Drink some,” he told me in a low, insistent voice, as he shoved the bottle closer to my chest.

I raised my eyes to meet his. His face was right by mine, maybe six inches away. I hadn’t noticed that I was leaning forward, that my elbows were on the middle of my thighs even as one hand rested between my boobs. Aaron’s face, this face I’d never seen before five minutes ago, was open and worried. That mouth that was almost too full for a man’s mouth was strained, and he looked like… well, he looked like he didn’t think of me as a stranger he’d felt bad for and invited on this trip. He didn’t look let down. Because you couldn’t look at someone you didn’t care for the way he was watching me, eyebrows knitted together, lines at the corners of eyes, and a pursed mouth.

Those eyes of his, which were a warm mahogany color, were on me. “Drink some. Take a deep breath,” he repeated, as his palm came off my thigh and he reached forward with two big palms. I didn’t need to look down to know one set of his fingers was on the lid, the other set suddenly covering mine as he turned and twisted the lid off before nudging it at me again.

All I could do was watch him as I lifted the bottle to my mouth.

It was the most self-conscious drink of my life having Aaron balancing on the tips of his toes in front of me almost eye level. He watched me so closely, with all that golden skin and that amazing bone structure I had rarely seen anywhere other than a high fashion magazine, that I expected to choke on the water and spit it all over him or something stupid like that. I watched him, and he watched me. And I wondered what he was thinking.

Mostly, I thought he’s here.

I smiled at him, anxious and nervous, as I took him in, and he took me in too. He smiled in return, not at all anxious or awkward, just… worried. I knew that look well enough from my own brothers. I could see it for what it was.

This was Aaron. My friend. And something told me I had nothing to worry about. I didn’t need to freak out any longer. I’d known what I was getting into coming here, and I couldn’t let that ruin my weekend. I could make the best out of this. I could be the best female friend he’d ever had. I could be the little sister figure he already looked at me as.

I could, I thought as he put a hand on my shoulder and slid it down the length of my upper arm.

But it would be unbelievably hard.

“You all right?” he whispered. He still had that smile on his face that honestly made my heart start beating a little weird again, but in a way that had nothing to do with a panic attack or palpitations.

I nodded at him, sensing my unease slowly going away as I took him in, this guy who knew more about me than a lot of other people I’d known for years. This guy who brought me water and squeezed my leg when I told him I was on the verge of losing it. This was the man I’d become friends with. The man I’d tried talking myself out of having a crush on and failing, all because of e-mails and messages.

This was Aaron. My friend. The person who had invited me to Florida because he wanted to meet me, and he was smiling at me, looking more worried than he should have.

“You sure? Your heart is okay?” he asked so earnestly I had to stop breathing for a second.

I plucked the bottle cap from his fingers and looked down as I screwed it on. “It’s okay. I was nervous.”

“You’re not anymore?” he asked, and it took everything in me to not glance up as he spoke.

I lifted up a shoulder and let out another breath from my mouth to calm down even more. “No.” My mouth twisted, and that time I couldn’t stop myself from glancing up at him. He was still watching me so closely, I had to glance down for a second before looking up again. “I lied. I am. Just a little.”

That pretty mouth twisted, his eyes going nowhere. “I thought I could watch the doors better if I was on the side of the lot, but this van was blocking right where you were standing,” he explained. His mouth formed a soft smile that my entire body wasn’t sure how to handle. At the same time, he put his hand back on my knee like it had always been there. His voice was slow and still so low only I could hear. “I wasn’t going to leave you.”

There went my heart once more.

He blinked, and it was like he could read my mind. “You really thought I wasn’t coming?”

I shrugged all over again.

“I—” He shook his head, and I finally noticed his hair wasn’t just neat, he’d combed it a little. There might have even been gel in it. It was short but just long enough to be able to be parted. “I don’t know what to say, Rubes.” It was the reluctant smile that crept over his face that was so unexpected, so much like the sun coming out over a cloudy day, I forgot about his hair. If that smile wasn’t enough, he squeezed my knee one more time. “Maybe we should text for a minute first. Break the ice.”

It was me who laughed, all awkward and choppy and still sounding like there were tears hanging around the back of my throat. “Maybe.” I laughed again, and that time it was watery and a bit broken, and luckily I hadn’t tried to act like I was tough because he’d know right then that I’d been on the verge of crying because I thought he wasn’t coming.

That handsome, model-like, slightly sun-weathered face flashed me a grin before tipping toward the bottle of water I was holding between my hands. “Take another drink.”

I undid the cap and took another drink. He was still watching me. Why was he watching me so much?

That pink mouth went tight as his eyes scanned over my face with a slowness that made me want to fidget and ask him to stop. “Why didn’t you saying anything?” he asked, still being so quiet.

Dragging the rim of the bottle from my mouth down to my chin and leaving it there, suspended in the air, I blinked, taking him in one more time and eating up the lines of his bones and the clear skin of his face and thinking he was the most beautiful man I’d ever seen. Of course he was. “I’ve told you everything.” Did he have a dimple too or was I imagining it? “I promise,” I assured him, trying to think of what I could have deliberately missed.

Aaron’s golden eyebrows rose just a little, just a little, that smirk-ish smile still playing at the corners of his mouth. “Almost everything.”

I lowered the bottle to my lap and frowned. “What do you think I didn’t tell you?”

Those brown eyes swept over my face, and he squeezed my knees again before planting his feet flat. He started straightening, his face pausing while he was still eye level with me when he said way too evenly, “You could’ve told me your mom and sister are the ugly ones in the family.”

I didn’t even get a chance to throw my head back before I laughed, laughed like I hadn’t just been on the verge of crying and then on the edge of having a panic attack. I just laughed my butt off. Loud and dorky and big.

When I managed to open an eye to see what he was doing, and what that was, was him crouched all over again in front of me like he’d been, with his cheeks and neck colored.

He was blushing.

And that only made me blush.

Leaning forward, his words and his pink cheeks and his smile with a dent in it still fresh on my mind, I asked him, still practically whispering, “Are you drunk again?”

That dimple that was for sure a dimple went even deeper and his smile went full-powered on my heart, almost knocking the wind and every thought out of me when he snickered.

“Are you going to hug me or are you just going to stand there?” I asked him.

I had no idea right then that, for as long as my soul resided in my body and I could reminisce on the best parts of my life, I’d remember how Aaron Hall leaned forward and wrapped those long, tan arms around my back and pulled me into his chest. Me who was still on the bench. The way he hugged the hell out of me would be something that sickness and death could never take away. And in the time it took me to suck in a breath, I put my own arms around him. I’d hugged dozens of men before. Dozens and dozens, hundreds of times. And Aaron’s upper body was just as wide and solid in front of mine like the best of them.

But better. So much better. Because his hug was the greatest. He smelled like a hint of cologne with cedar in it. And I would remember it forever.

My friend had come. This man whose beauty had nothing to do with what was on the outside. I only tightened my arms around him and felt him do the same thing to me. He hugged me and kept on hugging me, one hand going to the back of my head and sliding its way back down again. Affection. That was exactly what he was giving me, and I drank every sip of it up.

When he pulled back after a few moments, those tan hands went to my shoulders and stayed there. His face couldn’t have been more than a foot away as he asked one more time with that expression that I couldn’t properly process, “You didn’t say. Are you hungry?”

I couldn’t help but do anything other than nod, taking in his features and filing them away for later. Who would have known?

Aaron smiled again as he reached out to take the handle of my suitcase from where it was propped against the wall. Who or when it had been moved, I had no idea, but later on, when I could think about it, I’d be happy no one had stolen it while I’d been having a mini-meltdown. “Let’s go. I was waiting to eat in case you were hungry too.”

I nodded and watched as he pulled my suitcase to his side, then tipped his head across the street toward the giant parking lot. Without another word, I followed just to the right of him, the suitcase on his left, finally taking him in fully. In a V-neck, olive green T-shirt that fit the width of his shoulders perfectly, brown cargo shorts that showed off tan, muscular calves, and running shoes, he looked so… normal.

But better.

Aaron must have sensed being eyeballed because he glanced over his shoulder and raised those sun-lightened eyebrows. “Do I have something on my face?”

I could feel my cheeks get red; that’s how bad it was getting caught. “No. It’s just… weird to see you in person.” I hesitated for a second and told him the truth, because I’d promised not to lie, and something in my gut said if he’d known when I was full of crap online, he could tell the same thing in person. “You’re just… not as hard on the eyes as I thought you were going to be.”

His mouth did that hesitating grin again that fluctuated between a grin and a controlled smile before he winked.

He winked. At me.

Then he said the most perfect words that could have come out of his mouth. “If it makes you feel better, we can talk about my….” He waved the hand closest to me behind his butt. A butt I’d have to totally catalogue later when it wasn’t so obvious.

I pressed my lips together and tried not to smile.

And I totally failed at it.