Just when a guy thought he might finally have a shot at the girl, she looked him point-blank in the eyes and told him she never had and never would want him. She wanted his brother. The same guy who was too busy getting a piece of ass to show up for his own damn wedding day.
Talk about a reality check. For a few minutes there when we’d been talking, I’d almost thought . . . I’d been foolish enough to hope . . . goddammit. I couldn’t keep doing this to myself. Cora Matthews was my weakness. My addiction. Everything I wanted and everything I had to let go of.
I’d known that for years, but I hadn’t accepted it until today. When I saw how broken she’d ended up as a result of what I’d done. When I realized how broken I was because of watching her fall in love with my brother.
I had to let her go. It wasn’t a choice anymore, it was a requirement. Before we fucked up each other’s lives any more than we already had.
Another call from Jacob popped up on my screen. If he wasn’t already en route, he was about to be. It would be better to take his call now than wait until we were within arm’s reach of each other and took out our emotions on each other’s faces via our fists.
Cora had left a few minutes ago, having nothing else to say. She didn’t want me—she wanted him. What else was there?
I didn’t say anything when I finally answered his call.
I heard my brother suck in a breath. “Did you fuck her?”
My hand curled around the phone. He’d missed the wedding. He’d missed the whole entire day because he’d been screwing some girl he’d met in a bar. And me having sex with Cora was the first thing on his mind?
“You fucked her over enough all on your own.” I didn’t recognize my voice.
From the moment of silence on the other end, I guessed my brother didn’t either. “You know what I mean, Matt.”
Yeah, I did. And I wasn’t going to tell him. Not until Cora made up her mind. If she wanted to tell him what had happened between us last night, I’d support that. If she didn’t, I’d support that too. This wasn’t about what I wanted to tell Jacob or what he wanted to know; this was about what Cora needed.
“Where were you?” I asked, rising from the crouched position I’d been in ever since she left. I couldn’t kneel while having this conversation with my brother.
“None of your damn business where I was,” he fired back. “Who the hell are you to think you could just slide into my spot when I wasn’t looking?”
“It wasn’t that you weren’t looking. You were fucking some tramp when you should have been exchanging vows with your fiancée.”
There was only the briefest beat of silence. “You don’t know what I was doing. You don’t know what happened.”
“Yes, I do. Because you’re you, and I’m me.” My jaw locked when I pictured Jacob with someone else on Cora’s and his wedding day. “Don’t try to lie to me. I’m not like her, happy to overlook your faults.”
“No, you’re just happy to make your play for my girl when you saw the chance. You’ve been trying for years. You must have shit yourself when you saw your chance had finally arrived.” From the sound of his voice, Jacob was drunk.
Trying to have a logical conversation with an illogical Jacob was a doomed endeavor.
“Do me a favor and call me back when you’re sober. We can talk then.” My thumb was hovering above the end button when Jacob laughed.
“I’ll do you one better by showing up and talking to your face in a few hours. How about that?” Jacob let me process that for a few moments. “My plane’s landing in St. Thomas at 3:25, so I’ll see you soon. We can ‘talk’ this whole thing out. Oh, do me a favor and let Cora know, would you? For some reason, she doesn’t seem to be answering her phone.” The tone in Jacob’s voice suggested exactly why she might not have been eager to answer his call.
I started heading back toward the cabin, needing to find Cora. If Jacob was going to be here in mere hours, I needed to find out what her plan was. I needed her to tell me what she wanted to admit to Jacob, if anything. As it was, he already knew I’d posed as him for the wedding and reception, and he suspected that I’d kept with the theme into the wedding night.
“Good, I think we could all benefit from a ‘talk.’ Cora has a few questions as to where her fiancé was yesterday when he was supposed to be at his wedding.” I gave him a moment to process that. “I have my suspicions, and so does she, but it will be nice to have it all cleared up once you get here.”
“Matt—”
“Oh, and those Ass Clowns you call friends might have let a few things slip about your whereabouts when we were chatting at the reception when, you know, they thought I was you.” I jogged down the beach, my emotions fueling my body.
“Matt—”
“Save it for later. When you have to look me in the eye and try to lie to me. When you have to look her in the eye and try to lie to her.” It probably wouldn’t make much of a difference to Jacob, because he’d been lying to Cora’s face for years now. From small white lies to the grand-scale version such as where he was on their wedding day.
He might have been about to say something else, but I hung up. That phone conversation wasn’t going anywhere—he had a reason to be pissed with me, and I had a reason to be pissed at him. No matter what we worked out on the phone, we’d have to work it out all over again when we came face-to-face. That was Jacob’s and my way.
As soon as the cabin came into view, I knew she wasn’t there. Whether it was that sixth sense or intuition, I knew I wouldn’t find Cora inside. It didn’t stop me from loping inside and checking though.
Housekeeping was there, trying to untangle the cyclone of sheets and blankets from last night. I didn’t miss that Cora’s purse and bags were missing. Even her clothes that had wound up scattered on the floor last night had been picked up and removed. It was like she’d vanished. Like she’d never even been here. With housekeeping making the bed and righting lamps that had tumbled over and cleaning bathroom mirrors that had been streaked with handprints, it was as though I’d made up all of last night.
God knew I’d pictured plenty of last nights in my head.
“The young woman? Did you see her?” I asked the two ladies cleaning the cabin.
They both avoided making eye contact, like they were afraid to answer me.
Finally, the one still wrestling with the sheets nodded. “She was here to get her bags.”
I was pacing in circles, feeling like the whole world was going mad with myself leading the charge. “Did she mention where she was going?” I guessed the airport, either to meet Jacob when he arrived later or to catch her own plane out of here.
The woman focused extra intently on smoothing the sheet over the pillows.
“Please?” I added, not above getting on my knees and begging the woman if she had any idea where Cora had run off to. “I need to find her.”
When she took a look at my face, she sighed. I must have looked really desperate. Good to know my expression matched the way I felt.
“The main hotel, sir,” the woman answered. “She said she was checking into a room in the hotel.”
At the same time I exhaled with relief, my heart kind of seized. She hadn’t rushed to the airport as I’d expected, but she’d rushed to get out of this cabin and away from me. For her, last night had been a mistake, probably a moment she’d look back on and regret forever. But for me—pathetic, stupid me—last night had been the highlight of my existence, in this life and any and every other.
“Thank you,” I said, fishing a couple of bills out of my wallet to leave as a tip before hurrying out the door.
She might not have wanted to see me, but too bad. She couldn’t hide from this—she couldn’t hide from me. What happened happened, and she could hate me to her dying breath if it made things easier for her, but I needed to know how she wanted to deal with Jacob. I needed to know what she was going to tell him so I knew what to expect. So I knew if the moment I saw him, I should start running because a moving target was harder to hit, or if I just needed to play it cool as the dutiful brother who’d stepped in to save the day and was stepping down now that the golden brother was back.
The path back to the hotel was a long one, but it didn’t take more than a few minutes with the way I was running. My journey took me past the beach, and something caught my eye. I broke to a stop the moment I saw her. Tropical storm approaching or not, the beach was crowded with people. There was a little tiki bar toward the back, where people in brightly colored swimsuits were sipping brightly colored drinks. A few lines of lounge chairs accompanied striped umbrellas, and the thin swath of empty beach left over was fair game for people to sprawl out with their beach towels and toys.
In the middle of it all was Cora, in her basic white bikini, looking anything but ordinary. She was standing ankle-deep in the turquoise water, staring at the horizon like it was coming to get her. Dangling from one hand was a snorkel and in her other, a pair of fins. The water was calm and still, the storm having no effect on it yet, but she still surveyed the water like it was capable of growing fangs and coming for her.
Cora had never been particularly fond of the water. That had a lot to do with her learning to swim late in life. It seemed strange to me that, of all the things she could be doing right now, she was here, mustering up her courage as she took a few more steps into the water.
I had no idea if she’d already checked into a new room or why she was hanging at the beach when Jacob was hours away from descending on us both, but I didn’t care. She was here. That was enough for me.
As I cut through the circus of beach towels and chairs, I couldn’t help the smile I felt tugging at my mouth. She was trying to be so brave—I could tell from the way she was working her lip and almost looking as if she was staring down the ocean in front of her, like it was her nemesis. I also might have been smiling due to the way she looked in that bikini. Cora had a woman’s body, curves instead of hard edges, and was more soft than she was firm. I loved that about her. I loved that she didn’t feel the need to cover or disguise or diet her way down to fit into the size two clothes Jacob frequently bought her as a not-so-subtle hint.
Seeing her standing there in nothing more than a couple of scraps of fabric made my body ache as I remembered the way she’d felt against me. The way her skin felt sliding across my palm. The way her chest felt spilling against mine as I moved inside her. The way her lips felt moving down my throat.
And, great. Nothing like sporting a hard-on at a beach packed with people. Thankfully, no one seemed to be paying any special attention to the one person in pants and a button-down shirt instead of swimwear. I didn’t miss the way plenty of people were noticing her though. I also didn’t miss the way I wanted to crush their skulls from the looks they were giving her.
Shit. Talk about possessive. With a side of sick and twisted violent inclinations.
“Having one of those deep conversations with the Atlantic?”
She didn’t flinch when she heard me behind her. She didn’t even look surprised to see me there. “Less of a conversation and more of me trying to convince it I’m not terrified.”
“How’s that working out?”
Cora lifted the hand clutching a snorkel. It was trembling. “Not so great.”
“Then why are you doing it?” I stepped into the water beside her after kicking off my shoes, not bothering to take the time to roll my pants up.
“Because I’m tired of being scared. I’m tired of feeling like I’m living my life based on fear, instead of standing from a point of strength.” She sounded tired. She even looked tired. Neither of us had gotten much sleep last night, but this was a different kind of exhaustion. The kind that had been building for what looked like years.
“I heard you checked yourself into the hotel?” I matched her step when she journeyed farther into the water.
She nodded but didn’t offer any kind of explanation. Not that she needed to. I knew why she had.
“Jacob’s going to be here this afternoon. His flight arrives at 3:20.” I watched her for a sign of any reaction, but all she did was acknowledge me with another nod, her eyes still focused on the vast body of water in front of us. “I need to know what you’re planning on telling him. I’m behind you, whatever you decide, but I need to know because if he finds me first, I need to make sure our stories align.” When her silence stretched on, I wound my hand around her wrist and angled myself slightly in front of her. “What do you want?”
Her eyes drifted to mine, the look in them making my throat tighten. She looked as lost as I’d ever seen a person, maybe even more lost than I felt at the present moment. Her throat moved when she swallowed. “I don’t know, Matt. I don’t know.”
Her eyes looked like they were about to fill with tears, so I did what came naturally and wound my arms around her and tucked her close to me. She came into my embrace like it was exactly what she’d been waiting for, her head falling against my chest. Her back quaked a few times from what I guessed were stifled sobs, and we stood there just like that for a few minutes.
“It’s going to be okay. I promise,” I whispered, because it would be okay. I’d make sure it would be, even if I had to tell a million lies and sell my soul to keep that vow.
She nodded against my chest, almost like she believed me, but she didn’t hurry to lean back or pull away. She seemed perfectly content to stay folded in my arms, standing knee-deep in the still ocean. I didn’t realize it at first, but her body had stopped trembling in fear.
“What are you really doing?” I said.
“Trying to snorkel. Or at least working up the courage to try to snorkel.”
“But you’re scared of the water.”
“And I’m tired of being scared of it. I told myself I was going to snorkel on my honeymoon, and I’m going to snorkel. I’ve always wanted to, and people do it everyday and live to tell the tale.” She sniffed and leaned back, a brave expression plastered on her face.
“Plus, you’re a strong swimmer. When you actually get in the water to swim.”
The heaviness started to drain from her eyes. “Well, I did learn from the best.”
I shrugged. “The very best.”
She laughed, which made me wonder if she was thinking of the same memory I was. The first time I’d taken her to the country club pool when she was thirteen so I could give her her first swim lesson. I’d been on the swim team for years, so I thought I could teach her a thing or two. Except I forgot to account for how I felt whenever Cora was in a swimsuit. Especially when we were both in the water and I was trying to teach her how to back float, which meant touching, which meant my brain pretty much went into power-down mode.
“You told me it would only take a few lessons to teach me how to swim,” she said, still laughing. “And it took a whole year of weekly lessons before I could finally make it a full lap without stopping.”
I rubbed at the back of my head. “Practice makes perfect, right?”
“I don’t know about perfect, but I’ve definitely had plenty of practice.” She backed out of the water so she could sit on the sand and put on her fins. I guessed she was ready. “I can’t believe you actually took the time once every week until we graduated to get in the water with me so I ‘wouldn’t forget what I’d learned.’”
I shifted so I was blocking the sun from her face. “I might have had ulterior motives for our weekly swim.”
Her eyebrow lifted. “Pissing Jacob off?”
I shook my head, although those swim lessons had definitely pissed him off plenty.
She caught me staring at her and adjusted her top. “So you could see me in my swimsuit?”
I shook my head again, but I definitely hadn’t minded seeing her in her swimsuit every week. I’d had to beat her into the water every time to try to disguise my “reaction” to seeing her in her swimsuit. And ten years later, same damn story, I thought as I slid my hand into my pocket.
“Because you were a good guy?” she said next.
Another head shake, because I wasn’t a good guy. I was a far cry from that. “Because I wanted to be with you.”
My answer took her a second to absorb. “In a chilly pool that you had to remind me how to do egg-beaters in every single week?”
I moved closer so my feet were between hers. “In the depths of hell roasting on a spit if it meant getting to be close to you.”
Her chest stopped lifting with her breath, like I’d taken her by surprise. Which didn’t make sense to me. Didn’t she get it? Didn’t she understand? Had I not been clear in my feelings for her?
Her breath returned, this time making her chest move extra fast. She was looking around like she was hoping for a distraction. “Will you go with me?”
“Yes,” I answered, not knowing where or to do what, just knowing my answer was always yes where Cora was concerned.
Her shoulders seemed to sag with relief. “You can check out a mask and fins over there.” She pointed at a bright white shed tucked back on the edge of the beach.
My fingers pinched the material of my slacks. “I don’t have a swimsuit. I’ll have to go back to the cabin first.”
Her head shook as she scanned the beach. “I need to go now or else I’ll chicken out.” Her eyes widened on something before she pointed down the beach again. “There. You can just buy one and change into it.”
My gaze followed the direction she was pointing in, and my mouth fell into a frown. A vendor was carrying what looked like an umbrella lined with an endless supply of bright colors and wild prints. “Those are women’s swimsuits.”
From the corner of my eyes, I noticed her shake her head. “They’re men’s swimsuits.” She was already waving over the vendor. “European-cut men’s swimsuits.”
“Banana hammocks.” My hand thrust in the direction of the “swimwear” swishing toward us. “You’re suggesting I put on a banana hammock and strut around on a beach filled with children and old women?”
The vendor was already lowering the curtain hanging around his mobile umbrella shop. The privacy seemed kind of ironic, since I’d be emerging from said changing room dressed in a swimsuit that was basically Lycra dental floss.
Cora shrugged like the answer was obvious.
“Why do you think I’m going to do this?”
She smiled at me, her light eyes finding mine. “Because you get to be with me?”