“What?”
“Six o’clock. Tattooed rocker, goes by the name of Conner Burke, staring at you.”
Thump. My heart pounds almost painfully, and it takes everything I have to turn around. Because as much as I could stare at him all day, I don’t want to.
I don’t want to look at him and remember lying on the beach. I don’t want my mind to be flooded by memories of late nights in the woods. I don’t want to remember my dad smiling knowingly the next morning but never wringing my ass out. I don’t want to remember Conner’s touch or his kiss or his smile or fucking anything about him.
Yet I turn, because his gaze is anything but avoidable. It’s compelling, pleading, conflicted, like he wants to drink me up but push me away at the same time.
I swallow, running my eyes up his body. I can’t help but notice the way his jeans hug his hips or the way his T-shirt clings to his chest and arms or the way a few teenage girls are standing feet behind him giggling into their hands.
His gaze travels from me to the only child in the park—mine. Ours. I watch as he stares at her hair, then her eyes and her excited smile. How he winces when she giggles, clapping her hands together.
His eyes find me, questions swirling, accusation whirling, but it’s the pain that swallows those things. His bright eyes are almost dark with his anger, and I know it.
And I don’t do a damn thing to soothe it. I don’t move. I don’t speak. I barely even blink as his eyes bore into mine intensely.
Because I deserve it. And so does he. He deserves to be angry with me. He has every right in the damn world to hate me with everything he has. He should hate me. I’ll let him feel it all.
I want him to feel that hate. I want him to wish he’d never met me or that I’d never come back. Because that’s real and that’s honest and that’s nothing less than I deserve.
I deserve to watch the man I love hate me.
End of story.
He rips his eyes from mine, finally. He turns and walks away, and my heart clenches a little with every step he takes. Each one induces guilt, regret, a bone-deep ache.
Not only for him, but for Mila, too. For the life I’ve denied them both.
For the life I believed was best.
I turn back to the playground and clench my fists as I wrap my arms around myself. For the life I believed was best. I did what I thought was right, and that’s what matters.
I have no doubt it seems wrong to many people.
But I looked at a situation, I made a judgment, and I followed it through.
I have to hold on to that thought, because it’s all I’ve got.
Tick, tock.
Unruly brown hair, like mine.
Tick, tock.
Blue eyes, like Sofie’s.
Tick, tock.
Tick, tock.
Tick . . . fucking . . . tock.
I grab the neck of the beer bottle and drink from it, finishing it. Even the sound of the waves crashing against the beach can’t settle me tonight. They can’t calm the hell that is my mind since I saw Sofie’s kid at the park.
They just crash in time with each tick of that stupid fucking clock in the dining room.
Over and over, the image fills my mind. I’m sure it’s burning itself into my memory. A little girl, barely two foot, doing her best to climb up the slide. Every time, she gets halfway, then slides down on her tummy.
I don’t know how long I stood there and watched before Sofie noticed me. I couldn’t tell you how many times my eyes flicked from the back of her blonde head to the tiny dark one.
But every time hurt like a fucking bitch.
No—the not knowing hurt. Not knowing why the hell Sofie abandoned me the way she did without so much as a goddamn text.
I twirl the beer bottle between my fingers. Two nights before she disappeared, she finally told me she loved me. She said it out of the blue while we were lying on the beach, watching the sun disappear below the horizon.
I remember it so fucking clearly. The softness of her voice as she said, “I love you, Con.” The tightness in how she gripped me, the harshness of how she kissed me.
Did she know then? When she was lying next to me, telling me the words I wanted to hear, did she know she was going to leave?
I walk into my kitchen, exchange the empty bottle for a full one, and pop the cap.
“You know you can breathe between beers, don’t you?” Tate pushes me.
I meet Tate’s eyes. “Fuck off.”
I walk back out onto the deck and drop back into the seat. Resting my feet on the fencing that surrounds the deck, I tip the beer bottle up.
“Missin’ Sofie?”
“I said fuck off, Tate.”
“She’s hot now, apparently.”
She was always fucking gorgeous. “Yeah, where’d you hear that? From your latest whore?”
“From Nina.” He grins.
“From your latest whore, then.”
“She’s good, Con. Shoulda done her when y’all had the chance.” He swipes the bottle from me and swigs. “You know Sofie’s got a kid now?”
My lips thin and I nod, grabbing the bottle. “Saw her earlier.”
“The kid or Sofie?”
“Both.”
“Yeah. Whose is it?”
“Do I look like I fucking know anything about Sofie’s private life?” I turn to him and glare.
Tate holds up his hands and leans against the wall. “Wondered if she’d told Leila, that’s all. Lei tells you everything.”
“Nothin’,” I confirm. “Not even Leila. Refuses, apparently.” I swig from the bottle, my head getting fuzzy. “I wish I knew.”
“Why don’t you ask her, you fucking idiot? Would it kill you?”
I snort. “She’s not mine, Tate. She’s probably some dick’s Sof met in wherever the hell she went, and I still won’t know why she disappeared on my ass.”
He smacks the back of my head. I frown at him.
“Jesus, Con. You’re a pussy! Go to her house and just fuckin’ ask her.”
“What, you think I need to turn up like this and demand she tell me abso-fucking-lutely everythin’, huh? Like she owes me?”
“She does!” Tate roars. “She owes you a goddamn explanation for why she disappeared on you, then turned back up with a kid like it’s a fuckin’ vacation! You deserve to know. Stop being such a little bitch, get over there, and ask her!”
I drink the beer, his words surrounding me. They make total sense. I have every right to know, even if it’s a truth I don’t want to hear. But instead of agreeing with my big brother, the words that leave my mouth are, “Fuck off, Tate.”