Page 68 of Bought and Broken

Her lack of a smile tells me she doesn’t believe it.

“What do you want for dinner?” I ask, knowing food will steer her in another direction.

“What are the options?”

“I honestly don’t know.”

I sit up and pull my phone from my pocket, then browse the local restaurants. Devon moves closer to my side and looks at my phone with me.

“Oh, that looks good,” she says, pointing to a casual waterfront restaurant. The photo shows people in bathing suits, sitting at high top tables with drinks in coconuts. “It’s on the water.” She looks around, staring down the beach. “That way I think.”

I get to my feet and help her up. Taking her hand, we start down the beach in search of it.

We wait about ten minutes to be seated, and each order a drink once we’re at our table. We each order a burger. The food comes quickly, and when we’re done eating, we stay for another drink.

When we’re finished, we walk along the beach, both of us tinged red from the sun. We stop by our hotel and watch the people in the outside pool who are swimming and having a good time. There’s a swim-up bar with seats in the water. They’re all taken. Everyone is laughing and talking. They are genuinely having a great time. The hotel seems to be doing well from what I’ve seen. It’s clean and busy. But it’s really close to a lot of big chain hotels.

I glance at Devon, who is watching the people in the pool with a small smile on her face, which has a pit forming in my stomach. I have no idea why.

“Can we swim before we leave?” she asks, looking up at me.

I put my arm around her waist and kiss her head. It’s warm and smells like the beach. “Anything you want, baby. Anything you want.”

Devon tugs on my arm, pulling me after her. She’s running as fast as she can in the sand, which isn’t all that fast. I can’t take my eyes off her ass that is jiggling in the sexiest fucking way as I move after her. The girl is not a morning person, yet she was up before the sun this morning, dressed in her bathing suit and ready to go.

“Come on, Tate! We’re going to miss it!”

“We can see it from right here,” I say.

“No, it isn’t the same. We have to go down here!”

She keeps pulling me until she finds the spot she’s looking for and drops into the sand. She pats the space beside her.

“Sit.”

I sit down, facing the ocean.

“Why here?” I ask.

“This is where I was when I watched the sunrise with my father and Dane for the first time.”

And she wanted to reminisce on that. Okay, that makes sense. She is a sentimental person. She’ll likely never come here again with them, so I can see why she’d want to be here now. We’re leaving to head home in only a few hours.

“I’ve shared it with them. Now I want to share it with you,” she adds.

Frowning, I turn to her. She’s smiling brightly. That same happy smile that hasn’t left her face since we got here.

Does she mean that?

“Really?”

She nods eagerly. “This place has some of the best memories of Dad and Dane, and you’ve only made it better.”

“I had no idea…”

She faces me. “Dad took us here for our sixteenth. You don’t remember?”

The memory hits me then.

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