Page 99 of Torn In Two

She laughed, leaning over to rummage through the bag with me. “I can see that. I’m not fussy. It all looks good to me.” She picked up some crackers and opened a container of hummus. She munched on a few while we watched Hayley Jade, the crash of the waves the only sound between us.

It drew out so long I had to fill it. “I’m so sorry—”

“I want to—” she started at the same time.

Both of us stopped and looked at the other. She scrunched her face up adorably and squeezed her eyes closed. “Wait. Please. Let me say what I need to say because I don’t know if I’ll have the guts to say it if I wait any longer. I’m really sorry about last night. I was drinking, and I forgot my place. The whole thing was so incredibly inappropriate of me, and I hope you can forgive me.”

I blinked. “You’re apologizing to me?”

She widened her eyes. “Of course. What I did…watching you like that when you were…” She covered her face with her hands. “This is officially more mortifying than I even imagined. I swear, I’m not normally like that.”

“Like what?”

The question was out before I even really thought about what I was asking.

She peeled two fingers away from her face and stared at me from between them. “I don’t normally go to clubs and watch people I know have sex.” She covered her face up again. “Please don’t fire me from the clinic.”

I pulled her hands away. “Kara, you did nothing wrong. I was the one who was…well… you know…naked.”

Kara’s face flushed red. “You had every right to be. I mean…that’s what people do there, right? I shouldn’t have…I knew you were in there. I shouldn’t have followed.”

I paused. “Wait, you followed me?”

She shook her head quickly. “I mean, no! Not followed. Not…exactly. I…we…” She let out a long sigh. “Hawk is probably going to tell you anyway, because he has the biggest mouth known to man. This is so awkward I could die.”

“Tell me what?”

She glanced at me. “He thought you went in there last night because you were thinking about me. I told him how ridiculous that was—”

She was so pink with embarrassment. So beautiful. Her gaze was locked with mine, and she was giving me an opening, a chance to say exactly how I felt about her.

I had to take it. “What if I did?”

The wind picked up tendrils of her hair, blowing them around her face. Her voice dropped an octave. “What do you mean?”

Nerves rolled through me, like I was a sixteen-year-old boy asking a girl to prom, desperately unsure of what her answer was going to be but so sure of only one thing: I had to shoot my shot. That I had to ask. I had to hope there was a chance she might feel the same way. “What if I went into that party last night, because the sight of you and Hawk together had me so damn jealous I couldn’t breathe? What if I went in there hoping to fuck away the desire I felt every time your leg brushed mine beneath the table. What if I was thinking about you the entire time I was inside her…”

Silence settled between us. Then horror. All mine.

I’d just made this so much worse. “Fuck.”

Kara stared at me, shock written all over her face. “Hayley Jade!” she called distractedly. “Not too close to the water!”

I realized instantly how wrong I’d been. How out of line. How everything she’d said hadn’t been an opening for me to word vomit about how much I wanted her.

I hated this fucking beach. Nothing good ever happened here. The same crushing feeling I got every time I saw those waves rolling in intensified until my lungs ached. “I’m sorry. This is so inappropriate.” I looked away, up toward my car. I couldn’t even fucking leave. I’d brought her here, she needed a way to get home. I just wanted the earth to swallow me whole.

“Grayson…”

I held up a hand. “No. Honestly. No need to say anything. I get it. You have Hawk. And Hayden.”

“Grayson.”

“Just please forget I said anything. I misread the entire situation, and I honestly just want to go throw myself off the bluff. The thought of sharp rocks spearing through the chest, or a shark chowing down on my insides while the waves drown me, actually doesn’t seem so bad right about now. Maybe a speedboat could come by and just chop me up with its propellers for good measure—”

“I came last night, watching you with her.”

If I’d been able to place a million bets on words that would come out of her mouth, none of them would have been those.

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