Page 72 of Beached Wedding

The hotel phone was on the table beside me. I jabbed for the operator and asked for Felix Wiley’s room.

“G’day,” he said after the second ring.

“Can I come talk to you?” I realized my voice was quavering and that I didn’t even know what I wanted to talk to him about, only that I needed to see him.

“Sure. I was going to text, ask if you want to meet for breakfast. Are you okay? Shit. What’s happened now?”

“Nothing. I don’t know. Can I come to your room?” I was already kicking into my flip-flops.

“Sure. Two-forty-two.” His voice rang with confusion.

I dropped the phone on the sofa and stayed in the robe, barely remembering to shove my keycard into the pocket before I hurried down the hall to the elevator.

FOX

Idropped the cordless phone back onto its charger. I had just hung my wet togs and pulled on a dry pair of boardies. I’d been trying to work out how to smooth things over with Ash, thinking if she was up and willing to wave at me, she might be willing to join me for breakfast.

Yesterday had been every type of hell, seeing her happy when we were flying, touching her... In so many ways we were ideal for one another. Separate but the same.

But so wrong in other ways. Our fight in the car had grated on me for hours.

I had used Fliss a little, taking her surfing. She was fun and keeping an eye on her as she fell again and again had distracted me, but she also fed that part of me that would take any scrap of Ashley. Her laugh was so like her aunt’s, it was like a voicemail I obsessively listened to, trying to store it for future. And Fliss had revealed odd tidbits and minutia of their lives in Pine Grove. Learning there was a shop near Joanna’s place where she and Ash loaded up on penny candy before going to the movies made no real difference to my life, but I ate it up all the same.

I’d felt Ash’s absence all the more for only hearing about her, not seeing her. It had physically hurt me to pack my things intoShane’s duffel and drag my ass down to my own room. It was small by comparison. Claustrophobic. But what did it matter how I felt? I kept hurting her and I deserved to suffer for it.

I’d been worried about her, too, even though I knew she was with her sister and Izzy. She was still upset if they were drinking all afternoon. I had needed to check up on her so I’d called over to the villa.

The last thing I’d wanted to do was go to a noisy bar and try to talk to her. I’d wanted to dance with Izzy even less.

Ashley had looked as miserable as I’d ever seen her when I saw some a-hole with a burned neck above the collar of his corporate polo shirt hitting on her.

A green haze had crossed my vision at that moment that wasn’t healthy. I didn’t have any right to that type of reaction, but it was there all the same.

Fortunately, she got rid of the guy before I’d acted like an ass to a hapless stranger.

I kept thinking about how she kept saying she couldn’t come to Sydney, that she didn’t want to go back and didn’t know how to move forward. She’d been at similar loose ends when Izzy had left her in Australia. She’d been wringing her hands, staring at the ocean and looking very anxious when I caught up to her that morning. She wasn’t ready to fly home, but didn’t know how to strike out on her own.

“Any recommendations on where I should go?” she’d asked meekly, eyebrows pulled into a frown of uncertainty.

I’d known her less than a week, but I’d already picked her brains about how to improve our website. Offering her a ‘consulting’ job to make those changes had been spur of the moment, but had made sense. And she’d been great at it.

For as long as I could remember, I’d been knuckling down, staying focused on building stability for myself. Building my savings and building the company.

The fact was, there was a part of me that was insanely jealous that she had nothing but options before her. The urge to drop everything and bum around the world with her while she figured things out was obscenely tempting.

I couldn’t, though. I had responsibilities. A business to run. A life I’d worked my guts out to create.

The sudden rap on my door made me jump.

“That was fast,” I said as I let her in.

She waved a piece of paper in front of me.

“You were right. He never loved me. I didn’t love him. This entire thing was a stupid idea and I never should have let it get this far. You did me a solid and I can’t be mad, but I am anyway. I don’t know what todo.” She was on the verge of tears and it tore me up.

“What is that?” I held out my hand.

She stood there with the paper dangling in a limp pinch at her side, mouth down at the corners, so desolate I held out my hands to her.

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