Page 79 of Beached Wedding

When we arrived on my floor we stepped out, but didn’t move.

“He’s definitely on his way here.”

“Yes,” Fox confirmed tersely.

“He didn’t come all this way to see you or his parents. You’ll all be home in a few days. He wants to see me.”Why?I didn’t want to see him. Not now.

Not after this morning.

Oh God. I looked at Fox and guilt, so much guilt, pulsed between us. It was like the force that pushed magnets away from one another. He looked to the end of the hall and the hardness in his profile hit me like a slap.

A familiar, grotesque, frightened feeling was awakening inside me, the one that said I was to blame for this. I was the screw up. Everything was wrong and it was all my fault.

“We should talk,” Fox said grudgingly through his teeth.

“About what? Tell him whatever you want. I don’t want to see him.” With growing agitation, I paced down the hall to the suite. My hand shook as I touched the room card to the door lock.

I pushed into the room and Shane turned from the open bag on the foot of the bed. He was dripping wet and completely naked.

“There you are.”

ASHLEY

“Mate.” Fox put up a hand like he was shielding his vision from the flash of an arc weld.

I ducked my head, even though Shane’s clean shave was something I’d seen before. He was easy to admire in his birthday suit, tanned and ripped and beautifully proportioned, but not now. Not ever again.

“Quit being coy. You both know I drip dry.” He found some boardies and stepped into them. “All right. White wobbly bits tucked away. Pair o’ wussies.”

“What are you doing here?” I was still in shock that he’d come to Hawaii. When I’d said I didn’t intend to talk to him, I meant it.

“Surprise.” He pitched the word weakly while he pushed his arms wide in a slow-motion, big finish pose. “I texted that I was coming,” he said to Fox.

“I just saw it a minute ago.” Fox held up the phone he clutched in one hand. He indicated this room with other. “How did you get in here?”

“I told the desk I had a reservation and they gave me a key. I wanted to see you,” he said to me, mouth pulling into an uncomfortable smile. “I texted you that I was coming up. Whenyou weren’t here, I reckoned I’d shower then find you. Were you two at the pool?”

“No, um—” My gaze fell with self-reproach and snagged on the letter I’d written to him. It sat open on the sofa cushion where I’d left it. I shot forward to fold it and shove it into the pocket of my robe with the other one.

“What was that?” Shane asked with a sharp frown.

“Nothing.” I eyed him, wondering if he had read it before he’d showered.

My stomach was churning like a washing machine full of loose change and gum.I don’t want to do this. It struck me that Fox had done her a huge favor, ending my engagement by proxy. In a perfect world, I wouldn’t have had to face Shane ever again, or at least not until I’d had some time to get over all of this.

Of course, this wasn’t a perfect world. It was a world that was determined to play my pain for laughs because here Shane was, three days late and a pair of shorts short.

Shane shot a hairy eyeball look toward Fox, one that made my heart clutch. I couldn’t face his finding out what we’d just done. I hadn’t processed it and wasn’t ready to defend it. I wasn’t sure I could.

“It was my letter to you,” I blurted. “For our wedding day.”

Throwing that out there was a gamble. I didn’t want to start a game of disparagement or finger pointing. A dim part of me hoped it would propel him to leave. One of the things I liked most about Shane was that we had never really fought. The minute we’d started to disagree, when the butterflies of anxiety would start in my middle, he always vanished.

That hadn’t been particularly cool. Mostly it had left me feeling responsible for the discord, same as always. Then Fox would give me some insight into Shane’s guilt over being the reason his mother and brother were on the road the day Marcus died. Or how he never dealt with any of his emotions becausehe’d have to start with the loss of his brother and who in their right mind wanted to rake over that kind of pain if they could avoid it?

Shane didn’t leave, though. His shoulders dropped a notch and he held both his palms out to me in a plea.

“Ash, I’m sorry. It was a shitty thing to do, not getting on the plane. I was drunk. Really crook for two days. I didn’t even look at my phone. When I sobered up and told the guys what I’d done, they couldn’t believe what a bloody idiot I was. Fucking Gunz said it was past time one of us married a girl,” Shane said in an aside to Fox.

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