Page 82 of Burn for You

In the club, when my instincts took over and I slipped my hand into his. He looked down at our hands like the feeling was foreign, but he didn’t let go. Not until he threw a punch that is.

“What do I do?” I ask.

“You told him no strings attached right?” Marina asks.

“Right.”

“Is he not respecting your boundaries?”

“No he is…I—” I throw my hands over my face. “I think I’m the one fucking with the boundaries. I’m the one who started the conversation that led to the phone sex. I’m the one who decided to open up to him and cry on his shoulder.”

“And why do you think that is?” Isla chimes in.

I glare at her. Knowing exactly why she’s choosing to speak up now. “I don’t know, maybe because he gave me a fucking earth-shattering orgasm!”

She raises her eyebrows at me.

“Sorry.” I pass the wine bottle to Marina. She gets up, grabbing herself a wine glass from her small kitchen and filling it.

Isla slides off the couch, folding her legs and pulling my hands into her lap. “It’s fine.”

“I just…I don’t know why, but I can’t separate him from the sex like I normally can. I don’t know how to fix it. This isn’t my style.”

Isla’s eyes glisten as she looks at me.

“It’s okay for the things that you think you want in your life tochange,” Leo says, capturing all of our attention. “You can want something for yourself at a certain time of your life, and you can change your mind. Your priorities can switch a thousand times, it’s not always so black and white.”

Marina is the one who breaks the shocked silence between us all, as she sits back down with her glass of wine. “Is that why you left your job, because your priorities changed?”

He grabs the wine bottle from her. “Something like that, yeah.”

Isla’s gaze focuses back on me. “He’s right May, what you want can change, if you let it.”

“I don’t know if I want to let it.”

“I know,” she smiles softly. “But if you keep yourself guarded forever, you might never know what you’ve missed out on.”

I smile back at her, I don’t know if she’s right, but something tickles in the back of my brain at her words. Do I want to spend my whole life not knowing what it feels like? To be loved the way she is loved by Caio? Just because I’m scared of getting hurt?

Leo takes a sip of the wine. “So are we all still ignoring the fact that Isla’s brother and Marina used to fuck?”

Marina spits her wine across the room. “Oh my god.”

“Leo!” Isla scolds him.

He flinches away from her. “What? Considering how close you all are you really should talk about it. I’m surprised you’ve let the elephant sit between you for so long.”

Marina’s eyes flick to Isla’s. “We really don’t need to talk about it.”

Leo crosses his arms. “Yeah, you do.”

Now Marina’s looking at me. “I kind of agree with Leo.”

“You’re just trying to change the subject,” Isla says.

“It’s a good one to change it to though, isn’t it?” The two of them look at each other. Not saying a word.

“This is weird,” Leo says.

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