Page 33 of Surfer's Paradise

“Can’t sleep?”

Her breath shivered.

“No.”

“Come here.”

She should say no.

She should turn around, walk back to bed, pretend this moment never happened.

“I shouldn’t,” she whispered.

“I know,” Isaac said. “Come anyway.”

And she did.

Her feet carried her forward, slow and unsure, but she came.

He shifted beneath the sheets, pulling back the blanket, and without thinking—without questioning—she slid in beside him.

His arms wrapped around her, strong and warm, pulling her into the shape of him. His bare chest pressed against her back, his breath ghosting along her hairline, his body heat soaking into her skin.

She closed her eyes, melting.

He breathed her in like he’d been waiting for this. Like he needed this.

“I’ll admit it,” he said, his lips brushing just barely against her temple. “I missed you.”

Something inside her fractured.

A laugh bubbled up, soft and dangerously close to something else.

She curled her fingers around his arm, holding on. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

They laid there, wrapped in something heavy, dangerous, familiar.

For a minute, maybe two.

Then, she asked the question she shouldn’t.

“You asked me who I’m dating,” she said. “But you didn’t tell me who you are dating. Too many to count?”

Isaac huffed a laugh, the sound vibrating against her back.

“Not too many,” he mused. Then, after a beat, “But yeah. I met someone six months ago.”

Rosie went still.

Too still.

Isaac’s grip on her didn’t change, but she felt the shift, the shift inside herself. The sudden drop in her stomach, the way her fingers went numb against his skin.

He continued, oblivious to the way her heart clenched.

“She’s French. Elodie,” he said, voice easy, like it didn’t cost him anything to say it. “Met her in St. Barts on a diving trip with Dom. She doesn’t live here, so it’s just been a long-distance thing. We’ve met up a few times since then.”

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