Page 79 of Runaway Bride and Prejudice

We capped off last night with a sunset cruise full of couples, where we resumed our roles as newly married to fit in. At least, that’s the excuse I gave myself to allow Van to spend dinner touching me, his hand heavy on my knee under the table, his arm around my waist as we watched the sun set. His lips on my cheek as we stood at the rail, a pod of dolphins swimming beside the boat.

“I think they’re showing off for you,” he said then, his whiskers a delicious scrape on my neck. “Can’t say I blame them.”

For those hours, I didn’t just pretend for the sake of people around us. I allowed myself to sink into the lie. To imagine what it would be like to have him staying close to me because he wanted to. Because he was mine.

The thing is … it was easy to believe.

When Van looked at me with those dark brown eyes, the warmth there felt real. His flirting also fooled my body, which has been in a constant state of heightened awareness for days. I swear, Van shifts his weight from one foot to the other, and my body adjusts too.

When he touches me? Forget it. I instantly become like one of those static balls with all the electricity inside, every electron in me shooting toward the place where Van’s finger or his mouth or even his arm brushes mine.

Things were never like this with Drew. Never with anyone else either.

It’s ridiculous to think Van and I could really have something. Reckless. Maybe stupid.

I’m trying to internalize Morgan’s words. To wait.

To tell myself if it’s really this good, if it’s really something that could be real, I should wait until I’m in a better place. I’m attempting to just enjoy being drenched in an unexpected happiness. While also ignoring the thread of guilt that keeps weaving through me because I shouldn’t feel this way, right?

I mean, my whole life arguably just fell apart. I’ll be picking up the pieces when I get back for months. I should be heartbroken. A mess.

And yet—I’m at the complete opposite pole. My heart never broke over Drew, despite being battered around and covered in the slick film of humiliation whenever I think about everything. It’s helped that we haven’t seen him or Becky. Maybe they checked out and moved to a new hotel. Hopefully in Antarctica.

But being with Van this week has, if anything, inflated and expanded my heart, like it’s pumping stronger and steadier than before. As though his presence hasn’t simply had a healing effect but one that multiplies me.

I keep trying not to examine what that means, but my mind keeps hovering around it, returning like a memory.

What I do know for sure is that I don’t want it to end. I want to tell the front desk we’re staying another week. Or that we’re staying forever. We’ll be the squatters in the honeymoon suite.

But I already know this is an impossibility. Though I’ve largely been able to forget what’s going on at home, texting Morgan a few times for the barest updates, I know it’s waiting for me. Late tomorrow.

And with our trip almost over, dread has taken hold in my stomach like a tapeworm.

I expected things to get awkward at some point. For Van to get sick of me or me to get sick of him. Instead, the more of him I get, the more I want. Icravehim.

We talk, we laugh, we tease. Playfully … but an undercurrent of something sweeter and headier is growing. I can feel it in the way our touches linger, in the heat clambering up my spine when he’s near me, in the way his eyes darken when we stare too long.

Not just his charm, I tell myself.It’sgotto be me.

Doesn’t it?

The only time we spend apart is when he’s working out or one of us is in the bathroom or when we’re sleeping. More like when I’m lying in bed, imagining him on the couch, wondering what would happen if I invited him to share my bed. Just to sleep.

I’ve offered more than once, but he’s adamant. He won’t.

I know I’m not imagining the shift between us. I think it started the first night in the ocean, his warm hands on my ocean-chilled skin. Or maybe it goes back to the bathroom stall, when he wiped my tears away with his thumbs.

Every little moment, from him licking ice cream off my wrist to arguing about Keanu to allowing me the freedom to make my own choices.

Earlier this afternoon I almost confessed how I felt when he got back from a dip in the pool and told the half-drunk man hitting on me to stay away fromhis wife.

The way he saidmy wifegave my goose bumps goose bumps.

Every step of the way, Van has been both my cheerleader, my safety net, and my challenger.

Fly, he told me when we were zip lining.

Want to see what’s at the edge of the reef?he asked when we were snorkeling.

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