Page 71 of Problematic Summer Romance

“—but I hope you’ll see where I’m coming from, too. And I hope you won’t waste more of my time.”

“You can’t do this.”

“No? Why not?”

He has no answer for me. What he does have is a muscle twitching in his jaw, and an Adam’s apple that bobs as he swallows. It must be a sign of my terrible temperament, that I cannot help smiling at the sight.

“Don’t worry about me.” I slide my fingers around his hand, dragging it away from my waist. His palm is warm, rough-skinned, and pliant in my grip. Instead of dropping it, I guide it into his lap and gently set it on his inner thigh.

The muscles in his quads twitch.

I smile, and before leaving I say: “Think about it, Conor. The offer stands.”

4 days before thewedding

Chapter 22

I wake up early—again.

Swim laps—again.

Have a granita breakfast—again.

All according to my new routine. The only different thing is the low-level hangover that I manage to shoo away only with ibuprofen. Over half of the party decides to go on a day-long excursion to Catania, but I’ve already made plans to go after the wedding, so I opt for staying at the villa.

“And we’re supposed to, what?” Nyota asks me when I inform her. “Relinquish our dysfunctional codependency? Beapart?”

I pat her back. “Don’t forget to write.”

I’m heading toward the beach, walking by a first-floor room. When I hear Conor’s voice, I halt, hoping to avoid meeting him. Even sober, I don’t regret what I told him last night. It did, however, end in something that felt a lot like another rejection, and Idon’t want to deal with the fallback of it. I decide to exit the villa via the back door, but stop when I hear Tamryn’s distressed tone. “—don’t understand,” she’s saying. She sounds angry and tearful. “Their lawyers must be aware that their demands aren’t supported.”

“That is true,” an unknown mechanical voice says. Phone, or a Zoom call.“But even if we demonstrate that the testator left his assets in the proper amount—”

“Settling would be absolutelymental.”

“Tamryn, they arestillthreatening to go to the press.”

“They won’t. They’d be making up lies—”

“My brothers don’t care about that,” Conor points out. “They’re cunts, and that’s what cunts do.”

I take a few silent steps backward and slip outside, feeling guilty about eavesdropping, and even guiltier about wanting to know more. Conor once called his family “a nest full of devious little garden gnomes,” and I wonder if—

“That frown better not mean that the Mayageddon’s out.”

Eli is stretched under the shade of a ficus tree, leaning against the trunk, a book open in his lap. Tiny sploots next to him, belly flush against the cool grass, four limbs shooting out at different angles. He lifts his chin when he hears my voice, but is too lazy to come greet me in person.

“The Mayageddon has been temporarily subdued, but she’s always a single game of charades away from nuclear annihilation of her surroundings.”

“As usual, then?”

I grin.

He points at a spot next to him. “Come hang out with me while you’re still out of prison, then.”

“You didn’t tell me Conor’s dad had died,” I say once we’re side by side, shoulders pressed together.

His eyebrow inches up. “You didn’t ask.” He scans my face, shrewd. Those blue eyes and thick lashes that are a carbon copy of mine. “Where does this come from? I thought you were over wanting to use his ‘beautiful rower’s body.’ ”

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