Page 24 of Phillip

The corners of his eyes tightened. He rolled his bottom lip into his mouth. She couldn’t read his expression and couldn’t forget how he’d held on to her. They had been lost, together, in each other, and she simply couldn’t let that happen.

Phillip walked ahead. Ashley watched as their distance grew. He didn’t look over his shoulder, and again, she didn’t know what to say. Small talk would feel forced, and she was too distracted to focus on work.

She jogged through a receding wave until they were side by side again. Small talk didn’t surface. Nothing did. Ashley wondered if they should talk about them, about what had just happened, or whatever had happened years ago. She’d never said she was sorry. At the time, she’d been drowning in indignation and bad advice. What would her apology sound like now?

Ashley bit her lip and judged herself. The college kid that had been trying to live up to her mother’s expectations, to gain anything that could pass as approval. At the time, Ashley had believed the breakup was warranted. Her regret lay inhowshe’d ended the relationship.

But this Ashley? The one walking beachside, relaxing into his arms? Her guilt spread, slowly unfurling like a coil. She’d never accepted her share of the blame. Goat crap and an overbearing mother weren’t solid excuses for the how and when of their breakup. She wanted to say, “Phillip, it wasn’t all you.” But she wouldn’t waste a poor justification as an excuse for a weak apology. She could do better.

Phillip cleared his throat. “Housekeeping was in my bedroom.”

“What?” She blinked then shielded her eyes from the sun, finally having enough guts to look him in the face.

“Earlier. That’s why I was in Brock’s room.”

“Oh!” Ashley breathed easier at the change of subject. “You don’t have to explain why you were someplace in your own home.”

“I know,” he added thoughtfully. “We’d had a pretty strong back-and-forth earlier.”

“About what?”

He raised an eyebrow. “You.”

“Oh.” Suddenly, it didn’t feel like the topic had changed that much. “Well, whatever that was about, everything seemed fine when he told me where to find you.”

“I was in the shower.”

Her cheeks heated. “Yeah. I know.”

Phillip laughed it off, letting the conversation disappear, though he stayed lost in thought. She took what he’d said, playing with the words like a jigsaw puzzle, wondering what he hadn’t said. Then it hit her. Was Brock playing matchmaker again? No. He would never. But then why had he pointed her toward Phillip in the shower? Perhaps he was testing them, or better yet, maybe he wanted whatever would happen between her and Phillip to happen earlier rather than later.

“Even if Brock had been up to something…” she said.

He harrumphed. “Something.”

She blushed again but would make her point. “Even if he was, he couldn’t have anticipated our…”

“Crash?”

She laughed. “Good word for it, and besides, I was… wandering.”

Phillip’s eyebrow arched.

“Wandering,” she repeated, wondering if ambling would have been a better explanation. Either word was easier to admit rather than the tiny bit of snooping and spying she’d done.

“What does that mean?”

“I don’t know. I was taking it all in.”

He laughed. “You’re making that face.”

“What face? I didn’t make a face.” One of her many talents was the ability to conceal her reactions… from everyone but Phillip. That was a long-forgotten fact that she now knew to be all too true.

“Yeah, you did, beautiful.”

Her heart skipped like a stone thrown across the water. “Don’t call me that.” Because she liked it too much.

Amusement lightened his features. “That’s the face where there’s way more to the story—”

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