Page 30 of The Seascape Between Us

I turned away from the view to Grey standing with the door open and waiting for me to go inside. Was I really going to do this, let Grey talk me into spending the next few days with him alone in his father’s house? I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was making a huge mistake.

I was probably making something out of nothing. Nothing had happened between us since that day in his hotel room. Grey had suggested a fresh start as business partners, and I genuinely wanted that, too. Surely, we could spend a few days in this house alone and keep our hands off each other while not snarking back and forth at each other while we were at it.

I nodded and went inside.

Chapter Twelve

Grey

My head felt light, like an overfilled balloon ready to pop. Conversely, I couldn’t seem to breathe in enough air to fill my lungs. I could feel Daniel’s gaze on me, watching me, gauging my behavior since we’d walked into my father’s house.

Standing in the dimly lit foyer, surrounded by gleaming dark wood on the floors, a wide staircase with a square newel post and banister. Little had changed in seventeen years. I could see the living room, still decorated with the same dark wood and deep red accents and packed tight with my father and his husband, Sean’s, collection of art and knick-knacks, cluttering what would have been a good-sized room without all the crap.

The students had left the house in good shape, and Finn had someone in to clean after they’d gone. The smell of lemon-scented wood polish hung heavy in the air.

“Are you sure about this?” Daniel asked.

I nodded, pulling my phone from my pocket, eager for a distraction from Daniel’s watchful gaze. “You should get off your feet.”

“I’m fine. I can stand. My legs aren’t broken.”

“Stop being stubborn,” I told him without looking up from thumbs flying over the screen while I sent out a flurry of texts. “You’re supposed to be resting.”

Daniel muttered something under his breath, and I glanced up from my phone long enough to catch him rolling his eyes before he made his way into the living room and dropped onto the couch. He could claim all he wanted that he was fine, but I wasn’t buying any of it. He looked exhausted. Dark smudges bruised the pale skin under his eyes like he hadn’t slept in days, and I didn’t care what he said. His arm and his head had to be hurting him by now. The emergency room doctor had said over-the-counter ibuprofen should be enough to manage his pain, but there wouldn’t be any in this house with the students gone.

I quickly sent off another text.

Once I had finished making all the necessary arrangements, I sank onto the sofa next to him.

I still couldn’t believe I was back here, inside this house, after so long. It felt strange. So little had changed while I’d been away. I half expected my father or Sean to come strolling into the room. A lump formed in my throat, and I did my best to swallow it away.

Besides, what choice did I have but to come here? There was no way Daniel would have let me take him back to Portland, no matter how I tried to convince him. And I knew without a shadow of a doubt that he would never have relaxed at the Seascape, especially with the roofers working from dawn until dark overhead every day until the roof was finished.

My father’s house had felt like the best and only option.

“Grey,” Daniel started, his voice dropped, adopting that infuriatingly serious tone.

“Don’t,” I said, before he could ask me if I was sure about being here again. “This is just a house.”

And I wished that was true. I don’t know why being here bothered me so much. After my father left my mother when I was twelve, I barely saw the man. But even before then, things had been tense between us.

My father had wanted things for me, for my future. As a university professor, education had been important to him. When it came to school, I’d been bright but lazy, doing the bare minimum to squeak by, which had been unacceptable to my father. Maybe screwing around in school had been my way of rebelling against his heavy-handed demands where my education had been concerned.

Once he and my mother had divorced, and he’d moved to Saltwater Cove and started living with Sean, me and my education were no longer priorities for him.

With his obvious disinterest, there’d been nothing for me to rebel against. I started working harder, improved my grades and went on to university. By the time I’d chosen to spend a summer in Saltwater Cove, my father and I had really only seen each other a handful of times.

Around the same time, though, my mother had remarried, and I couldn’tstandLance. He was loud, opinionated and stupid—as loud as opinionated people often were. That year, spending a summer with a father I hardly saw had to be better than a summer with a stepfather I couldn’t stand. While my father and I had been awkward around each other, I didn’t care because that was the summer I fell in love with Daniel.

Though, by the end of the summer, I thought something had changed between my father and me. When things fell apart between Daniel and me, he’d been unexpectedly supportive. Iguess that’s why it hurt so much when he iced me out after. Now, my father was gone and Daniel was here next to me, looking adorably bored and frustrated. As if reading my mind, he looked over at me. “What am I supposed to be doing here?”

“You already know,” I told him. “Resting.”

I couldn’t stop a grin from spreading across my face. His scowl deepened. “I don’t feel very rested here.”

“You will,” I promised.

As if on cue, there was a loud knock at the door. I stood and pulled it open. Carter stood almost buried under a pile of linens from the hotel.

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