Page 49 of Entangled

“Ah. This place is pretty off the beaten path so an address won’t do you much good but I can tell you the GPS coordinates if you want.”

“That works.”

He rattles off the GPS coordinates and I quickly type them out along with his name and wait for Stef’s reply to make sure he got it. The three little dots appear quickly and I don’t have to wait long.

Stef: Be careful, cara.

El: Me? Always.

I add the wide-eyed emoji to the message before setting my phone down on the desk beside me with a smile, imagining him, Kai and Mac already searching for the place on Google maps while lounging by the pool. Looking up, I find Coop’s eyes on me and filled with interest.

“Good friend.” I can tell from his tone it’s a statement and not a question.

“The best.” I turn my head from his to look down the beach, not finding another soul in sight. “How far are we from town?”

“It’s about a thirty-minute drive.”

I look back to find him setting his beer bottle down on the tile with a soft clink. He lunges forward before I realize what’s happening and scoops me up, throwing me over his shoulder and bringing his hand down on my ass with a soft smack. I can’t help the giggle that falls from my lips as he carries me to the bed and tosses me onto it.

“What exactly do you think you’re doing?” I cock a brow and widen my legs teasingly, lips still pulled up into a grin.

His gaze devours me as he rips his shirt over his head, putting all that gorgeous olive skin on display. “It’s been five days since I was inside you, which is entirely too long in my opinion.” He unlatches the button of his shorts and pulls the zipper down, dropping them to the ground. I can see the hard outline of his massive cock through the black boxer briefs he wears. “I plan to fix that now.”

The only thought running through my mind as he comes over me and drops his lips to mine is that I might already be in way too deep.

Chapter 12

Present Day

I’d been avoiding Jace for five days.

After that day on the boat with him, I had locked myself inside my gram’s house and dodged the few texts he had sent since. Giving him the lame excuse of a headache to the first one asking if I wanted to hang out and not replying at all when he asked if I was okay and alive. The truth was I didn’t know anymore. That part of me that had been broken on the beach in Costa Rica still ached, but… it had lessened, healed just a bit since Jace had come into my life and that left me floundering.

The sense of déjà vu between this summer and the last had overwhelmed me into locking the door and living in my pajamas while I drank shit instant coffee. Switching between reading my mother’s journals and watching Netflix on my laptop when I needed a break from her inner workings. I had decided to read them in order. I knew the answers I wanted were clearly going to be toward the end but… the little girl in me who had secretly dreamed about the mother she lost wanted to know who she had been before facing her end.

The journals started shortly after she had come to America at the age of nineteen and I wasn’t quite sure what to make of her if I was being honest. On the one hand, I was impressed by her. She had been born an orphan and saved up for years to come to America in pursuit of a better life. She had taught herself English before moving here and put herself through culinary school in New York. She had used the journals as a way to fine-tune her English writing and expand her vocabulary. Her drive and determination was immense, more than I was sure even I possessed. And she wrote occasionally about ahimshe had left before coming here so I assumed she had been in love at least once before meeting my father.

But on the other hand… she was shallow, selfish. She often wrote about how she enjoyed the attention of men and she always had an angle when it came to them. Whether it was her career or materialistic things. All that mattered to her was what they brought to the table in her pursuit of a better life. She would spend her half of the rent money on clothes or shoes. Knowing she could charm her roommate into covering for her when she was short.

And yet she still sent money every month to the orphanage she had grown up in.

I quickly realized that my mother was… a complicated person, to say the least. Not exactly the fairy-tale figure I had dreamed of growing up. But I tried to remind myself that I had never known the loneliness and poverty she had endured. So really, who was I to judge?

The part that got to me was the things about her that I didn’t particularly like, but that nonetheless reminded me of myself. Not the debt part or the using others part. I never allowed myself to be in the debt of others and I wasn’t capable of pandering on my best day. But the liking of attention, the over-the-top attitude… Well, I guess some things really were genetic. The whole thing left me filled with melancholy and entirely too self-introspective for my liking.

I had made it to the part where she met my father at the age of twenty-one and closed the journal. Knowing I needed a break before reading about how their story began, I had lain on the couch and watched a couple episodes of the new season ofBridgerton.Because apparently, I really was a masochist before all the love and happy family dynamics had me snapping my laptop shut. My stomach had chosen that moment to give a grumble of protest, and after looking at the barren contents of my fridge, I had been forced to go on a search for food.

Which was how I ended up pulling back into the driveway in a barely presentable state. A sad-looking sandwich in tow that I had only cared was ordered from anywhere that was not Adam’s Place to find Jace Dawson’s face staring back at me from where he lounged on my porch steps.

“Fuck.”

I stare back at him for a moment from behind the safety of my tinted windows, debating whether I can just pull out and pretend I didn’t see him. But his expression quickly morphs into a look of gotcha, clueing me in to the fact that my windows were apparently not tinted dark enough. Definitely going to have to remedy that when I get back to LA.

“Fuck,” I mutter again, grabbing the take-out bag on my passenger seat and pushing the door open.

He watches me walk toward him silently. Eyes working their way from the top of my messy bun to the T-shirt and pajama shorts I’m wearing then down to the flip-flops on my feet. As if he’s checking to make sure all my parts are intact.

Mostly, Dawson. Mostly.

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