Page 16 of His Relentless Angel

I drag myself away from Bailey’s door, passing them on my way to the elevator, knowing it’s the right thing to do but hating myself more with each step.

One of the girls wearing a lime green dress that barely covers her panties—which I most definitely do not want to see—stumbles along with a frat boy type with sandy hair and a backward baseball cap. The two look more like siblings, though he’s got his arm draped over her unnaturally tanned shoulders. He pinches her nipple through her dress in a vulgar public display of imagined ownership.

She smiles at me with hooded eyes and smudged eye makeup, then flips her big hair back over her shoulder. She doesn’t hold a candle to my angel, and her attention makes my skin crawl. It also immediately starts a fight between them, and they start lobbing slurred accusations of cheating at each other.

I change my mind. Bailey doesn’t belong with them at all. She belongs with me.

Wait, no.

No.

No.

No!

Before stepping into the elevator, I take one last glance at Bailey’s hotel room door, wondering if I’ll ever meet another woman who doesn’t make my skin crawl. A woman who’ll warm me from the inside out like Bailey does and make my hands tingle with the need to touch her.

I doubt it.

Chapter 8

Bailey

My plan to make Isaiah eat his fucking heart out almost worked. He finally sees me for the woman I am and not the kid I used to be. He was so close to giving in last night, and I saw how he had to adjust his shorts in the elevator’s mirror when I told him I wasn’t on the same floor as my family. My mouth was fucking watering. I thought for sure he was going to push his way inside my room and take me. I’d have given him everything.

But there’s something about me that’s still not good enough for him, even if he is attracted to me now. I wanted to kick and scream at the world, and this time, I welcomed the haze. Let it pull me under until I was numb enough to go to bed by myself.

I decided not to leave in the night since I knew that would double my family’s worries, so I have the opportunity to regroup and switch to plan B before we all head back home tomorrow morning. Breakfast with my family in the hotel’s sunshine-filled dining room before we meet up with Isaiah is a trial of patience.

“So…” Shayla hedges as she cuts into her pancakes across from me at the round table, still dressed in her pajamas as I am. “What time did you make it back last night?”

Mom immediately looks up at me on my left. “You didn’t come back together?”

Thanks, sis. Shayla sends me an apologetic look, feeling guilty about bringing it up and piquing Mom’s worry.

“No. Tyra and I stayed at the bar a little longer.”

“I thought you said her friend’s name was ‘Tyla’,” Autumn says to Shayla on Shayla’s left, then tips her head with mock confusion when she looks at me and smirks.

Fuck, I messed up my pretend friend’s name.

I cut Autumn a glare. Some best friend, you are. “We ran into Tyra, too.”

“And you know them how?” Autumn asks, stuffing a sausage link in her mouth so she doesn’t laugh.

“From school,” I answer vaguely.

“Wow, small world that you should run into them in a city of, like, a million people, all on vacation at the same time,” Autumn says with faux surprise.

“Two million, if you count all the surrounding towns,” James pipes in unhelpfully from Shayla’s right.

“Yeah, small world,” I mumble, shooting both my sisters a look that says I want them to drop the conversation.

Mom clears her throat. “Was this before or after Isaiah left the restaurant?”

“Oh my god, can y’all stop giving me the third degree? I hung out with my friends for thirty minutes, then came back to the hotel. That’s it.”

“So James didn’t see Isaiah leaving the hotel at midnight when he left to get me some barbecue?” Shayla asks in a teasing tone.

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