Page 76 of Wish Lists and Road Trips

He laughed. “I think most of them are yours, sweetheart.”

“You owe me a dance,” I said, hopeful.Please don’t turn me down in front of these people, Nick.

He smiled, slow and sweet. “I do?”

“Yes. From the bar in Louisiana. I seem to remember a guy who looked an awful lot like you refusing me.”

His pretty eyes sparked with affection. “That guy sounds like an idiot.”

I tipped my chin at him and he leaned down until our noses touched. I felt the tension ooze out of my muscles. Just like that, we were in our own little universe again, breathing the same air, electricity sparking between us.

Not bothering to say goodbye to our new friends, I tugged Nick to the wooden floor where no one else was dancing. Annie made awhoopnoise from the back of the room, then whistled at us. Nick wrapped me in his arms so tight, it was hard to turn.

See this, Whitney?I thought, but being bitchy didn’t make me feel any better.

“Why did you do that back there?” Nick asked just loud enough to hear over the music.

“Do what?”

“Lie about your job.” He tucked a piece of my hair behind my ear. “You’re always changing depending on who’s in the room. It’s like you can’t decide if you want to stand out or blend in.”

I tried not to shrink at his critique. When did he become the nosy one?

“Brit,” he said when I didn’t answer. “Why not just be you?”

“Not everyone likesme.” It came out bitter and insecure. God, I sounded so far from the woman I’d set out to be when I’d left that port in New York. The woman I’d been a few hours ago in bed with Nick.

I felt his fingers brush my chin and I opened my eyes even though I knew they were wet. “Not everyone has to like you.Ilike you.”

You like the me you thought I was. Now I’m back to being nothing. A failure.The thought I’d been trying to fend off came bursting into my brain. I liked being liked by Nick, I more than liked it, but all it took was one interaction to reframe our entire time together.

Just because Stuck-on-Vacation Nick liked me, didn’t mean that Dress-Shirt-and-Tie Nick would. His friends, his family—hispeople. What if they were like Sean’s people? What if he realized, like Whitney had, that I’m a mess? Nick had enough mess in his life. He didn’t need more screwed-up people searching for safety in him.

“I’m a lot sometimes,” I said, repeating back a phrase I’d first heard from Sean. After that, I realized the same sentiment lingered in the exasperated looks my parents had been giving me my whole life.

“What does that mean?” Nick asked, his voice low.

“You know, like, my personality is a lot. I’m weird or whatever. People get tired of me.”

Nick looked like I’d just stabbed him in the heart. “Why do you think that, Brit?”

“I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” I said.

“Why not?”

“Because we’re having fun. Can we just drop it?” I could feel the tears rushing my eyes. Again. God, I wish I could stop doing that. It would be a lot easier to blow off conversations like this, play them off as no big deal, but I was cursed with these weak tear ducts and this heart that was so soft, it bruised like a peach.

I bit down on my lip and begged him with my eyes to let it go.

“Hey.” Nick ran his thumbs over my cheekbones, wiping at the tears that hadn’t fallen yet. “I’m sorry, okay? We can just dance.”

But I didn’t want to anymore. I wanted to get the heck out of this weird place that was trying to shine a flashlight through my Nick bubble. I wanted to be alone with him, to let him remind me that right now, he still enjoyed my company.

I pushed up on my toes to place a kiss at the hollow of his throat. Then I let my hands travel down to the back of his jeans, hooking my thumbs inside. He leaned down, his lips grazing mine until we were kissing with a slightly inappropriate amount of tongue.

“You wanna go back?” he asked in a strangled voice that filled my chest with an explosion of butterflies.

Yes, please.I wanted to go back to the hotel, I wanted to go back to just us.

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