Page 12 of Beauty and the Beach

Would I really ask Holland Blakely tomarryme?

“Maybe I could still find someone else,” I say. The thought of marrying Amsterdam fills me with roiling, churning dread.

Wyatt snorts with uncharacteristic sarcasm. “I think you know perfectly well that there is no one else,” he says, and I raise my brow at him. “Sir,” he adds mildly.

I roll my eyes. “I have other friends,” I say. It’s true, more or less. I know other women. But…

“If you’ll accept my humble opinion, sir?—”

“Sarcasm doesn’t suit you, Wyatt,” I say.

Another ghost of a smile flits over his face. “As long as you maintain your current relationship with Miss Blakely, there will not be room for another woman in your life.”

I blink. “What? What relationship?”

“The relationship between you and Miss Blakely,” he says. “Though not romantic in nature, perhaps, it does leave little room for anyone else in your life.”

“That’s ridiculous,” I say, biting the words out.

He shrugs. “You’re not close enough to anyone else to propose marriage, anyway.”

I frown. “I’m not close to Holland, either. If anything, I would call us the opposite of close.”

“I disagree.”

My eyebrows shoot up. “You’re not serious.”

His chin dips. “You’re not close friends, perhaps,” he concedes. “But opponents, rivals, maybe enemies—whatever you are, you’re close ones.” He falls silent, watching me as I grit my teeth and try to hold back my retort. I’m not one to hold my tongue in most situations, but Wyatt has earned my respect, no matter how much I disagree with him.

He was the one who helped me stand and brushed the dirt from my little black suit at my father’s funeral, when my mother had forgotten about me in her hysterics. He’s the one who made sure I was fed and clothed and taken care of when she confined herself to her room for days at a time.

In many ways, he raised me.

So I keep my thoughts to myself—that Holland and I are not close, not as friends or enemies or anything else. I give her my time and attention because I promised Trev I would. I made a promise to my best friend, and I owe him everything, because he’s dead and it’s partially my fault.

He’s dead, and it’s partially my fault, and—I realize with horror—I think I might actually ask his sister to marry me.

“Let’s finish here for the day,” I say, because there’s a weight pressing down on my chest, one I can’t dispel. Thinking about Trevor and the past always makes me feel heavy and tired and hopeless. “We can pick up on Monday.”

Wyatt just nods. And when he looks more closely at me, his wiry, brown-gray brows pulling low with concern, I turn away.

Long gone are the days when I unburdened my soul with anyone; I wouldn’t know what to say.

I wouldn’t even know where to start.

Holland

When I meetup with Cat later that afternoon, I’m still thinking about Phoenix’s face as he offered me a job—or more specifically, when he corrected himself and used the wordarrangement.

I don’t usually see such a lack of expression from him, especially when I know he’s annoyed. It reminds me of a Lifetime documentary I saw about this serial killer, and the lady who was his neighbor for years and never knew. She said he was grumpy and rude but otherwise normal—except that his expression sometimes sent chills down her spine.

That’s kind of what’s going on with my spine right now: chills, because I can’t get that blank look out of my head.

“So, wait,” Cat says, frowning at me. She sets down the menu in her hands. “An arrangement?”

I nod. “That’s what he said. He called it a job first, and then an arrangement.”

Sunrise Cafe is packed for the afternoon rush, and Cat and I have leaned gradually closer across our little table—orange, chipped paint, the exact same color as the surfboard on the wall behind us—so we can hear each other over the hum of conversation and clinking silverware and laughter. Cat’s platinum blonde hair, lighterthan mine, is pulled back into a braid, and even her freckles seem confused as she looks at me.

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