Page 85 of Away With You
“I do, and it’s fine.”
He peppers my face with small, soft kisses before landing on my mouth. He kisses me slowly, deeply, until my knees wobble before drawing back with a smile. “Are you sure you can’t think of a better way to spend your day?”
Right now, I can’t even remember my name.
“Oh, you play dirty, Mr Jackson.” I push at his chest and walk backwards away from him. “I’m sure we can survive a few hours apart.”
His azure gaze caresses my body, and a muscle in his cheek jumps. “I’m not sure I can.”
I squeak at the gravely tone in his voice, pointing him towards the ocean and closing the bathroom door. “You need to cool off,” I yell to him as I spin into the room and face the shower.
A cold shower, it would seem.
Turns out, I need cooling off as well.
?·?·?
Two hours later, I’m in a dark room, wrapped in seaweed.
The spa experience started off well, despite Victoria looking like she’d sucked on a lemon at the sight of me. It wasn’t like she could turn us away, though; Rosie is the sister of the groom,and I’m the girlfriend of the brother of the groom. But that didn’t mean she and her gaggle of friends had made us feel welcomed either.
“Let’s split up from them,” Rosie had said after they’d fluttered off, whispering to each other and casting not-so-subtle withering glances at me. “It will be better for everyone.”
And so, we did. Rosie and I got undressed and into another gorgeous robe and then settled back in our massage chairs for a mani and pedi. After that, things took a turn. Rosie, being more adventurous than me, submerged herself in a sensory deprivation tank and in a panic to avoid doing that, I’d blindly agreed to a detoxification massage, and that’s how I ended up here.
As a human sushi roll.
After wrapping me up nice and tight, my masseuse Angelique left me to ‘relax’ in this room, in the dark, in silence. I’m so uncomfortable, I want to scream. But this doesn’t seem like a place to tolerate that sort of behaviour.
“They can’t leave me in here forever,” I mutter, blowing at the hair that is stuck to my cheek, adding to my misery. With my arms swaddled down next to my body, I can’t do anything to fix it. I will just have to lie here and suffer.
“Think of something else,” I urge my brain.
Cake. Chocolate. Biscuits. Nathan. Ah, that works. Nathan.My mind wanders over his many expressions; the way his eyes light up when he’s talking about racing, the way he licks his lower lip just before he kisses me and the way his jaw clenches when he’s worried for me. The man has many facial expressions, and they’re all one hundred per cent perfect.
“There’s no way that relationship is real.”
I stiffen, tilting my head in the voice's direction just beyond my closed door, my eyes twitching as I identify the owner.
Victoria.
“Of course it’s not,” another—equally grating—voice replies. “She’s a nobody. Where did she even come from?”
“She went to his secondary school on a scholarship,” Victoria spits out the words like they offend her. “And apparently, they reconnected and fell in love. I’m not buying any of it.”
My breaths are ragged, and I struggle to control my breathing. I don’t want to make any noise and alert them to the fact that I’m right here. Within hearing distance.
“He’s just doing this to make you jealous. It’s clear he wants you back.”
My stomach drops at this, and I screw my eyes shut, listening intently.
Victoria sniggers. “It’s like he’s forgotten that he was calling me, begging me to come back to him.”
“I’ll never get over it.”Nathan’s words suddenly seem painfully real.
Another voice chimes in. “It’s clear he’s just using her to get to you. Can you imagine him out on the circuit with her? Taking her to all those glamorous events? She couldn’t even get her fake tan done properly.”
I cringe, shrinking further into my seaweed cocoon.They’d noticed my white ankles?
