“What else do Kelly men do?” I ask, and he tilts his head back.
“They go to poncey schools, both at home and abroad. I went to a couple in Australia, then dear old dad sent me to England, ostensibly to straighten me out, but it didn’t really take.”
“Ah, so you were the prep school bad boy, got it,” I reply, and he looks over at me with a grin.
“Never that bad, not truly.”
“What a shame.” My face is flushed, and I feel almost dizzy with my own recklessness. I know what I’m doing, what we’re doing. Whatever it is, it’s dangerous and stupid, and I’m going ahead with it anyway.
“So, tell me,” he goes on, turning to face me. “What do the McAllister women do?”
“Fuck things up?” I say lightly, but he’s studying me, and my skin feels too tight, and I look back out at the sea.
I decide to tell the truth. “We trust the wrong men,” I say. “My dad … I guess he wasn’t a bad guy, exactly. Just a careless one.”
He doesn’t reply, but I sense him listening. “He left when I was eleven, but he kept, like, trying the dad thing. For a little while at least. But then he had other kids, so I guess he didn’t need to be my dad anymore.”
I sigh. “It’s not that he didn’t care about me, or even that he didn’t want to care, I think. He just … couldn’t. Wasn’t capable of it.”
I think of Nico with his charming smile and capable hands, with his big dreams that are always, always his dreams. You can come along, sure.
But that’s all it is. An empty offer, and an even emptier promise.
Jake lays his hand on top of mine. “Is it rude if I say that your dad sounds like a real cunt?”
That startles a laugh out of me, and I shake my head, looking at him. He’s moved closer, and I know what’s about to happen.
I wonder if we’ve been heading toward this since the first day we met.
His hand is gritty on my face from the sand, and when he rubs a thumb over my lips, I taste salt water. My heart is pounding, stomach swooping, and I know this is stupid, I know it’s a mistake, I know it will just make everything worse.
But I don’t care.
Not right now, with the sun beating down, the two of us like Adam and Eve, alone together in this little stretch of paradise, a solitary Eden.
“You should tell me to stop,” Jake murmurs, his gaze on my mouth.
“I should,” I agree, and he lifts his eyes to mine. They’re almost as blue as the sea beyond us, the sky overhead.
“Are you?”
I answer by leaning in, closing the gap between us.
His lips are dry, but soft, and when his hand tangles in my hair, I feel a bolt of lust shoot through me, so strong that my mouth opens even more, his tongue pushing against mine as his fingers tighten, and my hand presses the damp hot skin of his bare chest.
In this moment, it doesn’t feel like a mistake. It feels like it might be another adventure, one that’s solely mine. For the first time in months, I’m doing what I want, not what Nico wants.
Besides—what Nico wants is Amma, apparently, so fuck him.
I deserve this.
It’s different with Jake.
My mind won’t let me say better, because even now, even after all that’s happened, I feel disloyal somehow. I hate that Nico still takes up enough space in my heart for me to feel a little bad about this.
But Nico’s the only guy I’ve been with for a long time, so I can’t help but compare the two.
Jake’s touch is firmer, more confident. He talks to me throughout, asking what I want, if I like this, if he can do that. And I’m saying yes so much that it just starts to blend into a chant, yes yes yes until I’m shaking and my fingers are gripping his hair, damp with sweat at the nape of his neck, and there’s no Nico and no Eliza, nothing except the two of us here on this shady patch of sand with the Pacific behind us and coconut palms overhead.
Afterward, we lie side by side, staring up at the sunlight filtering through the fronds. “I feel like I’m in a music video.”
He laughs, his arm tightening around me. “I have no idea if that’s a compliment or not.”
“Oh, it is,” I reply. “Or I mean it to be.”
A part of me wonders if I should tell him about Nico and Amma. But if I do, he might think this was just about revenge.
It was a little bit about revenge, don’t get me wrong. But that wasn’t all of it. This wasn’t some even-up-the-score kind of thing—Nico fucked Amma, so I fucked Jake.