I started to speak, but he caught my chin and stopped me. “I want to be selfish with you and if D wasn’t my friend, maybe I would, but you and I both know we can’t go that far. It would ruin everything, and the last thing I want to do is ruin you.”
I was about to speak, but the doorknob jiggled and Cane snatched his hand away, practically taking a leap back and turning toward the popcorn and candy.
“Hey!” Mom exclaimed with a small smile as she entered. “What are you guys doing? We’re all waiting for you.”
Cane turned casually, as if he wasn’t at all bothered by the situation. “Kandy said she was getting bored of waiting so I thought I would show her the theater room, give her something to look forward to when she got back.” He smiled. Only a little.
“Oh, Cane.” Mom continued to smile, and I was glad she hadn’t suspected a thing. I was also glad she couldn’t hear my heart pounding in my chest. “You spoil her, you know that? We could have done without the theater.” Mom focused on me. “Did you tell him thank you, Kandy? He got this room for you.”
“Mom. Yes.” I tried hard not to roll my eyes.
Mom looked to Cane for reassurance.
“She did,” Cane confirmed, and he put on a charismatic smile. A smile that would have made any woman, even my mom, blush.
And sure enough, she did. “Well, come on!” she insisted. “We have twenty minutes to get there, and I’m starving.” I walked her way and she ushered me out. Cane followed behind.
On the way back, Mom was a few steps ahead of me so I glanced back at Cane.
I could tell he was having thoughts similar to mine.
We’d almost gotten caught again, and it hadn’t even been twenty-four hours. This was a dangerous game. We couldn’t keep playing with fire like this—the only result would be getting burned.
Though I hated the thought of it, I knew we were going to have to put an end to this soon, no matter how hard it would be.
26
KANDY
Three days passed, and Cane and I could hardly even look at each other. Well, okay…I’m lying. We looked, but we didn’t say much to each other or linger around one another for long periods of time. I guess after almost getting caught again, it put a scare into both of us.
Not only that, but Kelly and I had bonded a lot more. I never thought I’d catch myself thinking this, but aside from being Cane’s girlfriend—or whatever—she was actually pretty cool.
She’d come up to our floor and help us pick out which bikini to wear to the beach. She helped make blueberry pancakes with Mom and me, and she’d even snuck Frankie and me a glass of her wine.
She was cool…but she still wasn’t a good match for Cane. To be honest, she may have deserved better than him.
I wondered day and night why she stuck around with him after so long. She explained it before, but it still didn’t make sense to me to be with someone who didn’t want to love you—or be in love with anyone for that matter—but they still got drunk together, and she still hugged on him and kissed him.
I couldn’t even be pissed about it. She was trying…and failing.
Before I knew it, it was our last day. We’d packed up and cleaned most of what we could in the beach house, and were eventually on Cane’s jet again, flying back to Georgia.
Something had changed, though. On our way to Destin, Cane had no problem sitting beside Kelly, but during our flight to Georgia, he was sitting in the row behind her, working on his laptop. She was reading and sipping on sparkling water. I had a book glued to my face, but I wasn’t really reading it. I was too busy passing glances between the two of them. Not once had she looked at him, and not once had he looked at her. Now that I thought about it, I realized they’d hardly said two words to each other that whole day.
We got home when the sun was setting, and Mom ordered Italian for everyone, but mostly to thank Cane for all he’d done for us.
I sat on a stool at the island counter with Frankie beside me, munching on garlic breadsticks. The beach scene was over, and I was glad to finally be able to devour some bread again and not have to worry about my belly pooch sticking out. Frankie and I had worked hard for our summer bodies, doing strenuous workouts in her backyard, and I was happy it had paid off. Not to mention that my softball conditioning and workouts helped me for the most part.
“I should probably get going,” Kelly announced as she picked up her handbag from the counter. “I have a lot of work to catch up on, and I promised to meet a client first thing tomorrow morning.” She sighed while walking to Frankie and me. She dropped a kiss on the side of our heads and then went to Mom to give her a tight hug. “Thank you guys so much for letting me join you for the trip. It was just what I needed to be inspired again.”