With his hand on mine, he guides us to the water. The coldness of the water makes me pull back a bit, but his chest to my back fills me with heat. The flutter in my stomach starts as I look at our hands in the water. The stingray swims by us, just missing the tips of our fingers, but another one comes over now. My hand is entwined with his as the stingray swims right under my palm. I laugh as another comes. This time, he lets go of my hand a bit. “See,” he says, his face right near my face. I turn so close to him, and all I can do is smile and look into his eyes. “Told you I would protect you,” he says softly, not moving from beside me, and if I move just a touch into him, my lips could be on his. If I thought my heart was beating hard before, it’s nothing like it is now. My whole body is on fire, and my head is screaming at me to lean in and kiss him. Everything in me is screaming, but it’s the guilt that comes crashing into me like a bucket of ice water thrown on you.
I quickly blink away the tears and turn back, shaking his hand off mine by taking mine out of the water. “You okay?” he asks me as I step out of his touch and toward the side, where I grab a bunch of paper towels.
“Yeah.” I push away everything that I’m feeling, looking up at him. His eyes look into mine as the guilt of loving him hits me, knowing I’m never going to be able to tell him. “That was cool,” I say, turning to hand him the towels I wiped my hand on. “Thank you for helping me face my fear.” The smile on my face is so forced it hurts my cheeks. “What’s next, the lion’s den?”
Chapter 11
Dylan
“Dylan!” I hear her yelling my name from downstairs when the doorbell rings. “She’s here.”
I grab my suitcase and head out of the room, stopping when I see three suitcases in front of Alex’s door. I grab one and walk down the steps as she stands there holding Mac’s leash. “Here is the leash.” She hands it to the woman, and Mac just sits by Alex’s side. “She likes lots of love and kisses,” Alex says, getting down in front of Mac. “We will be back in two weeks, and I’m going to bring you so many surprises.”
“What are you going to bring her back from Hawaii?” I look down at Alex, and my chest contracts. Yesterday, when we were at the aquarium, I was so close to kissing her, and then she jumped away from me, probably with disgust.
“I already bought her stuff, but I’m going to give it to her when I come back.” She stands up, and I see her wearing a white short-sleeved one-piece cotton dress. “Stop being bitchy.” She turns back and hands the girl the leash. “You can send me the login and password, and we will check in as soon as we land.”
Mac looks back at us, walking to the van and getting in. Alex stands there waving her hand at her. “She’s going to be fine. She has a better time there than she has with us.”
“Speak for yourself,” she huffs out. “I’m a fucking fireball to be around.” She crosses her arms, pushing her tits up, and I have to turn around before I moan. “The car is going to be here in ten minutes.”
She walks up the stairs, and I see her trying to bring her suitcase down. I run up the stairs two at a time. “Would you move out of the way before you break your head, and then I get my ass kicked by your father and my father for not doing it for you?”
She looks at me, and I look back at her as she glares. “You’re so fucking crabby,” she huffs out and walks back down the steps, her flip-flops making a racket as she gets down. “You need to eat a piece of bread or something.” She walks to the kitchen.
“Bread is not going to help me with this,” I mumble to myself and bring the bags down. I don’t even know what is going to help me with all these feelings. The only thing I do know is that I need to get over these crazy feelings I have for her. Feelings that came out of the blue, or did they? “Why the hell do you have three bags for two weeks?” I shout toward the kitchen, and she comes back with a hat on her head and her carry-on bag in one hand.
“Dylan.” She says my name, and I have this sudden urge to ask her to moan my name. I close my eyes, trying to get the sound out of my head. “This is not the first vacation we are going on. You ask me this every single year.”