Images of them strolling the boardwalks, eating ice cream, and other such nonsense fill my brain.
Or they’re inside and the reason they’re not answering is that they’re otherwise occupied.
I pound on the door again, hard enough it rattles in the frame.
At last, footsteps sound on the other side.
The hairs lift on my neck, and I brace myself for a fight. I’m expecting to see Raegan, but when the door cracks, it’s not her.
“Hawhoh, brozuh.” Sebastian peers out from the gap in the frame, his mouth full of something, the chain lock still engaged.
“Where is she?” I demand.
“Who?”
I slam a hand against the door, and he jumps.
“Calm down, man.”
“Sebastian, if you don’t open this door…”
His gaze runs down my form. “You’re wrinkled, Harry. You blow in on a tornado?”
I reach through the gap and grab his shirt. “Open. The damn. Door.”
Eyes widening, he reaches for the chain and slides it open.
I push the door in and step inside before he can think of getting me back out. My brother looks completely at ease, including the amusement in his expression. He’s wearing a T-shirt and boxers, eating…
“What is that?”
“Cinnamon Toast Crunch. Raegan brought it for me from America.” The sound of her name on his lips reminds me why I’m here, why my blood pressure feels dangerously high, before he grabs another bite. “This is good, Harry. They’ve been holding out on us.”
I hit him, hard enough the blow or the surprise sends him to the carpet.
The bowl falls from his hands, and cereal flies everywhere—his face, the carpet, the foyer.
“Jesus,” he gasps, rubbing his jaw. “Did you have to do that? Waste a perfectly good bowl of the stuff? This was almost the last—“
“What’s going on?”
We both freeze as Raegan emerges from the hall in the suite. She’s wrapped in a white towel, her hair dark and dripping around her shoulders.
When she spots me, her mouth falls open. She’s obviously stunned to see me, emotions chasing one another across her face. Disbelief. Anger.
“What did you do?” she demands.
It’s half her sudden appearance that slams into me and half how she looks.
Fresh, wary, beautiful.
The woman I spent months loving and even longer aching for is here, a few feet away.
“Not nearly enough.”
Before I can think twice, I step over my brother and cross the room, grab the back of Raegan’s neck, and drag her to me.
I crush her lips beneath mine. She tastes like toothpaste and home, and I kiss her with desperation and anger and exhaustion.