Beach Reads Box Set

by Madden-Mills, Ilsa

  More memories drowned me.

  Last night, with each kiss, each touch, each soft caress, he had silently been asking me to fall the rest of the way with him. And I had. I had followed his lead, and on the way down, he had made love to me until my heart was beating like he’d wanted it to. Like I’d wanted it to. My world had changed. Inside, my walls had fallen down and he was all around me. All I knew. All I wanted to know.

  Kline had gone from being my boss to my best friend, my lover, and my intoxication until he let the needle break off in my skin. This wasn’t a little cut that would scab over and flake off. No. He had cut me so deep I hadn’t even bled.

  The pain was so unbearable that all my emotions fled the scene. I switched from distraught—fighting the sob threatening to bubble up from my lungs—to robotic.

  I didn’t want to talk to him. I didn’t want to ask him why, after the night we had shared together, he would still want to meet someone who wasn’t me. Initially, when I’d found out Kline was Ruck, and he had been chatting with TAPRoseNEXT without knowing it was me, it didn’t upset me. I looked at the entire situation with a rational, understanding head. Because I had done the same thing.

  But the second I had met Thatch, the guy whose picture was on Bad_Ruck’s TapNext profile, I’d known I needed to stop. I knew I wanted Kline. I knew I was falling in love with him, and I didn’t want anything to ruin that. Which was why I had told Cassie to take the reins. Who would’ve thought that the whole time I was chatting with Ruck, I was actually talking to Kline?

  It was the ultimate mindfuck.

  Unfortunately for me, that mindfuck had just gotten a whole lot worse.

  This was different from a simple response to another woman on an online dating profile. He was requesting to meet someone that wasn’t me, someone he knew was my best friend.

  What on earth did he think he was going to gain from that? Was he planning on being in a relationship with me while screwing Cassie on the side?

  God, it didn’t add up, didn’t seem like the Kline I knew, but the proof was right in front of my face.

  I felt so devastated. Knowing what we shared and all of the possibilities of what we could have been, why would Kline have risked that? In a matter of a few sentences, he had just ruined everything. Destroyed us. Destroyed me.

  I felt sick. Nausea coiled my stomach, constant and unrelenting.

  The minute the seatbelt lights went off, I made a beeline for the lavatory. My breakfast filled the small metal toilet within seconds. It took a good five minutes before I could stop dry heaving. I held myself up over the sink, staring at a woman I didn’t even recognize. I did my best to clean up, splashing cool water on my face and rinsing my mouth out, before I made my way back to my seat.

  God, I had never felt so cold, so fucking alone.

  I didn’t want to feel like this. I wanted the pilot to turn the plane around so I could talk to Kline. I wanted to forget that TapNext conversation had ever happened.

  But I wasn’t going to be that woman who couldn’t step back and face the facts.

  Even though it was going to kill me, I was going to be the woman who knew when to end things. The woman who could end a relationship with a man—even though she loved him—because she knew she didn’t deserve to be treated like that.

  He had told me he loved me, he had touched me and kissed me in ways a man would only do when he was in love. But while he had been doing that, he had also found time to request to meet another woman. These were not the actions of a man I wanted to be in a relationship with.

  For the entire five-and-half-hour flight, my mind raced. Every memory was a picture in my head, his betrayal scratching across the surface of each photograph and tainting it forever.

  I was fucking miserable, stuck on an old airplane with no Wi-Fi after finding out the man I wanted to spend the rest of my life with was going behind my back and requesting to meet other women on the side.

  If he did that knowing it was my best friend, what else was he doing behind my back?

  I knew it was crazy to go in that direction, but who could blame me?

  Trying to talk this out with him was pointless. I could only take so much, and a nasty breakup would push me over the edge. I was afraid of what I might say to him. Hell, I’d have to hold my breath if I was in the same room as him, because breathing the same air meant breathing him in.

  And my heart couldn’t take any more.

  * * *

  I walked off the plane, my mind fogged with heartbreak and anger. I wanted to scream. I wanted to cry. I wanted to curl up in the fetal position and sleep for forty years.

  Pre-life-altering screenshot, I would’ve sent Kline a text message telling him I had landed, but I didn’t even bother turning on my phone. What was the fucking point? I had nothing to say.

  Eventually, I found baggage claim and grabbed my suitcase.

  I had options. Either I could let this drag me down and turn me into someone I didn’t want to be, or I could find a way to get past this.

  My decision was made and there was no going back to what we had.

  There was no explanation he could give that would fix this, save us.

  Steadfast in my choice, I hailed a cab and threw my bags in the back before the driver could even get out of his seat.

  “Winthrop Building, Fifth Avenue,” I instructed without a second thought.

  When he pulled up to the building, I tossed money in the front seat and hopped out, grabbing my suitcases from the trunk. It was afternoon and everyone would be there. My coworkers would be roaming the halls. Dean would be waiting for me to attend the meeting.

  Fuck.

  No way could I handle sitting through a meeting. I had to go in, do what I needed to do, and get the hell out of there with as little interaction as possible.

  I was striding off the elevator within minutes. I offered a few small waves to Meryl and Cynthia as I passed them in the hall before ducking into my office. Leaning against the closed door, I shut my eyes, biting my cheek to hold back the tears.

  God, I didn’t have time for a breakdown. I had about twenty minutes before Dean would stroll in, ready to escort me to the conference room.

  I sat behind my desk and booted up my computer. My hands shook, and my foot tapped against the tile as nervous energy radiated off of me in unpredictable waves.

  A letter of resignation was typed out at a quick, efficient pace. I sent a screenshot of the TapNext conversation to my email and printed it out.

  And then I was walking down the hall, toward the one place I didn’t really want to be.

  “Oh, hi, Georgia!” Leslie stopped me as I rounded the corner. “Is Mr. Brooks back? I forgot to give him a few messages last week about some meeting…” She scrunched her eyebrows, her pea-sized brain trying to remember. “I think it was important, but, like, I’m not really sure.”

  “He won’t be back until tomorrow.”

  “Oh.” Her huge mouth jutted out into a pout. “Are you feeling okay? You look, like, really terrible today.”

  Wow. As if my day wasn’t already fantastic.

  I didn’t even have the energy to form a sarcastic retort. I just nodded, because she was right; I looked like shit.

  “Hey, do you mind going into Dean’s office and letting him know that I had to go home? Tell him I’m sick and I’ll call him later.”

  He would be crazy pissed at me but would understand. Plus, I was betting on the fact that Leslie would ramble on and on about my haggard appearance. It was the first time I could use her obsession with being the prettiest girl in the room to my advantage.

  “Uh…okay,” she begrudgingly agreed.

  You’d think I was the intern in this scenario, asking my superior for a favor.

  The second I stepped into Kline’s office, my heart clenched. I glanced around at the familiar surroundings, taking everything in. Knowing I wouldn’t last long, I pulled open a drawer on his desk in search of paper. My eyes got blurry when they caugh
t on a photograph of us in the Hamptons resting on top of everything else. We were sitting on the porch, his arm wrapped around my shoulder. I was looking into the camera, grinning, while he gazed down at me, a soft, smitten smile on his lips.

  What should have been a happy memory only made me want to throw up again.

  I was starting to wonder if I ever really knew Kline Brooks.

  I had to get out of his office and back to my apartment. The impending breakdown was sitting in my throat.

  Slamming the drawer closed, I wrote out a simple note on the top edge of the screenshot Cassie had sent me, placing it on top of my resignation letter.

  Walking out of his office and getting on the elevator, I was certain I’d never be the same after this. I knew getting myself to a place where I even felt like smiling was going to be the hardest thing I ever did. I knew there was no getting over Kline.

  But I also knew I deserved better.

  I’d find a new job. I’d find a way to move on.

  And I’d be just fine pretending that I was.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Kline

  I shook the ice in my glass, watching as the cubes moved from side to side and melted into one another. One water droplet plopped from each surface to the next until it finally disappeared into the shallow amber liquid at the bottom.

  I’d taken to drinking scotch on the flight to pass the time, the bouncing of my knee having grown old within the first fifteen minutes. Georgia was still on a plane too, having taken off precisely two hours and seventeen minutes ahead of me—according to the FAA—but every minute felt like a lifetime, and it took real concentration to keep myself from bombarding her turned-off phone with a stream of sappy messages.

  Last night—the last few weeks of nights—had been the best of my life. Everything I’d worked for, built for myself, and strived to keep healthy felt like a drop in the life-bucket. Finding someone who made me anticipate each day and crave her company—someone who made me feel even more like me—well, that was what made a man realize the truth, the importance, in working to live rather than living to work.

  I wanted my days to start and end with her, and I wanted the privilege to have even more of her in the middle.

  Put simply, I was in love.

  And it was irrevocably clear why I never had been before. None of them were her.

  “Gemma?” I asked like the pathetic shell of a man I had become. I’d told Georgia I loved her, but it hadn’t been enough. I needed some kind of confirmation. Some kind of peace. Some kind of promise of forever.

  Gemma had the grace to smile. “She should be landing sometime in the next five minutes, sir.”

  I could have been the butt of many jokes, the object of numerous men’s end-of-world postulation, but I couldn’t find it in me to care. And it was clear I’d been feeling that way for the greater part of the morning.

  Cutting short a meeting with Wallace Fellers, one of my biggest regular investors, and heading straight for the airport only to chase Georgia’s plane across the country was not exactly precedented behavior.

  The flight attendant’s phone rang, and my head jerked up from my lap at the sound.

  Gemma laughed as she hung it up and showed compassion for my pitiful existence by delivering the news from air traffic control immediately. “She should be on the ground, sir.”

  Phone in hand from the cupholder at my side, I scrolled to her number and dialed.

  Two short rings gave way to her voicemail, and I hung up without leaving a message.

  I knew it was crazy, dialing someone the moment the wheels of their plane touched the ground, obsessing over their arrival so valiantly in an effort just to hear their voice that I couldn’t wait the five-minute security delay a Google search would imply.

  But I was a very sick man, the first stages of love overwhelming my cells and multiplying by the minute. It was aggressive like most terminal cases, taking down one organ after the next until I had no choice but to succumb—succumb to the crazy, desperate lengths to make contact and the desire to swaddle myself in her presence and never unwrap.

  I typed out a text instead.

  Me: After a few bribes and several heinous displays of my money and influence, I got the FAA to give me an exact schedule of your arrival time. Call me as soon as you can.

  Several minutes and an intense one-man conversation later, I added the words I should have included in the first place.

  Me: PS-I love you.

  When she didn’t answer immediately, I knew I was one short step away from throwing myself off the proverbial ledge. I couldn’t take it anymore. I had to do something else, be something else—if for nothing more than the sake of my poor, overexcited heart.

  A nap. That was the only answer.

  Determined, I sunk into my seat, reclined the back, and forced my eyes closed.

  I pictured her smile and her hair, and as I focused really hard and gave myself over to the dream, I could even smell her perfect Georgia smell.

  * * *

  I woke hours later to the jolt of our wheels meeting the pavement of the runway. Gemma smiled and waved as my eyes met hers, and I jumped to pull my seat back to upright and grab my phone from the cupholder.

  No messages showed on the screen, so I unlocked it to be sure, but no amount of hope could make the status change.

  Nothing.

  No calls. No texts. No messages from Rose. I checked each and every folder rigorously, searching for some phone-cyberspace loophole that’d robbed me of the one thing I desired so much.

  But ten minutes and a mild case of carpal tunnel later, I still came up empty.

  I prided myself on being a smart man, and something didn’t feel right.

  But I quieted my thoughts with the power of sheer will and unbuckled my seatbelt as we pulled to a stop.

  She’d had a meeting to get to immediately upon landing, and as much as I’d bitched about her waiting for a later plane, she’d already had it scheduled to the very last possible minute.

  With New York as her habitat, it probably took every ounce of concentration and a pledge of sainthood to make it there on time, in one piece, and with an inkling of schmooze left in the tank. She wouldn’t have much left for me.

  I moved to the front of the plane, re-strategizing on the fly and focusing on the element of surprise. I was here, in the same city, free to chase her down until the sun came up if I had to. She didn’t know I’d flown home earlier than expected and keeping it that way would only amplify the reunion.

  Jesus. Yeah. I liked the sound of that.

  “Thanks, Gem,” I said, giving her a genuine smile as she stepped to the side of the main cabin door to let me by.

  “Anytime, Mr. Brooks.”

  I took two steps down the stairs when she called my name again. I looked back at her over my shoulder.

  “She’s very lucky, sir.”

  I shook my head and laughed.

  “Me,” I corrected, tapping my chest with a wink before scooting down the rest of the stairs to a waiting Frank.

  He stood, holding an open door and wearing a smile.

  “Mr. Brooks.”

  “Hey, Frank,” I greeted. “Straight to the office, okay?”

  I’d start at the beginning and work my way around the city until I found her from there. I couldn’t wait to see her face.

  “Yes, sir.”

  * * *

  The lights of the office were dimmed enough that they rubbed off on my hope, but I headed for the back anyway. As long as I was here, I’d check my desk for messages and change into one of my spare shirts before heading for Georgia and Cassie’s apartment.

  I kept my pace to a near jog, but considering the strength of my desire to run, I counted it as a victory.

  My door was cracked, the lamp at my desk illuminating the immediate surrounding space softly. My eyebrows pulled together at the sight, but I didn’t slow my gait, striding for the beckoning light at a canter.

  The surfac
e was clear except for two loose sheets of paper. I shuffled them to the side in a hurry, grabbing for the tray at the back where Pam often placed my messages when the photocopy caught my eye.

  It looked like a screenshot of a message window on a phone.

  At the top, a few short strokes of delicate scrawl demanded my immediate attention.

  Ruck,

  Of all the people in the world…my best friend?

  I hate that I still love you after seeing this,

  but I can’t be with someone who lies to me.

  This doesn’t hurt good.

  Benny

  One word bled into the next as I tried to make sense of the simple sentiment, but a mushrooming cloud of dread jumped and swooped, swallowing me whole.

  Bold and cruel, the screen of the messaging page of the TapNext app taunted me.

  TAPRoseNEXT (7:00PM): You’re a very nice guy, but I can’t continue talking with you anymore. I’ve gotten more serious with the man I’m seeing and this just doesn’t feel right. I’m sorry. Good luck with everything, Ruck.

  BAD_Ruck (6:45AM): I get it. I do. But I think we should meet in person, just the two of us. Please, Rose.

  “No,” I muttered, reading the words in a flash and reliving each of the seconds that led up to them and followed. “No, no, no, noooooo!” I screamed into the echoey silence.

  So lost in the haze of new and all-encompassing love, I’d foolishly, faithfully believed I’d get the chance to straighten everything out in my time. Practiced, planned, and in a completely unmessy setting. That was what I’d been after, the meeting in person. I figured I could control the situation. She’d have the space to react and I’d have the chance to explain. I’d naïvely thought an in-person revelation could even be a little idyllic. But as I ran through the hours and the days I’d kept it to myself—the time I’d harbored my secret even after learning of our faux foursome with our friends—I knew I’d missed my chance.