Make Me Choose (Bayshore Book 4)

by Ember Leigh

  I must have had that smile on my face a hundred times in Aruba.

  “You just get back from your trip?” he asks, unbuttoning the cuffs of his shirt.

  “Earlier this week. I’ve been laying low.” I rub my forehead. My thoughts are turning dark again, which means I just need to take the plunge. “Hey, so, if I theoretically decide to move to Aruba in the future, do you think Dad would think even less of me than he does now?”

  Dom’s brow lifts. “That came out of left field. Are you planning on moving to Aruba?”

  “No, no, I’m just thinking about it.”

  “I can’t keep up with you,” Dom says with a laugh. “You’ve been more places in the past year that I’ve been in my entire life, real life and dreams combined.”

  I smile, but it fades quickly. “I’m just thinking I might shake things up. Again. For like, the millionth time.”

  “Then do it,” Dom says simply. “That’s what you do, after all. Why would it be different now?”

  I feel that same tug inside my chest, the one that always precedes thinking about or looking at the shame that lurks inside me. “Because it’s been too many times. I feel like all Dad does is make fun of his lost, drifting second-to-last kid. The second-to-last who is actually in last fucking place.”

  Dom frowns, his gaze not wavering from mine as my words hang in the air.

  “That’s not true,” Dom says. “I know Dad was harsh on all of us, and we had a helluva competitive childhood, but we’re all adults now. We can do what we want with our lives. And you aren’t obligated to live a version of life that he wants for you. Trust me, it’s a lesson I’ve learned.” When London lets out a little hm, Dom adds, “Am still learning.”

  Watching my mid-thirties brother admit this same struggle is somehow relieving. It’s one thing to be in a quarter-life crisis and not know what you’re doing—hello, hi that’s me—but when the white-coated doctor admits it, suddenly there’s legitimacy. And thank God. Because I’ve felt like the textbook definition of a fucking joke for way too long.

  “You’re doing what you want and making it work. What’s wrong with that?” Dom adds.

  “Nothing, is the answer,” London says.

  “But I have nothing to show for myself,” I say, scooping out the last dregs of my doubts from the bottom of my heart. “Look, you’ve started this clinic. Grayson started his own business. Connor started his own business. What have I done?”

  “Are you kidding me? You’ve been living outside the margins, which is basically the impossible option for any Daly offspring,” Dom says with a disbelieving laugh. “Don’t overlook that achievement.”

  The comment feels like a high honor coming from my eldest brother. I contemplate my drawing, and after a moment, Dom asks, “Who is that?”

  “Nova.” My chest tightens again, but not for the same reason as before. Now, it’s just reminding me of how badly I hurt her. What I walked away from. How glorious things could have been. “We’ve known each other for a few years, but I fell in love with her in Aruba. And then I didn’t just leave her, I hurt her.”

  Dom frowns. “Why’d you do that?”

  “Because I’m not good at the long-term. What happens if I fail? It’s better not to try, right? Avoid the pain.”

  Dom smirks. “That’s interesting, coming from you.” Of course he’d think that. He doesn’t know just how deep my secret runs. Before I can even think about sharing the details, he adds, “You’ve done everything, gone everywhere. You’re essentially fearless. But you’re too afraid to fall in love. You can break your bones in a parachuting accident, but your heart is too precious?”

  When he puts it like that, it’s hard to refute.

  “I’m not criticizing,” Dom hurries to add. “I was in that boat with you. But let me tell me you. The risk of heartbreak is worth what you find in the process.”

  He’s got a point. London and Dom share a sparkling look. Which reminds me of our last conversation a few weeks ago.

  “Well, then, I guess you’d like to know you were right, Dom,” I tell him. “About the inheritance. The necklace that Grammy gifted me. It turns out Nova has the same one.”

  London gasps, and Dom just looks supremely satisfied.

  “Is it a common necklace?” London asks.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Dom interjects. “She has the same one. What are the odds of that?”

  Part of me is right there with him. Another part of me is deeply worried that I am just distracting myself with fanciful stories and the temporary insanity of lust disguised as love.

  “I don’t know what it means,” I say.

  “I do,” Dom says decisively, crossing his arms. London is grinning into her palm like this is a big secret that everyone has known about but me. “It means follow the inheritance.”

  “You mean move to Aruba?” I ask him, trying to sound like it’s outrageous when it’s not. It’s the only thing I’ve been thinking of for the past five days.

  “Maybe. But only you know.” Dom gives me a wink and stands, giving my shoulder a squeeze. “But if it does mean that, then I’m going to insist you have lunch with us. Because maybe your time in Bayshore is limited.”

  I smile despite the swirling uncertainties. The idea seems too big, too wild. If I go to Aruba, there’s a high chance Nova will say fuck you and never speak to me again.

  But when I think about Thailand, it doesn’t feel half as right as giving Aruba—giving Nova—another shot. Not just giving it a shot, either, but a deeply invested attempt. Something I plan for. Something I fucking invest my time and heart and future into.

  And maybe what Dom and London are getting at isn’t exactly about following inheritances or signs.

  Maybe it’s about following love. Even if it ends up in a broken bone, or heart.

  If that’s the case, then there’s only one place I can go.

  Chapter 30

  NOVA

  Three weeks into my brand-new Aruban life, I’m pretty sure it’s actually been three years instead.

  For being on island time, things sure move fast. It only takes a couple days on the job to realize why Edward was so eager to hire someone. Resort staff members quickly fill me in during gossipy breaks on the beach about the last wedding photographer and why he fled the island so quickly. Believe it or not, the wild hog family that lives in that stand of palms on the north end of the resort isn’t the cause. But even if they hadn’t told me, I would have found out for myself.

  The resort wedding schedule is breakneck. They don’t just need me and a second shooter. They need triplicates of us. This resort crams in as many weddings as possible, while understaffing as much as possible. What felt like happy luck running into another bridal party at that yoga class the first night on the island is actually a carefully curated dance of housing multiple destination weddings at once and still maintaining the image that each group is the only wedding group of its kind.

  In just three short weeks, I’ve shot fifteen weddings. Which seemed like a mathematical impossibility until I realized the resort is actually much larger than the section I saw as a guest. It’s like a house of mirrors, except with beaches. Just when you think you’ve reached the end, there’s just one more doorway that opens into a new tiny community of tiki huts and pools. It’s never-ending paradise. And I’ve traversed the length of this resort-of-mirrors a hundred times since I officially became an employee.

  What doesn’t help is that I’m doing most of the work myself. If I could call my second shooter an idiot to his face and have it improve his work performance, then I would. Unfortunately, I think if I called Matias an idiot to his face, he’d just take it as a challenge to be worse.

  “Hey. Matias. I said over here.” I jerk my chin toward the dining room for the second wedding we’re shooting for the day. “We need the place settings and the detail shots.”

  He grimaces as if I’ve asked him to clean toilets and saunters off toward the area. If Matias could be replaced
by a mannequin who knew how to take photos, I’d do it in a heartbeat. The only credit to his name is that he knows how to take photos. That doesn’t guarantee that they come out great all the time. There’s a fifty-fifty chance he’ll fuck it up, and one time, he even took a picture of his dick and claimed it was an accident. I can’t wait to fire him—I just can’t find a replacement quite yet. He was the only respondent on my search for the emergency second shooter, and every day that Matias sucks is another day that I miss Weston just a little bit more.

  It’s not because I only value Weston for his helpfulness and ingenuity. His last words to me—that I’m just using him to get this job—still burn through me, and I wish I could stop hurting long enough to consider reaching out to him to set the record straight. But whenever I consider that, I remind myself that reaching out to him is strictly not allowed.

  I will not reach out to a ghoster.

  He made his choice clear. The least I can do is forget about him and move on.

  While Matias lazily takes photos of the dining room, I head for the altar. The florists aren’t missing today, and everything is very much on time. Still, I think the altar that Weston and I rigged up last second looked better. But maybe I’m just biased.

  Biased to everything Weston has touched. And I’m definitely trying to forget about him. It’s just that Weston has somehow become baked into the very fabric of the universe. Everything I do reminds me of him. And whenever I’m working on this side of the resort—where Amelia and Rhys got married—of course every last nook and cranny reminds me of that insanely hot and ultimately heartbreaking week of my life.

  One week shouldn’t have affected me so much. But it did. And all I can do in the aftermath is keep moving forward and focus on my job. After all, I’ve got a lot back home riding on this decision. Namely, the outrageous shock and disgruntlement of my parents, the lofty scorn from Jimmy I’ve heard about through the grapevine, and the endless excitement and beer-drinking of my gram.

  This needs to work out, or else my gram will have celebrated in vain. And I can’t have that.

  Sunshine beats down on me, and I smile despite the stressful schedule ahead of me and the fact that Matias sometimes actually falls asleep standing up. All things considered, I’m glad I took the leap. Even though working with these bridezillas from all corners of the world is a type of torture I didn’t know existed. Edward did a pretty good job of acting like every wedding was as fun and easygoing as Rhys and Amelia’s, which I learned by day three was not the case.

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” a sharp, feminine voice asks from behind me. It’s the type of voice you hear in nightmares. The sort of haughty, condescending question they make movies about.

  I turn around and find Bride #1 for the day. I did her hair and makeup shoot four hours ago, and let me tell you, she asked that same question in that same manner about fifty times during the forty minutes I took photos for her. Yes, more than once a minute.

  “Is everything okay?” I ask as sweetly as I can muster through gritted teeth. She had been openly criticizing her own maid of honor’s dress size when that “best friend” was out of the room, so I can only imagine what sort of insults she hurled my way once I had left the room.

  “Your ‘second shooter’”—she makes exaggerated air quotes—“touched my centerpiece.”

  “I’m sorry, your—”

  “My centerpiece,” she says in a slow drawl. This woman can go from bitchy to intolerable in two seconds flat. “You know, the big decorative arrangement that’s been placed in the center of a room or table for people to enjoy?”

  If I could roll my eyes right into her throat, I would. But it would only hurt both of us, and right now, I only want to hurt her. “Is it broken or damaged in some way?”

  “His fingerprints are on it,” she says with an acid tone.

  “Okay. We’ll clean that up. I think you need to get back to your area right now, because you don’t want—”

  “Jenna?” A male voice calls out from down the boardwalk. Jenna twists and gasps, holding up her hands to shield herself.

  “Damien, don’t look at me, you can’t look at me, I swear to fuck you have to get out of here!”

  While Jenna keeps berating her own fiancé for using his eyes in a common area, Matias saunters up to me like he’s using a slo-mo filter. He raises his camera, oblivious to the bridezilla meltdown happening. It’s awe inspiring, really. Maybe this is another point in his favor: his immunity to drama happening around him.

  “So I got all the pictures,” he drawls.

  “Thanks, Matias,” I say, watching as Jenna swears out her husband-to-be and then eventually bolts back up the sidewalk toward the main building. “I don’t think these two are gonna last. So the fact that you touched her centerpiece probably isn’t a big deal.”

  “I didn’t touch touch it,” he says, as though there are varying levels of touching. We begin walking toward the wedding patio.

  “Whatever. Are we ready for bridal party entry photos?”

  He rolls his eyes. “You tell me.”

  I grab his camera, feeling a lot like the mother of a petulant child. I scan the photos quickly. He did decent work. At least there are no dick pics this time. However, there is a photo of his hand touching the centerpiece. I’m not sure if he took that as part of a personal vendetta against the bride or just out of sheer luck.

  “Great. Let’s get into place.” The groom and groomsmen have been filing toward the altar, along with the officiant and some of the guests. As we near the wedding patio, I hear the muffled sounds of someone crying. There’s one thing for certain: Amelia and Rhys’s wedding was by far the most chaotic fun, but every other wedding is its own brand of chaotic stressful. Every bride-and-groomzilla has held its own treasure trove of surprises, and this Jenzilla is sure to surprise me yet again.

  But I couldn’t have counted on just how much of a surprise she had in store for me. When I near the veranda where the bridal party is gathering, I see Jenna crumpled into the arms of…a man. A man who, at first glance, on an instinctual, visceral, completely unfathomable level, makes my veins turn electric and every inch of my skin goes on high alert. A man who, from the back and from a distance, reminds me of Weston.

  If I ever thought three weeks would be enough time to get over Weston, I already knew I was wrong, but this happening right here would convince me I’m extra wrong. Except I’m not stupid enough to think that it would only take me three weeks to get over Weston. It might take me years. Possibly a lifetime. So at least I’m mentally prepared for the long road ahead of me.

  The man is quietly shushing the bride. He’s not her fiancé, because I passed him fifty yards back, and because her fiancé never had the same hair style as Weston Daly. Besides, he’s dressed in street clothes, not formal wear, with a black shirt stretching across strong shoulders and gray board shorts. Jenna’s mother and bridesmaids—including the one she made fun of—are gathered around her, cooing softly and sending discrete looks of confusion to one another.

  “I just don’t know if I want to go through with it,” Jenna is wailing as I approach.

  “Honey, you don’t even know this man,” her mother gently chides.

  “But he helped pick up my bouquet,” Jenna insists. The man extracts himself from her grip, something in his movement looking a little too familiar. When he steps away and turns toward me, all the air inside my body departs in one graceless puff.

  Because that man doesn’t just seem like Weston Daly. He is Weston Daly.

  His gaze lands on me, and we both freeze. It’s only been three weeks, yet he looks so different. I swear his hair is longer, his face somehow different. More chiseled. Almost more worn, like he’s been living the past few weeks in a personal hell because he’s had to be away from me.

  That’s what I’d like to believe, at least. But it can’t be true. Even though maybe it is true, because he’s here now.

  I can’t make any sense of his being here.
None at all. So all I do is gape and stare and get jostled by Jenna.

  “Don’t take a picture of me,” she warns, even though I’m physically unable to operate my camera right now due to Weston.

  “Weston?” I squeak.

  He takes careful steps toward me. Our gazes lock, and the heat that zips through me tells me I am farther away than ever from reaching my get over Weston goal. All the repressed longing and love I feel for this man suddenly bubbles up and spills over. Tears are pressing to escape, and I can’t even say why.

  “Don’t leave,” Weston says. “Please.”

  “I…” My brain short circuits. I forget entirely what I’m supposed to be doing here. “I’m not going to. I mean, I can’t. I’m working. Do you know the bride?”

  “I ran into him when I was coming back from being observed by my fiancé, which was your fault because you sent that stupid oaf to fondle my centerpiece,” Jenna accuses me in a tear-clogged voice. There is so much to say right now to Weston—so many questions to ask—but this bridezilla meltdown makes both of us perk up in a special way. I can see Weston’s fixit-guy gears turning. He turns toward Jenna.

  “Stupid oaf?”

  “That stupid shooter of hers!” Jenna jabs her finger at some point past me, where I can only assume Matias is standing behind me, fast asleep while holding his camera in his hands. Or maybe exposing himself. Or better yet—taking dick pics while sleeping.

  “Jenna, dear,” her mother begins.

  “He’s stupid, but he’s not an oaf,” I say, out of zero loyalty to Matias and negative five loyalty to Jenna. “Well, maybe slightly an oaf. But not a totally stupid oaf.”

  Weston’s icy blue gaze slides past me, landing on Matias. His eyes narrow, and something goes tight in the air. “Are you…?”

  “What?” I ask. We have so much to talk about, so much to catch up on, so much left to argue about, it seems ridiculous to address this of all things in the middle of Jenna’s wedding. The violins begin playing from the ceremony area, which makes Jenna burst into tears.