“We didn’t.”
But he had hoped. I gave him a watery smile.
The door opened yet again and more people filed into the room. This time it was the woman from the picture with my grandmother, Nash’s abuela. She was followed by a woman with long, dark curly hair and green eyes. Behind her was a tall man with lighter brown hair. I knew right away it was his parents. He looked a lot like his mother.
“Nash!” his abuela cried and then broke into rapid-fire Spanish that made my head spin. I watched him, wondering if he understood what the heck she was saying.
He smiled and nodded. Then he returned her monologue with one of his own—matching her speed.
Wow. He really talked slow to me on that island. And I still hadn’t understood.
Before I could ponder that further, he finished talking, and all eyes swung to me. His mother and grandmother both converged, wrapping me in a hug at the same time. They started talking and exclaiming in Spanish once more, and I sat there in the center of them, feeling like I was starring in some sitcom on TV.
“Mom,” Nash said with a laugh. “Ava doesn’t speak Spanish.”
His mother pulled back and looked at me with tears in her eyes. She stroked the side of my cheek with her hand and I actually saw affection in her eyes. “Bella,” she murmured.
“Si,” Nash replied. “She’s very beautiful.”
His grandmother kissed me. “You look like your abuela.”
That was the first time anyone ever told me that. I started to cry.
Everyone started talking at once. People were patting my back. My mother was going on about some movie about people who talked to coconuts when they were stranded.
“Everybody out!” Nash yelled over the chaos.
Everyone stopped talking and looked at him. “We love you all. We can’t wait to spend time with you. But we need a minute.”
To my surprise, they left. My father was the last to go, pressing a kiss to my head. Then he gave Nash an approving look and shut the door behind him.
I collapsed against the table. “It’s like a circus.”
He chuckled. “Your mother seemed nice.”
I burst out laughing. “Tell her that she should have been an actress and she will love you forever.”
“So what now?” he said, his voice taking on a serious tone.
It was the question I’d been dreading since we first crashed onto that island. Probably because I knew what I had to do, what this would come to if we ever made it out alive.
Part of me actually wished we had been able to stay there. Even with everything that happened, things on that island seemed simpler.
“Hey,” he said softly, coming up and wrapping his arms around my chilled frame. “Why don’t we go to the hotel? Shower, get some food. Then we’ll talk.”
I snuggled into him a little closer, taking a deep breath. He still smelled like the ocean.
“Okay,” I replied, my answer muffled against his shirt.
I wasn’t used to him wearing a shirt.
“Where’d you get the shirt?” I asked.
He grinned. “One of the nurses gave it to me.”
Damn nurses were probably checking him out.
“Come on,” he said, lifting me down off the table. I was so incredibly tired all of the sudden.
“The doctor didn’t bring my paperwork back.”
“We’ll sic your mother on him.”
I laughed.
He reached for the knob on the door and then stopped. He spun, grabbing me by the shoulders, and looked so far into my eyes I wondered if he saw my soul.
“We’re going to be okay,” he whispered. “Even if it takes a while.”
He kissed me.
It was our first kiss that wasn’t on a beach. Our first kiss in the “real world.” It was everything it always was: hot, consuming, and deep. I curled my hands into his T-shirt, gripping the cotton fabric tightly. He turned his head one way and then the other, covering every angle he could. His mouth was an onslaught to my already overwhelmed senses. Kissing him was something I would never ever get enough of.
Yet…
Yet this felt like the last time.
It was like we were saying good-bye.
Like when he gazed into my eyes, into my soul, he saw exactly what I tried to hide, exactly what I refused to admit.
And it was like he was telling me it was okay.
The kiss ended too soon. We stood there, bodies pressed together, my hands still tangled in his shirt. He kissed my nose. He kissed my forehead.
“You ready?” he asked, hoarse.
No. “Yes.”
He opened the door and stepped out into the hallway. I didn’t move. My feet were glued to the floor. I knew the minute we walked out of this room, everything would change.
When I didn’t follow, he turned back. He gazed at me so tenderly I literally felt my heart crack.
“Bella,” he murmured, stoking my hair. “I know what you’re thinking.”
“You do?” My voice trembled.
“Yes. You think we need to go our separate ways.”
The crack deepened a little bit more. “What if what we feel…?” I gestured between us. “What if it was all just a product of our environment? Two people trying to survive?”
“Do you really think that?” He bent down a little to look directly into my eyes.
“I don’t know,” I whispered, upset. I was confused. I was overwhelmed. The crash hadn’t seemed like that big of a deal on the island. Now, it felt like my life was split in two.
Before and after.
In some odd way, I felt like I was getting a fresh start, a do-over of sorts. It seemed like I needed to really think about my life, my feelings, and not just shuffle through the next part of my life. In a way, that crash killed the old me, and in her place was a woman who was ready to take on life and make it what she wanted it to be.
Did I want Nash?
So much it hurt.
But jumping into something seemed wrong. It seemed like I needed to find my… land legs. Like I had spent all this time at sea and I needed to get my balance again on land.
It seemed the fair thing would be to let him go.
They say if you love something—someone—you should set them free…
I felt like being a hoarder.
He took my face in his hands. “I’m going to give you some space, bella. The time I think you need.”
“But what if I need you too?”
He smiled. “Don’t worry. You haven’t seen the last of me.”
Then he walked me down the hallway, placing me in the arms of my father. Both our families filed out of the hospital, toward the waiting cabs at the curb.
Nash and I were the last to get into our separate cars.
Our eyes met. I watched his dark, unruly head disappear inside the car. His cab drove away. I sat down beside my mother.
We survived a plane crash.
We survived a band of pirates.
We survived a frenemy.
But it seemed the biggest challenge we would face was the one that presented after our rescue…
Reality.
ONE MONTH LATER…
24
I glanced at the clock and did a double take. Seemed like I just got here and already it was time to leave.
Time flies, I mused, placing the last stem into a gorgeous blown glass vase. I carried it over to the giant glass-front cooler and placed it inside, where it would stay fresh and gorgeous until tomorrow morning’s delivery.
After I cleaned up a little around the back, I reluctantly grabbed my bag and stepped out onto the sidewalk. It was fall but much too early for it to feel that way in Miami. More than likely, the temperatures wouldn’t even begin to cool off until mid- to late-October. And even when part of the East Coast was buried in snow, Miami would remain mild.
I walked slowly to the bus stop, in no real hurry to get home. In truth, the only time that went by fast was the time
I spent at work. Every other second, minute, hour of the day seemed to drag by.
Nighttime was the worst.
I pushed away those thoughts and rode the bus home, trying not to think about the island, Duke, and the nights I spent in the sand… with Nash.
It wasn’t until I arrived home and leaned against the back of the door that I finally let myself have the thought.
The thought that plagued me every day.
The thought that echoed around inside me even when I tried not to listen.
The thought I knew was never going to go away.
I missed him.
I missed Nash so much that I could barely breathe. At first, I thought the reason my appetite didn’t come back, the reason anxiety sometimes gripped me and threatened to never let go was because of the crash, because of the pirates.
But it wasn’t those things.
One day I was in the grocery store, pondering a display of coconuts, when someone behind me called out bella, the word sounding exactly as he said it. So many feelings crashed over me in a single second.
Joy.
Desire.
Longing.
Love.
I spun around so fast that all the coconuts tumbled off the table and rolled around my feet. Yet I barely noticed. My eyes searched for his face, for his curls, for the arms that held me for so many nights.
But it wasn’t him.
It was someone else.
I stood there completely shattering apart as I watched a woman with dark hair run into the arms of a man that was not Nash.
I left the coconuts on the floor and I went home without whatever I went to the store for in the first place. And I cried. I cried so much my eyes swelled.
And that’s when I understood. I knew it wasn’t the fact that we survived the awful experience together. It wasn’t the fact that we bonded in a crisis.
I loved him in spite of those things.
I loved him because there was no one else that would ever make me feel the way he did.
I did exactly what I told myself I wasn’t going to do anymore. I let fear rule my head. I denied my heart because I was afraid to follow it.
I was stupid.
But knowing that couldn’t erase the fact that I pushed him away. That I told him we needed time apart to really know if what was between us was real. He’d agreed. Easily. Did that mean he thought I was right? Did that mean I’d been nothing but someone to chase away the boredom while we were stranded on that island?
I sighed and pushed away from the door. It’d been a month since I’d seen him last… two weeks since I realized that my love for him wasn’t going to go away. I couldn’t go on this way.
I didn’t want to live in limbo anymore.
I went into my bedroom and changed out of my work clothes and pulled on a pair of black leggings and a light-green tank top (okay, so yeah, it reminded me of his eyes). Then I reached for a light oversized sweater and tossed it onto my perfectly made bed.
I pulled the band out of my hair and loosened the French braid it was styled in, letting it wave softly down my back. Just as I was reaching for the sweater, there was a knock at the front door.
I frowned, wondering who on Earth that could be, and padded through the living room to throw the lock and pull open the door.
Dark curls and green eyes greeted me.
My heart literally stopped beating.
I reached out and gripped the doorframe, unable to speak. I could only stare.
He looked as good as I remembered him, standing there in low-slung ratty jeans with too many holes. His T-shirt wasn’t gray, but a deep green that accentuated his jade-colored stare—a stare that searched my face like a hungry man searching for his final meal.
His skin was still deeply tan, unlined, and the beard he’d been sporting when I said good-bye was gone, revealing his square jaw and the dimple in his chin.
I swallowed, my heart stuttering back to life. “Nash?”
“She remembers my name,” he quipped, giving me a little grin. He was carrying a large cardboard box with the words Pizza Hut scrawled along the side.
My stomach roared to life fiercely.
“Is that a pizza?” I asked.
“Large veggie with pan crust.”
Tears rushed to my eyes, blurring my vision and making it hard to stare at him. “You remembered.” When we first crashed, it was the one food I told him I wanted.
“I know you probably have eaten a million of these since you got home…” he said and shrugged as his words died away.
I shook my head. “I haven’t had it yet.”
His eyes zeroed in on my face. “You haven’t?”
I shook my head again. Of course I hadn’t. I couldn’t eat something that reminded me so fully of him.
“You gonna let me in?” he asked, devastating me with his lopsided grin.
I stepped back, gesturing for him to come in, and then shut the door behind him. He looked around the apartment with rapt interest. His eyes took in the cream walls, the oversized posters filled with art and landscapes, the gray couch with multi-colored pillows, and the coffee table scattered with a million magazines (and not one of them managed to take my mind off him).
“Nice place,” he said, his eyes sweeping over me from head to toes.
“Thanks,” I echoed, realizing that I looked like I was ready to curl up on the couch and eat an entire pint of ice cream in front of some cheesy Lifetime movie.
Well, that’s what I was going to do. But still.
“I’ll be right back,” I said and rushed from the room.
In my bedroom, I leaned against the wall, trying to catch my breath, trying to calm the pounding of my heart. He was here. He was standing in my living room. He was so close I could reach out and touch him.
Lust erupted inside me. Just the mere thought of putting my hands anywhere on his body had me practically salivating. I rushed to my closet to look inside, but I never got the chance to debate my wardrobe because a quiet sob racked my body.
I leaned into the frame, against the open door, as tears rolled down my cheeks.
I felt a hand on my elbow, gentle at first but then his grip tightening. “Bella,” he said softly.
My quiet sob broke and I spun, burying my face in his chest. His arms came around me instantly, holding me so tight it almost hurt. But I liked it because I knew he was there.
After long moments of me blubbering all over him, I quieted and he pulled me back, tipping up my chin and staring into my tearstained face.
“You missed me.”
“Every. Single. Day.”
“Thank God,” he groaned and pressed his forehead against mine. “I was afraid when I got here you would tell me that you hadn’t.”
“I never should never have let you leave.”
“I know.”
“But you didn’t give up.”
“Someone told me once that when you love someone you should never give up.”
“What did you say?” I whispered, not sure I heard him right.
“I love you, bella.”
My heart swelled to the point I thought my ribs wouldn’t be able to contain it. “I love you too. So much.”
His kiss swept me up into a tidal wave of passion, washing away an entire month’s worth of longing. My body remembered everything about him and fit itself against him perfectly, knowing exactly where to go. My fingers went for his curls, tangling in their softness, and my tongue rushed inside his mouth as if it would rather be there than inside mine.
The softness of his T-shirt brushed against my arms, and while it was comforting, there was something else I would rather feel. I delved below his hem, gripping the skin of his taut waist and moaning.
He ripped his mouth away and tugged the shirt up and over his head, throwing it across the room, and then was on me again in seconds. He backed me up against the wall and used his body to pin me there as his mouth traveled hotly over my neck and collarbone.
He re
ached up and pulled down the straps of my tank top, ripping the bodice completely down my waist and exposing every ounce of my aching flesh. My breasts were already swelling with need and I shoved myself out, gripping his head and bringing it down to one of my sensitive nipples. He nipped at it with his teeth and I cried out.
As he kissed and sucked, I found the waistband of his jeans and pulled it away, delving my hands inside his boxers to find the object of my desire. It was pulsing and ready. His entire body jerked when I closed my hand around him.
“This is going to be fast,” he said against my breast. “I’ve missed you too badly to drag it out.”
“Do it,” I growled, giving his member a squeeze.
In a blurred frenzy, our clothes hit the floor and we fell backward on the bed. Nash rolled, tucking me beneath him and sinking himself immediately in my moist heat.
Both of us groaned and stilled as pure pleasure rolled over us.
And then we were moving, slapping against each other with intense fervor. The orgasm ripped through my body, and I cried out his name over and over again until my insides stopped quaking. And then it was his turn. With one final thrust, he pulsed inside me, emptying everything he had into my more-than-willing body.
Long after we were finished, my muscles continued to contract around him, squeezing him and making him flex inside me.
“Damn,” he said, tucking me into his side. “You have no idea how badly I’ve been wanting to do that.”
“I think I might.”
He chuckled and then dragged us farther up the bed, seeing as how our feet were dangling off. I guess we should be lucky we made it onto the bed at all.
“Uh, Ava?” he said after he settled me into his side once more.
“Yes?”
“Where are your pillows?”
I lifted an arm and pointed over to the side of the bed. He paused and then sat up, glancing over the mattress and down onto the floor.
“You mind explaining to me why you have a pile of blankets and pillows on the floor?”
“I’ve been sleeping there.”
He took my cheek in his hand and looked down, concern lacing his eyes. “Baby, are you still having nightmares? You should have called me.”
I shook my head, silencing his words. “I can’t sleep in this bed.”
Tempt (Take It Off) Page 17