Page 51 of Forever Fighting
I need to find my own place and start a new life by myself. I need to get myself back to a place where it doesn’t feel like the earth beneath my feet is constantly moving. I’m in an emotionally precarious place. Obviously since I freaking married Roman on a drunken dare and a whim.
I don’t want to do anything that can’t be undone or that I’ll regret.
Right now it’s not such a big deal. We’ll get a divorce when we get back, and that’ll be that. But… the way I feel with him lately isn’t as easy to abolish.
My eyes close and I try to relax, but it’s not happening. I’ve taken all my chill and washed it away. Now I’m unsettled and jittery with it. Slipping off my chair, I pull the brim of my Rebels hat lower on my head and slide into the cool water of the pool. It only goes up to my waist and I dip down lower until it meets my chin. Then I pace, back and forth, my arms moving like a wave, propelling me along.
I don’t know how many times I do this, but a tingling awareness, like someone is watching me, prickles the back of my neck. I glance up to find I was right. Roman is leaning against a stone pillar in the shade, with his arms folded over his sweaty shirt and his sea glass eyes on me, fitted with an unreadable expression.
My heart gives a thump, and a weird, fluttery kind of nerves tickle my belly.
This is what I’m talking about. This reaction to him. What the fuck is it, and how do I make it stop?
“How long have you been watching me?” I ask, standing back up to my full height and letting the sun bake off the drops of water clinging to my upper half.
His eyes do a quick sweep of me. “Not too long.”
“Did you have a good run?”
“I did actually. It was enlightening. You seem a bit unsettled.”
“Just thinking about having to get a place now that I moved out of Adam’s.”
He frowns. “There’s no rush on that.”
I swallow and nod, my hands running along the top of the water, making swirly patterns with it. “I’m just glad he and I never bought a place together as we had talked about. It’ll make moving on easier. Hopefully, for both of us.”
“I doubt he’s moving on that easily. You’re impossible to let go of.”
He steps out of the shadow, toes off his sneakers, pulls off his sweaty T-shirt, and comes straight into the pool. He goes under, only to immediately pop back up, and my eyes land on his nipples that harden, the goose bumps on his tanned skin, and the way rivers of water flow over his ink. My face heats, and I turn away.
Cold, wet fingers on my shoulder startle me, and my head snaps over.
“You’re getting more freckles,” he explains.
My breath hiccups at his touch, and I can feel my own nipples hardening in my bathing suit. Something he could very easily see if he looked.
“I freckle the moment I set foot in the sun. That’s not new.” I pull away from him and push through to one of the built-in loungers they have in the water and climb on it.
“How was your massage?” he asks.
“Good. It was nice. You could have stayed.”
He sighs and sinks back down into the water, but his gaze hasn’t left mine. “No, kid, I couldn’t. I was already struggling enough with you being naked beside me in there.”
Guilt gnaws at me. I didn’t mean to make him uncomfortable. “I didn’t realize it would be that big of a deal. I figured we’d be in the dark and have robes and drapes over us. It’s not like you saw anything.” A memory flickers through my head, and I start laughing. “Do you remember when I came to your grandparents’ compound for brunch, and you accidentally walked into the bathroom as I was pulling up my underwear?”
The first smile I’ve seen on him all day hits his lips. My heart feels lighter for it as some of the tension and strain I was feeling evaporate.
“You mean when you yelled at me before slamming the door in my face because I barely caught a flash of your pussy?”
“Yes.” I laugh a bit harder. “That was horrifying.”
“You didn’t talk to me the rest of the day.”
I splash water at him. “I was embarrassed. I was only nineteen or twenty.”
“You were twenty. I was twenty-six. I was home visiting from Paris.” He splashes me back. “That was a rough day. I felt like such a pervert because I got hard over seeing you like that.”
