Page 13 of Twisted Beauty

Liv reached over to grab her margarita and caught him staring. “You still here?”

Matt smiled. This might be fun after all. So easy to rile her up. Maybe pissing off Katie’s best friend would finally convince Zach to put a stop to this bullshit. “Just checking. We’re all concerned about your comfort over there.”

“Right, so you speak in the ‘royal we’ and call me a princess?”

Matt laughed. “Actually, princesa can be a compliment in my culture. But you Americans seem to know so little about that.”

“I know plenty of…” Her voice trailed off when the ding of her phone captured her attention. Because of course she’d brought her phone out here into the fresh ocean air. How else would a city girl keep from getting bored in an unsophisticated place like this? He was about to say as much when the look on her face distracted him.

She’d lifted up her sunglasses to stare at her phone. And all the fire had gone out of her at once. He had to stop himself from asking why. He didn’t need to know. She wasn’t his problem.

“Everything okay?” he heard himself ask.

Damn it.

Liv looked up at him, seeming disoriented, almost as if she’d forgotten he was here. Then she nodded and set her phone facedown on the side table. She leaned back into the lounge again and closed her eyes. “Everything’s perfect.”

Matt grabbed his drink and moved to the glider to finish up his margarita since everyone else had gone inside. He had to agree with Liv. As long as she didn’t want to talk, then everything was pretty damn close to perfect.

He leaned back and noticed for the first time how blue the sky was today, even with all the humidity. Katie had a sweet place here. A pain in the ass to get to, considering how far out of town it was, but the sand was right below her balcony and the pounding surf just a few yards away. He closed his eyes to listen.

Matt heard footsteps and looked up to see Katie walk out on the deck carrying a pitcher.

“Who’s ready for strawberry?” She jerked to a stop when she reached Liv, splashing red liquid onto the deck. “Oh my gosh, Livvy. Your phone!”

Matt chuckled. She might as well have screamed “dead body” with how horrified she looked.

“You turned it back on? You checked your messages?”

Liv shook her head. “I have no idea. It was sitting unlocked and charging on my nightstand. I must’ve erased them all last night. There was probably something terrible on there, I don’t know. But there’s not a single message on here from—” She stopped mid-sentence and glanced over at Matt, like she’d forgotten once again that he was here.

Always good to be so memorable.

“You deleted all of them?” Katie asked with wide eyes.

“Apparently.” Liv looked down at the phone in her hand as she scrolled with her finger, shaking her head again, her voice barely above a whisper. “Sucks. I have no idea what to expect from him now.”

“Wow.” Katie set the pitcher down beside Liv’s melted drink and grabbed the phone. She scrolled around for a minute as well. “What about this one?”

“It’s new.”

They stared at each other for a moment, as if sharing some kind of female telepathy thing, before Katie handed back the phone. Matt remembered all too clearly when his mother and aunt would share that exact same look. He didn’t understand it at the time—he was just a kid—but looking back he realized it had happened almost every time his father left a room. He’d had no clue his mother was about to throw his dad out of the house and turn Matt’s life upside down.

This whole thing made him uneasy.

“I guess I should be glad I can’t remember what any of them said, right?” Liv shrugged.

Matt cleared his throat. “You two drank enough last night to black out? Too bad I missed that.”

They both turned to glare at him at the exact same time. He could swear he felt the burn of their eyes on his skin. At least it didn’t take long before they forgot he existed and focused on each other again.

Liv shook her head. “Well, shit. Now I—”

“Look who I found at the door,” Zach interrupted, walking out onto the deck with two more women.

Matt felt a rush of relief when he saw who it was, though that was probably premature. He knew both Jana and Elle, but could only consider one a friend. Maybe more people, no matter who they were, would take some of the pressure off this whole situation. He set down his drink and got up to greet them.

Jana held a dog with a pink studded collar in one arm. The little white mutt wriggled frantically, her whole body moving with the wagging of her tail. No doubt one of Jana’s foster dogs.