Page 61 of A Deal with the Devil

27

We leave on Friday for Laguna Beach, about an hour south of LA. As much as I’d like to take in the view—the city giving way to ocean and sand and distant cliffs—I turn toward him instead, my knees pressed to the console.

We’ve barely left the city and already I can see how some of that tension from work is easing away. His shoulders are relaxed, his mouth soft.

He has the most glorious profile—a nose that is somehow endlessly masculine and elegant at the same time. What a shame he has no plans to pass those genes on to another generation. He glances at me, and I wonder if my staring unnerves him—but I don’t care enough to stop doing it.

“You haven’t mentioned your sister in a while,” he says. “Is she doing better?”

My stomach tightens. Right now, I want to imagine what his children would look like and pretend I never have to leave him. I do not want to think about my family. “Yes. She gets out in August.”

“And your mom? She’s not going to be an issue?” he asks.

My mother hasn’t replied to the text I sent a week ago, nor the more demanding ones I’ve sent since. I know what it means, and I know I should tell him the truth. But my friendship with Hayes is like a flower that’s just begun to bloom, and the truth will be a hard freeze, prompting him to cut his losses and back away. And I’m not ready for him to back away yet. “It’ll sort itself out,” I reply.

I glance out the window, at the sun glinting off the Pacific’s endless blue. Yes, it’ll sort itself out, but only with my help. Only with my salary paying the mortgage and me there to take care of Charlotte and some concession made on my end to Liddie, who no longer tells me about pregnancy attempts or anything else. And it would be worth it all if only the four of us were going to come out of this okay. I just feel increasingly certain we won’t. Me, in particular.

“Have you been to Laguna Beach before?” I ask. A subject change is necessary. Otherwise, Hayes will drag the whole gruesome truth out of me.

He shakes his head. “No. You?”

“Matt and I had this goal to visit all of California’s beaches someday. We passed through, but I can’t remember if we stopped.”

His lip curls at the mention of my ex. “You’re telling me, then, that you had sex on most of California’s beaches.”

A shocked laugh burbles from my throat. “God, no.”

“Why not? I’d have tried, were I him.”

Of course you would. I squeeze my thighs together and try not to picture sex on the beach with Hayes. Sex on every single beach in the state with Hayes. “He’d have never...forget it.”

“Oh, no,” he says. “You can’t start a sentence like that and not finish it. He’d have never what?”

“We would never have made sex the focus of a trip. He’d be moody for days after, if we did.” A blush crawls up my neck. “He always…finished quickly and it made things, uh, anticlimactic.”

I stare out the window again, hoping we’re done with this topic. Yes, sex with Matt was anticlimactic more often than it wasn’t, but that didn’t matter so much. We had other things—friendship and history, a common language. If I suspected I was giving a few things up, they didn’t bother me at the time.

“I don’t understand why you stayed with him,” he says, suddenly irritated. “Is he really that attractive?”

“It was more than his looks. He’s a really good guy most of the time, and he’s kind to everyone, no matter where they are on the totem pole. He did a bad thing, but nobody’s perfect.”

Hayes’s lips press together. “You sound like you’ve forgiven him.”

“I’m getting there, or at least I’m trying to. Holding a grudge takes too much energy.”

It’s a very mature response. I’m not sure why Hayes looks so unhappy with it.

* * *

It’s just after six, the sky a symphony of muted rose and gold and dusky blue, when we arrive at the bungalow in Laguna.

I’m so smitten from the minute we walk in that I want to spin in place, like I’m some ecstatic Disney princess singing with woodland creatures.

The cathedral ceiling is walnut hardwood crossed with exposed beams. The back wall is glass, with nothing but water as far as the eye can see. It has a darling shiplap white kitchen and a glorious deck with a hot tub. I couldn’t even have dreamed up anything quite so perfect.

His smile is soft. “I’ve never seen you so in awe of a place.”

“Can you imagine living like this? Waking up here every freaking day?” I run a loving hand over the marble countertop. “Forget about your mattress. I’m marrying this house instead.”