Terms + Conditions (Strangers #3)

Chapter Eighteen

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

NOW

I’D LIKE TO HAVE a word with Mother Nature about this cold weather. We live in the South for godsake. I know it’s mid-December, but why is it thirty-six degrees? The breeze cuts through my hoodie and sweats as I slow my pace a few hundred yards from the boardwalk that leads back up to the house. My heart beats against my chest, and now that I’m not running, the sweat has started to form along my hairline. It doesn’t get very far with the cold breeze that blows in from the water.

Last night was the opposite of what this weekend was supposed to be about, and I still feel kind of bad about what I said to Georgie. At the same time, it’s been six years, and she’s married to someone else, should it matter that much? But with the tension between her and Noah maybe it was making her a little extra sensitive.

Not long after she stormed off, I ventured out to the back patio to find her and apologize. I didn’t want there to be animosity when this might be the last weekend I had with everyone.

Georgie sat with Elizabeth in the pool house at the far end of the patio. When Elizabeth noticed me walking toward them, she glared over her shoulder. Georgie looked calmer, but she glared when she saw me, too. I raised my hands in surrender.

“I come in peace. I just wanted to apologize. What I said was out of line.”

Georgie’s gaze remained narrowed.

“You and I have always done this—given each other shit. It’s what we do, but…I took it too far tonight, and for that, I’m sorry, Gigi.”

With a sigh, her face finally relaxed. “It’s not your fault, Josh. I just…There is a lot going on.”

“Anything we can help with?”

Georgie offered a small smile, glanced at Elizabeth, and then back to me. “No, thank you.” She reached over and squeezed Elizabeth’s knee before standing. “I’ll see you both inside.”

When she was gone, Elizabeth shot up from her chair. “What the fuck, Josh?” Her stare was deadly. “Just because you don’t want to be here this weekend doesn’t give you the right to be an asshole!”

“I know.”

“That was so uncalled for. Georgie was just asking—Wait, what did you just say?”

“I said, I know ,” I said simply. She looked taken aback by the words. “You’re right, Liz. It was uncalled for. I’m sorry.”

“Why are you agreeing with me?”

“Because you’re right.”

“No!” Elizabeth shouted. “No…You don’t do this. You don’t just agree with me.”

Okay, now it was my turn to be confused. What does she want me to do?

“You never do that.”

“I mean, I guess, in the past, I’ve not been quick to apologize…But I was wrong this time. It was a low blow.”

Since then, I’ve been trying to think of our other arguments. Did I really never say sorry or agree with her? Surely not. Surely, I had apologized and admitted I was wrong before. And there were times I had agreed with her. The only time I can think of is the fight right before she left—because I wasn’t wrong. I was looking out for myself like she had been doing for months, even years, before that, but she didn’t want to hear that explanation.

Elizabeth was already in bed when I retired to our room last night. Everyone had gone to bed, but Elijah and I had one more drink, catching up on life—minus one major detail. She slept as close to the edge as possible without falling over, and part of me wondered if I should just make a pallet on the floor, but my back couldn’t take sleeping on the hardwood. I’d never be able to move in the morning. Instead, I crawled into bed and cuddled up to my edge.

When I woke up this morning, the sun had just started to peak over the horizon, and it became quite apparent I was not in the same position I had fallen asleep in. My left arm draped over something. Not just something, someone. My hand splayed across her stomach underneath the long sleeve she had worn to bed.

Shit. If she wakes up, I’m a dead man, was the second thought that popped into my mind. The first was how good it felt to be this close to her again. I took a deep breath, inhaling the scent that had become so familiar to me—hints of florals and sandalwood mixed with her coconut shampoo.

She began to stir, and my body tensed.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

But she only settled further into me before falling back asleep. I took one more moment to enjoy this, being so close to her, feeling her body against mine, because I wasn’t sure I’d ever get this opportunity again.

One part of me is happy she didn’t wake up. I didn’t want to fight the whole weekend. It would only make this whole thing that much more difficult. This entire trip was all for show. We weren’t really together (or back together, I guess?). I’d spent the past ten years pretending to be her husband; I could do it for three more days, right? Besides, by the end of the weekend, she’d tell them about the separation, and it would all be over with.

A different part of me wishes she had woken up. Maybe it wouldn’t have been a fight. I mean, she did snuggle closer to me, right?

Trekking through the sand, I climb the wood steps leading to the boardwalk, winding through the dunes to the house. It empties out into the side yard, where another set of stairs leads up to the back patio.

“Finally!” Elijah says when I walk through the sliding door into the dining room. “I was about to send out a search party.” He and Jeremy sit at the table with empty coffee mugs in front of them.

“Dramatic, much?” I roll my eyes.

“Georgie and Elizabeth went into town already.”

I check the time on my watch: 8:48 a.m. They left already? It’s not even nine o’clock. That’s strange. Not to mention they went without Selena and Lola. That’s even weirder.

“We’re meeting them at Teddy’s whenever you’re ready,” Jeremy says.

Normally, we don’t leave for breakfast before nine-thirty, maybe even ten.

“Let me go shower real quick, then we can go,” I say.