Chapter 22 Elijah
ELIJAH
She’s facing the ocean, her ponytail blowing in the breeze.
“Hey,” I say, dropping into the sand beside her. I’m on her right and that bruise is staring me in the face. I clench sand in my fist and let it pour out. Bud Walsh is going to pay a price for throwing that remote.
“Hey,” she says, closing her phone. “I heard from Thomas.”
Why does she want this asshole back so badly? How is it that Easton, who never took shit off anyone, is sweating this guy after the way he treated her? The Easton I knew had way more pride than that.
“What did he say?” It’s a struggle not to sound surly.
Her laugh is tinged with bitterness. “He wanted to talk. He says he’s lonely. I said no.”
Good. It’s about fucking time you stood up to him. “So you’re done with this bullshit?”
She raises a brow. “You mean the bullshit where I pretend we’re together to make him jealous? Hell no. I just refuse to hold his hand while he sorts out his feelings. And...” She shrugs, leaving the thought incomplete.
“And?”
She wraps her arms around her knees and turns, grinning at me. “I don’t want you to think for a moment that I’m enjoying this trip, but...”
“Nothing you’ve said or done has led me to that conclusion, Easton.”
Her eyes crinkle, a suppressed laugh. “But there are pieces of this experience that I like, and that I’m probably not going to get again. Like...Thomas and I never, ever go to the beach because it’s not his thing, even if we are at a beach. So I want one last hurrah.”
My irritation was settling. Now it’s back in full force. “Why does he get to decide everything?”
She shrugs, crossing her legs in front of her. “Every trip we take is because someone is paying him to be there, not me. I’m just tagging along so I sort of feel like I don’t have the right to insist. And I hear myself wanting to bitch about visiting a museum and I sound like Kevin and Sean.”
And there it is.
Growing up, she had freedoms no other kid got, but she also had two junior criminals for brothers, her dad stumbling drunk and half-naked in the front yard, and a former beauty queen mother who’d flirt with anyone who walked past.
Letting this asshole decide she’ll go to a museum rather than the beach has nothing to do with the fact that she’s simply tagging along.
“Never going to the beach is a pretty significant sacrifice, and this is the first time you’ve even mentioned it.”
She shrugs. “You have to give things up as part of a couple. There are worse losses.”
I sigh, running a hand through my hair in frustration. “Except that this guy seems to understand very little about you, so I bet you’re giving up more than you’re admitting.”
Her face grows guarded, a hint of pink blooming beneath the surface of her cheeks. “I’m not.”
She is.
And someone needs to show this asshole that if he won’t put some effort into making her happy, plenty of other men will. I guess I ought to be the one showing him how to treat her, but I wish, instead, that I was just making sure he doesn’t win her back at all.
He clearly doesn’t deserve to.