CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
BLAIR
C lear View is an entirely new world tonight. The space is decked out like some sort of fever dream, all pristine white linens, fresh flowers, and champagne. It’s like every section of the place has been plucked from a wedding magazine. It’s hard to believe it’s even real.
People are mingling, glasses of expensive liquor in hand, talking in those soft, polite tones that only come out at places like this.
The whole thing feels staged with no warmth, nothing real, just appearances.
I glance around, trying to find something familiar, someone I can talk to, but all I see are people I’ve never met.
I walk to the edge of the patio and stare out again. I know I’m supposed to be here to support my mom, but honestly, it’s not my vibe. As I’m about to turn around and hide inside, someone steps beside me from the corner of my eye. When I turn to look, it’s Shay.
He looks over me with those impossibly blue eyes and that same broody, intense look he always has.
For a split second, I feel that familiar knot in my stomach, but then he does something that surprises me.
He doesn’t say anything—no snarky comment.
He just stands there, and for some reason, it feels different.
Like he’s not trying to make me uncomfortable or make me feel small like he normally does.
His eyes flicker, but there’s no judgment, no typical sneer that usually follows when he’s in my orbit. It makes me feel a little less on edge. A little more grounded, somehow.
“Hey.” His voice is low and rough, but with an edge of something softer I’m not used to.
It’s strange. He’s the last person I’d expect to offer me any kind of peace, but at this moment, I find myself—oddly enough—relieved.
“Hey.”
“Wanna say fuck it and get out of here?”
My brows raise a touch. “Is it that obvious I don’t wanna be here?”
Shay shrugs. “Can’t say I blame you. It’s kind of a circus but with fewer lights and fewer acts.”
I laugh and extend my hand in front of me. “Lead the way. I don’t know this place like you.”
He chuckles, then tips his head. “Say less.”
As he starts stepping, I follow. We weave in between all of the tables and people until we reach the end of the engagement party chaos. My heels sink into the grass once we’re off the wooden dance floor that was transformed for all the guests, but I keep moving. Shay does too.
To my left, there’s a tennis and basketball court, and just beyond that is a boat dock, but Shay doesn’t lead us that way.
Instead, we navigate right until the grass eventually turns to sand and we’re positioned on the club’s private beachfront.
It isn’t insanely massive, but it is blocked from the public with huge, man-placed rocks.
It gives us the smallest bit of privacy.
I slip off my heels and hang them on my thumb as we move closer to the water.
The sand feels cool beneath my feet as we walk along the shore.
The further we get from the party, the more the world seems to quiet down, like everything is slowing and giving me room to think.
I take a deep breath, and for the first time since stepping inside Clear View, I feel calm.
I glance at Shay walking beside me silently with his hands shoved in his pockets. His jaw is tight, but there’s something softer in the way he carries himself here.
We walk in silence for a few moments, neither of us in a hurry, with the sound of waves filling the space between us. But then, out of nowhere, I find myself speaking.
“You know,” I start, pausing before I lower myself into the sand. “Everything feels different between us now.”
Shay doesn’t say anything at first, but his gaze stays locked on me as he sits down beside me. There is no surprise on his face, no confusion. Just something like acknowledgment.
“Yeah. I think we both knew it always would be. Between all the shit-talking and fighting, we were never really going to stay the same, were we?”
I shake my head, not trusting myself to say much more because I know he’s right.
Things are different now. For a while, I thought maybe I could keep pretending—pretending things would stay the exact same way they had been.
Me hating him, him hating me. But I knew it wouldn’t last. Between the way my body engulfed in flames when he touched me or the way I would almost seek him out in any form—bad or good—I knew I was doomed.
And I guess he felt the same too. The locker room the other night and everything that followed proved that.
“Where do we go from here, then?” I ask, looking into the distance of the waves on the surface of the ocean.
I see Shay shrug from the corner of my eye. “You tell me, Dollface.”
My stomach flutters at the name he calls me. For once, it isn’t something insulting or rude. It’s actually… cute.
“I mean, everything with our parents complicates things, doesn’t it?”
I turn just in time to see Shay smile wickedly. “Well, I’ve never been scared of a fight or a challenge. Guess this just makes things more interesting…” He trails off like he’s thinking, needing a little time to formulate his next statement.
I let his words sink into my skin. Everything in my life since moving to Saint Bipal has moved at one hundred miles an hour. There has been no break, no moment to take anything in. And everything with Shay is no different. One minute, we hated each other, now the next, we’re…
“What does this make us exactly, then?” I ask, voicing the very thought as it came.
He chuckles lowly, then lies back into the sand, closing his eyes to shield them from the sun. “It makes us whatever we want to be. I fight all the time, you know? And sometimes, I don’t want to. And I don’t want to fight with you. Not anymore.”
I’m not sure how to even respond to what he’s saying. A part of me agrees and knows this is how it will always be, but another part of me is scared. What about our parents? What will people say? How does this work? I have more questions than answers, but I don’t want to ruin the moment either.
Shay is finally opening up and laying himself bare in front of me. He’s being real—raw.
“What if I like fighting, though?” I roll my eyes and laugh, almost kicking myself. Why did I say that?
In one swift motion, Shay’s arm wraps around my stomach and pulls me back into the sand with him. As soon as my back hits the warm ground, his fingers lock around my wrists, and he crawls on top of me, straddling my hips, and raises my hands above my head.
Unlike other times, my first instinct isn’t to hit him or try and fight and get away.
Instead, my breath picks up, and my chest starts to pound with excitement.
He leans down, his nose only a hair away from mine.
I can smell the alcohol on his mouth from the drink he must have had earlier and feel his breath on my lips.
I stare into his icy blue eyes, not knowing what to say or what to do. I just pause and let myself bask in his figure and the feelings stirring in my stomach.
“Tell me to stop and I will,” he whispers, moving at a snail’s pace to close the gap between us.
But I don’t tell him to stop. His lips press into mine softly.
Such a harsh contrast to the normal we once had.
There is nothing violent or fierce about how he kisses me this time.
Instead, he moves his mouth against mine slowly, savoring every taste I’m giving him.
His tongue juts out and swipes across the seam of my lips slowly, and I open greedily, ready to take every single sweet lap.
He unleashes my wrists and plants his hands into the sand by my head.
I move mine and cup his face, scraping the pads of my fingers across the slight stubble on his cheeks, then crawl them up his jaw and into his hair.
His silky strands feel like they belong there, tangled in my fingers, just like it feels right to have him pressed against me so tightly.
Our breaths start to synchronize, and my heart slows.
Everything is so warm and easy. So right.
He breaks his lips from mine, then stares down at me. “I think that’s better than fighting.”
I smile and shake my head. “Finally, one thing we can agree on.”
Shay rolls his eyes, then moves from on top of me, taking his position beside me back.
“Maybe we will get some backlash,” he continues his thought from earlier. “But I think we can handle it. I mean, since my mom died, I’ve dealt with worse things.”
I nod and wrap my arms around my center. “What happened to her? Your mom.”
Shay sucks in a deep breath. “She just had a bad heart. Doctors thought they had caught it soon enough, but there wasn’t as much time as they thought. Treatments and all of that helped some, but we knew what the outcome could be in the end.”
“I’m sorry.”
He shakes his head. “Don’t be. Anywhere life happens, so does death. It’s a hard pill to swallow, but it’s reality. I miss her, but I’m thankful for the time I got with her, you know?”
I nod because I do understand, although I can’t imagine knowing death was coming soon. I didn’t get that with my dad. One day, he was here, healthy as a horse, then the next, he was gone. No signs. No warning. No goodbye. He was just gone.
“And your dad?” Shay asks, dragging me from my thoughts.
“Car accident.”
“Damn.”
I nod again. “Yeah. How it all played out is still a mystery, but I don’t think I care to know. It’s not like it’ll bring him back.”
Shay tips his head. “What do you mean?”
I fist my hand into the sand, trying to focus on something other than what I’m thinking. Talking about my dad isn’t something I like to do. Not because I don’t love him but because it’s still just… hard. I have so many questions, but unlike in other situations, I don’t think I want the answers.
“I don’t know. Cops just said they couldn’t really put together how everything happened.
His brake lines were cut, but it didn’t seem like an intentional way, if that makes sense.
Apparently, the cut was jagged instead of smooth or something.
So everything was still ruled an accident, but no one knows if the lines were cut as a result of the accident or if someone did it before.
They ruled it an accident, though, and my mom won’t talk about it. “
“But if someone did do it, you don’t want to know?”
I shake my head. “My dad was a saint. He had no enemies or anything like that. At least, that’s how I knew him, and I don’t want to know different. I think that’s my mom’s thoughts too. That’s why we just don’t talk about it. What’s done is done.”
I want to tell him more—about the texts and how I have a feeling that maybe they can be linked. But I just watched him beat some guy bloody for touching me a few days ago. I don’t want to unleash that beast again.
Shay opens his mouth to say something else, but I cut him off.
“Maybe we should head back now. I’m sure our parents will start looking for us soon.”
As I stand, Shay stays planted in his spot for a moment, studying me, but he doesn’t make any more comments.
“Yeah,” he finally breaks his silence and stands. “I guess you’re right. Let’s go raid the bar.”
I chuckle and push his shoulder, then lead us back the way we came.