Chapter 5
FIVE
Leilani
The drive home from Lime and Salt takes about ten minutes and I spend most of them arguing with myself.
I do not need Remy Hastings. Not now, and probably not ever.
I have a bar to open. I have a town I'm trying to settle into.
I have a man I just escaped from who took two years of my life and a third of my body weight in confidence.
I have a million things to do that are not falling for a Florida fisherman with a cocky, lopsided smile that should come with a warning label.
NOPE.
That kiss was a mistake. A beautiful, ridiculous mistake. Some kind of water magic, maybe. Or mocktail magic. What was in that drink that Kate made, anyway? There’s no universe in which getting involved with a man who is that attractive that fast is a good idea.
I’ve made this exact mistake before and I’m not making it again.
My phone vibrates on the passenger seat, so I pull over because I’m a careful driver.
Hey. I'm glad I fell off that platform today.
I read it three times, start to type the letters LOL, then delete.
I look at his name on my phone: REMY HASTINGS. He must have entered it that way himself when he handed me his phone, like he was already staking a claim in my life.
“Nope,” I whisper as I delete the contact.
The text disappears with it. Like he was never there.
Then I sit on the shoulder of the river road, staring at my own steering wheel, and say, out loud, to no one: "What is wrong with me?"
When I get home, I’m going to make a new list. I know exactly what's going at the top of it.
1. STOP THINKING ABOUT REMY HASTINGS.