Chapter Thirty Hayes Is Bad at Feelings
Chapter Thirty
Hayes Is Bad at Feelings
Hayes
I can’t sleep.
I’m lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, the weight of everything that happened tonight practically crushing me.
I might have laughed and let her stroke my ego . . . but alone now in my cabin, I can’t lie to myself. Something happened between us. Something that shouldn’t have.
Which is why I had to get the hell out of there. The last thing I can afford is to get tangled up with feelings I swore I’d never entertain. As soon as she fell asleep, I crawled from the bed, grabbed my clothes, and shuffled off to my own cabin. Which is where I am now—spiraling.
I force my eyes closed, but it doesn’t help. I keep seeing the way she looked at me, gazing at me in wonder. I keep hearing the sound of her soft voice . . . remembering the way her lips tasted. The way her hands . . .
Damn it.
Why did I let myself go there?
This is only going to cause problems. She works for my uncle, and she makes me think about things I swore I never wanted. Talk about a cluster . . .
She challenges me, argues with me over nonsense . . . she makes me feel like I’ve been sleepwalking my entire life. When she kissed me, something inside me—something that had been dormant for years—woke up. It felt like I was . . . alive again. And it scares the shit out of me.
I shake my head, frustrated.
The morning sun comes too quick, and I force myself out of bed.
I struggle through a sunrise workout and almost quit eight times.
What’s wrong with me? Am I sick? Dying?
I replay everything from last night in my head, still stunned by what happened. I don’t even know what to do with the fact that I’m feeling . . . something. I keep trying to shake it off like it’s just a weird fluke—maybe the flu? Or some sort of brain fog?
I’m just tired. My body is on edge, maybe from the trip. Hell, maybe I just need a nap. That’s it. A nap. I didn’t sleep much last night.
I find Charles on the aft deck, alone with a cup of coffee.
“Morning,” he says.
“Morning,” I grumble.
“You okay?” He’s staring at me now.
I scrub a hand down my face. “Didn’t sleep well.”
He nods, looking thoughtful, then tips his chin toward the cabins. “Did that have anything to do with the fact you spent the night in her cabin?”
“Damn boat’s too small,” I mutter.
“It’s forty meters. And you didn’t answer the question.”
“Of course not,” I mutter. But when I glance over, I see his frown. I really don’t want to deal with this right now.
“Hmm,” he says, sipping his coffee.
“Everything’s fine,” I lie.
Charles sees straight through me. “I doubt that’s true.”
I release a slow, shuddering exhale.
“Maybe I treated Frankie with less kindness than I should have,” I say, voice tight. “I may have implied our night together was . . . sort of, you know, run of the mill. And then I left after . . . well, after.”
Charles raises an eyebrow. “Why’d you do that?”
I rub the back of my neck. The words are so much harder to say than I imagined. “Because there’s a chance that I could see myself . . . falling in love with her.”
He doesn’t react right away. Instead, he watches me with a long, calculating stare. “And that worries you?” he asks.
“No, that doesn’t worry me,” I say quickly. “It terrifies me. I’ll mess it up.”
I try to swallow the lump in my throat, but it’s there, lodged like some kind of foreign object I don’t know how to get rid of. I’ve never been like this, never felt . . . whatever the hell this is.
Charles just stares at me, as if he’s waiting for me to catch up with myself. And then finally he speaks again, like he’s seen this coming all along. “She’s a good girl, you know?”
I nod.
If there’s one thing I know, it’s that I’ll screw it up. I’ll ruin everything.
It doesn’t matter. What I told her was true—it was a one-time thing.
It has to be.