Skyler
“Jesus said Sunday is the day of rest, y’all,” Erin tries, popping a grape into her mouth while we lounge by our plunge pool.
“And we are resting. Until…” Jess looks at her watch. “About two hours from now, in which case we will be transitioning into pre-gaming and then full-on party mode.”
Erin shakes her head. “My liver will never recover from this trip.”
“How often is it that your best friend gets married?” Cassie remarks.
“It better only be once for this bestie,” Ashlei says, holding up her finger. “Because if I lose a man this fine, just hang me up to dry, y’all, I’m done.”
We all laugh and raise our water bottles in a cheers before chugging — which may very well be our most important chug of the day. If we’re going to hit up the pool party again tonight, we’ll need all the hydration we can get.
Electronic dance music softly thumps up to our room from the pool deck below, and we tap our feet along to the beat as we soak in the sun’s rays.
Ashlei has taken off her sling to avoid tan lines, and she and Cassie are reminiscing on the night before as Erin flips through a textbook — one we tried to get her to leave behind, but to no avail.
That girl is nothing if not serious about law school.
Jess and I are quiet for a while, just enjoying the breeze and the nice weather and the music, and then I notice her looking at her phone. She sighs, flipping between two photos. I lean in a little closer and chuckle when I see one is of her and Kade, and the other is her and Jarrett.
“Sadist,” I tease.
She groans, closing her screen and throwing her phone onto the table face down. “I know, I know. I can’t stop.”
“I don’t think swiping between pictures is going to make the answer come to you.”
“No, probably not. But they are nice to look at.”
I offer a sympathetic smile. “How are you feeling? After getting away and clearing your head a bit.”
Jess is silent for a long pause. “Sick. Absolutely sick.”
“Because you still don’t know?”
“Because I think I do know, and somehow that makes it even worse.”
I frown. “How so?”
Jess’s maple eyes meet mine. “I have to hurt one of them, Skyler. I’ve already hurt them both.
” She shakes her head. “I don’t deserve either of them after the way I’ve played them back and forth under the guise of needing time, needing space, needing…
whatever. The truth is I fucked Kade and then fucked his brother two weeks later.
” Her eyes water. “I’m the most awful human to ever walk the face of the Earth. ”
“You love them,” I say, sitting up. “And they both knew what they were getting into. If either of them was against it, really against it, they would have told you to kick rocks already.”
“That’s what I deserve.”
“Well, love makes us do some crazy shit,” I say with a laugh. “I mean, come on — this group is nothing if not proof of that.”
Jess nods. “They really love me. And I really do love them.” She swallows. “But like Cassie said — I can’t have them both.”
“No, you can’t.”
There’s a knock at our suite door, and Cassie pops up, already jogging inside. “Room service is here!”
Jess closes her eyes and sinks down into her lounge even more, ignoring the call for food. “It’s going to hurt him so bad. It’s going to kill me.”
“It’s going to hurt who so bad?” I ask.
Jess sighs, opening her mouth to answer me, but then her eyes go wide as basketballs at something behind me.
I whip around, scared there’s a bug or a monster or a fucking tsunami.
Instead, I find Kip.
My jaw drops as he walks onto the balcony with Cassie trailing behind him, her face just as shocked as mine. He looks like absolute shit — wearing what I can only assume is the tux he wore to the premier the night before, a five o’clock shadow on his jaw, his eyes red and puffy.
In his hand is a bouquet of flowers.
“What are you doing here?” I breathe.
Kip’s eyes search mine, a thick swallow bobbing his Adam’s apple before he shrugs. “I came to fight and win my girl back.”
Jess rolls her lips together and smacks my arm as Cassie, Ashlei, and Erin all do a miserable job of hiding their collective sighs at his declaration.
“Actually,” he clarifies. “I came to grovel, and plead, and put all my chips on the table, to pray like hell my measly pair of deuces is enough.” He takes a confident step toward me. “Pray that I am enough.”
My heart squeezes in my chest, tears pricking my eyes.
“I am sick without you, Skyler. I could say my entire world has been flipped upside down, but the truth is that you are my world. The show, school, whatever future career I might have — none of it matters without you.” He swallows.
“You are my dream. And without you, life is just… sleep deprivation. Punishment. Unrelenting torture.”
“Kip…”
“I am so sorry for hurting you, for not listening to you, for having my head so far up my ass I couldn’t see my mistakes.
Please,” he begs, his own eyes watering, nose flaring.
“Please forgive me. Please tell me you’ll give me another chance.
I swear I won’t waste it. I swear, if you let me, I’ll spend the rest of my life making sure you know you are my everything. ”
“If you don’t kiss him, I will!” Jess says, shoving me until I have no choice but to either tumble out of the daybed onto my face or stand. I choose the latter, and Kip smirks at Jess before his eyes are on mine again.
Sincere and more apologetic than I’ve ever seen.
And I hate myself for putting him through this, for making him so sick he thought he could ever truly lose me.
As if I haven’t been his since the moment I laid eyes on his stupid glasses and his stupid perfect smile.
I inhale, exhale, and slowly make my way over to where he stands.
But I don’t say a word.
I just nod.
In the next breath, I’m swept into his arms, and then I’m spinning, my hair flying behind me as the girls laugh and cheer. I don’t have the chance to laugh, though — because Kip captures my mouth with his, holding me to him in a beautiful, long-overdue kiss.
“I will never hurt you again,” he swears against my lips. “I’m so sorry, Skyler. I’m so fucking sorry.”
“I’m sorry, too,” I breathe into him.
“You have nothing to be sorry for.”
“Sure, I do. I put you through more torture than you deserve. I didn’t accept your apology.”
“Well, I didn’t apologize correctly. I was blinded… I couldn’t see your point of view, and I’m sorry for that.”
“Okay, okay,” Jess says, making a gagging notion with her finger, tongue sticking out. “He’s sorry, you’re sorry, we all get it. Now, can you two get out of here and go fuck already?”
I cover my laugh by burying my face in Kip’s chest, peeking up at him. “I… I love you, and I’m so happy you came all this way but… I’m here with the girls. It’s Ashlei’s bachelorette.”
“I know, I know, and I don’t want to take you from them. I just had to see you.” He sweeps my hair from my face, and I lean into his palm as he says, “I had to know you were okay. That we were okay.”
“We are,” I promise.
“Skyler, I swear to God, if you don’t have that man naked in the next ten minutes,” Jess warns.
I spin in Kip’s arms, throwing my hands up. “But we’re going out!”
“We are going out,” Ashlei corrects, pointing to the four of them and purposefully leaving me out. “You are getting railed.” She pauses. “Sorry, Kip.”
He throws his hands up with a smile.
“If you still have energy after, come join us,” Erin says.
I bite my lip, looking at all of them. “Are you sure? I don’t—”
“GO!” they all yell in unison.
And then I’m swept up again and carried out of the suite.
***
My feet don’t hit the ground again until I’m halfway across the resort in Kip’s room. It’s much smaller than the penthouse suite Brandon booked us, but I couldn’t care less as I immediately slip my hands under Kip’s suit jacket and shove the fabric back over his wide shoulders.
“Help,” I pant against his lips, trying unsuccessfully again to strip him.
Kip chuckles, shrugging out of his jacket and unfastening his tie. “Are you sure you don’t want to talk for a while? We haven’t—”
“Later.”
I don’t wait for him to unbutton his dress shirt.
Instead, I grab at the collar with both hands and then rip them in opposite directions, sending the first two buttons skittering to the floor.
Kip roars a laugh at that, and then helps me rip it the rest of the way because two buttons was all I got with all my might.
I laugh then, too, before Kip steals my breath with a passionate, demanding kiss — one that has me pressing up on my toes for more as he tugs at the string of my bikini top.
It falls loose, dangling from the string wrapped around my neck, and Kip palms my breasts with a groan that makes me ache and clench and tingle.
“Fuck, it’s been so long…” he husks, pressing his forehead to mine and looking down to appreciate the view of what his hands are doing to me.
I capture his mouth again just as my fingers start fumbling with the button and zipper of his pants, and in-between bruising kisses and lip biting, I manage to undo them, yanking as hard as I can to get them down over his ass.
Kip shoves them the rest of the way down, hopping a little as he frees one leg and then the other. I’m in his arms in the next instant, and then I’m falling into the lush comforter, pillows making a soft whoosh when I collapse into them.
It’s a glorious sight to behold, Kip watching me from the foot of the bed as he slowly strips his boxer briefs down.
His length springs free of them, making me bite my lip, and when he palms that impressive cock with his heated gaze on me, I spread my knees, leaning up on one elbow as I slowly slide my other hand down my exposed breast, my navel, and dive beneath the small triangle fabric of my bikini bottoms.
“Have you touched yourself thinking about me?” Kip asks, his eyes on where my fingers move under the swimsuit.
“Only every night.”