by Anne Marsh
It’s just a simple touch, but it’s so sweet that I almost forget my urgent need to flee to the bathroom for oral hygiene purposes. His hand cups my neck, urging me closer, and—
“Morning breath.” I twist my head to the side, because telling—not showing—is my current plan.
He laughs, the sound low and husky. “You complaining about me, sunshine?”
Not him. He’s Mr. Perfect and I could kiss him all day long. It’s me that’s the problem. “You’re the ten in this relationship.”
And I’m the one who needs to brush her teeth.
“Hey.” He nudges my chin up with his thumb. “This is a come as you are party. You don’t have to be perfect for me. You worry too much.”
I roll my eyes. “You should talk to my dad. He’d be happy to clue you in on what a screw up I am.”
Ro nips my bottom lip lightly. “You really want to talk about your dad right now? Because give me his number and I’ll list all the ways you’re perfect.”
His gaze runs down my body, pausing for a flatteringly long time when he reaches my tits. Ro has never made any secret of the fact that he loves my body. Is this enough? Is this the beginning, middle, or end for us?
How do you hold back and stay safe when you want to devour someone whole? What if last night was just sex to him? What if I screw this up again? I have a million questions and Ro’s the one with all the answers. He always has a plan, so there’s no way he’s just winging this thing between us. But then he laughs and that husky sound is so absolutely perfect, so happy, that I don’t want to take the chance of wrecking things.
“I—” have feelings for you.
Don’t know what to say—or how to say it.
I might be falling for you and you promised you’d never let me fall.
“This is just about us.” He sounds certain. “Not about your dad or anyone else. No pictures, no paparazzi. That’s our deal, Hindi. We’re exclusively for us and no one else.”
Oh. God.
His mouth brushes mine fearlessly. “Are we all in?”
I swear I hear the words coming out of his mouth. They’re even in English. One syllable. Perfectly clear. I just don’t know what he means. I blame the sex—the hours and hours of hot, sweet, rock-my-world sex followed by even more hours of cuddling. There’s a sleepy look in his eyes. Heat. And something else, something spoken in the language of Ro and I don’t have the dictionary.
Was it only sex? Or was it more? The answer lies somewhere in his dark eyes but I can’t find it. Emotions hit me hard and I’m not going to cry, not going to choke up and ruin this perfect, sunshine-filled Saturday morning moment. Which is why I blurt out the first thing that comes to mind.
“Yes.”
“Yes?” His big hands cup the side of my face, his thumbs rubbing seductively back and forth? How am I supposed to think when he makes me feel so much? And my yes makes him happy because he smiles, a big, goofy grin, and that’s a look I’ve never seen on Ro’s face before.
“Me too,” he says and then he rolls me under him and we don’t get out of bed for hours.
Hindi
I’m so in love with Rohan. Maybe it’s ridiculously crazy to feel this way, but this is Ro. He’s my hero, my lover, my best friend, my everything. I came down to the Florida Keys looking for an ending. You know how on the Fourth of July the guys shooting off the fireworks pepper the skies with everything they’ve got at the end of the show, part big bang and part use-it-or-lose it? And one minute the sky’s full of exploding colors and you can’t hear the band anymore, but you know they’re speeding toward the end of the 1812 Overture and then there’s a moment of silence and the sky fades to black, everything’s over, and you’re dragging your cooler and chairs back to the car with little bits of ash floating down to land on all your shit.
I thought that was our marriage.
I thought we were done and I’d get the last big bang and head out.
I was wrong.
We’re just starting. We spend our nights curled up in my bed making up for lost time. We spend the better part of our free daylight hours doing the same thing and sometimes with more clothes. We go out with Finn, Vann, and their fiancées and dance until dawn at the Tiki Hut. I convince Ro to model my boxers for me and tuck a hot pink number with a bespangled fly in his drawer of black and blue cotton. After I look in Ro’s fridge and discover four different kinds of energy drinks and two brown bananas, I talk him into grocery shopping and teach him how to make pasta. We explore the Florida Keys and I try to find the spots I remember from my childhood, when my family used to come down here for the summer. We get lost together and then we laugh together.
This Saturday, when we finally pull on some clothes and leave my bungalow, we’re on an ice cream hunt. It’s lunchtime somewhere, as I point out to Ro, so our need for sweet cream and sugar at ten in the morning is perfectly okay. He just nods and threads his fingers through mine. Of course he knows just where to go—I wonder if he’s got our next round of hot sexing all laid out in that head of his. I’m open to suggestions and Ro has the best plans.
We go into Bee Sweete, because Vali, Finn’s fiancée and the owner, makes the best homemade ice cream, and five minutes later we’re licking our way through scoops of the most delicious cinnamon and vanilla bean goodness I’ve ever tasted. Getting ice cream is turning into our thing, and I love it. And then because we’re apparently in the moment, we stroll up the main street of Angel Cay. When my phone buzzes in my back pocket, I ignore it. This is our time.
We walk up the street together, fingers entwined, shoulders bumping. It’s cute and romantic and kind of feels like we’re honeymooning for the second time. Maybe Ro would steal away with me if I asked him. Maybe we could both steal a few days or weeks from our jobs and go somewhere new to us both. Explore. Look at shit. Or yeah—just break in a new bed in some place with room service and have lots and lots of sex. Just walking with Ro is the biggest turn on. He both watches me and watches out for me. If enemy ninjas suddenly jumped us in the middle of Angel Cay’s sleepy main thoroughfare, he’d be all over it.
It only takes five minutes to reach the end of Main Street. The term street is a little ambitious. Someone paved it at some point and there is a speed limit sign (all of twenty miles an hour), but in terms of houses and buildings lining it on both sides? Yeah. There are more palm trees and gigantic bougainvillea bushes than structures. There’s a corner store, though—one of those places that
sells the bits and pieces you can’t do without. You can pick up milk, coffee, bananas, and vast quantities of supermarket tabloids advertising celebrity gossip and Bigfoot sightings. I’ve starred on the front page of those tabloids a few times, and it’s good publicity for the show.
We wander closer, because Angel Cay lacks many walking options, and I can’t help glancing at the colorful covers. Last week, they were running pictures of Nessie, the Loch Ness monster, who had apparently decided to visit the coast of France. Yeah. Apparently apocryphal monsters like Nice, too. Go figure. Today’s blurry pictures look like a cross between a dinosaur and a gigantic lizard. A gigantic albino lizard. Nessie is neither photogenic nor blessed in the suntan department.
Ro follows my gaze to the paper. “People believe that shit?”
“People enjoy that shit,” I correct. “Belief is entirely optional.”
And really, life is too short and sometimes sucks too much. A laugh and a little fun aren’t too much to ask, and Nessie fits the bill. Ro makes a noise. Followed by another. Yes, the man is actually laughing and it’s a good sound for him. I love it almost as much as the sound of him moaning my name when he’s deep inside me. He runs his finger down the cover, calling out the titles.
And then he stops. “You get a mention.”
I shouldn’t look. I really shouldn’t. I should snatch it away, play keep-away. Do something. Yeah. Remember that “get the show some PR and the network will lock you in for even more episodes” plan? I’m about to check out o
f my fantasy luxury hotels, the one I booked on points, got for free, enjoyed not quite until death do us part—and now the hidden price tag is about to be revealed.
I try to play it off. “They’ll report on us once, maybe twice, but then we’ll be old news.”
Ro sort of freezes beside me. “You know about this?”
Right. It was the secret plan. I wasn’t supposed to know anything about it. Plausible deniability. A big fucking lie. Take your pick. Instead of saying anything to make the situation better, my brain shuts down and I say nothing at all. Just stand there with ice cream dripping down my hand and onto my wrist.
“Ro?” Say something to me, I want to beg. Tell me this is going to be okay too. That you have a plan for making everything better.
Except it’s my fault it’s broken.
There’s no Band Aid big enough for this kind of hurt.
Silently, Ro lobs his half-eaten cone into the trash. I follow suit, because my ice cream is suddenly tasteless. He keeps the tabloid, though, and I have a bad feeling about this. My phone vibrates again as I try to look over Ro’s arm at the front page. Nessie has more real estate than we do, but my picture is in the bottom right corner. I’m wearing white and I’ve got my arms around Ro’s neck as I kiss the ever-loving fuck out of him. Okay. So our personal moment is a little less private.
Except that’s not Ro I’m kissing.
As panic curls through me, I skim the text beneath the photo. I only wish it surprised me. “Husband number one: Hindi Alvarez wore me out! Reality TV star and lingerie designer Hindi Alvarez changes husbands as often as she does her sexy line of panties. What she’s hiding—and why she’s likely divorcing husband number two.
Oh. God.
Rohan
Hindi never told me that I wasn’t her first husband. It didn’t even occur to me to ask, if we’re being honest. It’s the kind of thing you just expect to come up at some point. Oh hey, I was married to this total douche bag for about four nanoseconds, but you’re the one I really want to be with for the rest of my life. I’m absolutely sure of that. I mentally replay our time on the island six years ago, but there’s no mention of a previous marriage—or a previous relationship—coming to mind.
“Ro—”
“I’m reading,” I tell her, which shuts her up for less than a nanosecond. Yes, she is that quick to fill in the silence between us.
“I thought they’d run a piece about us,” she says quietly. “I never dreamed they’d dig this up.”
Obviously not.
I mean, if she’d planned on being honest with me, she would have mentioned husband number one at some point, right? A number of opportunities come to mind. She’s chosen to leave me in ignorance and I have a hard time imagining a compelling reason. The pictures in the tabloid aren’t helping, either. I flick past picture after picture of Hindi and Alain. Not only was she a child bride, but her groom was French. There’s no competing with that. The article doesn’t include all that many words—after dropping the “Hey, they were married!” bombshell, the author pretty much settles for a seemingly endless stream of photos. There are pictures of Hindi and Alain getting married. Pictures of Hindi, wrapped in a sheet, sprawled on a hotel bed and then kissing on a roller coaster. Pictures of Hindi in a man’s T-shirt slipping down her pretty, bare shoulder. Apparently, she has a long and well-established history of stealing clothes.
Fuck.
Me.
The article lays it all out. Hindi and Alain married in a Vegas quickie ceremony. Elvis himself tied the knot and their marriage lasted almost three days to the minute and then apparently her daddy swooped in and took Hindi home with him. Because she was goddamned seventeen years old. Punch line? Alain worked as an exotic dancer. No, wait. He’s not the fucking punch line in this joke—I am. Because after the tabloid finishes quoting Alain —and the man had plenty to say about his brief marriage to Hindi and her insatiable appetite in bed—it’s my turn.
Because they followed up all those happy couple shots with our pictures. Me and Hindi six years ago, kissing in Central Park (not my best idea). Fast forward to me knocking on Hindi’s front door in Angel Cay. Me kissing Hindi on the beach, half-in, half-out of the water, while I tangle my fingers in her hair and hold her close. They’re happy pictures, and not just because we’re both smiling. I think we were happy—it’s just that it didn’t last. Real life is hard as shit and we didn’t know our time was almost up.
The tabloid lays it all out there in black and white, from the date of our marriage to the dates of my deployments and the inescapable truth that Hindi Alvarez and I are still married but seeking a dissolution in the state of Florida. Third time’s the charm, Hindi! You know that childhood saying about how sticks and stones can break your bones, but words can’t hurt? It’s not true. I’ve broken bones. Taken a bullet twice. Survived hand-to-hand combat where my opponent was trying to kill me and almost succeeded. That shit’s all on the surface, but these words cut deep. In real life, you have to listen and then try to forget.
Or remember.
When I asked her to marry me, she was my first, my best. My very last. The exclamation point at the end of a sentence that began with Will you marry me? Now all I have are questions and a picture of my ass in a supermarket tabloid.
“Alain and I got an annulment,” she says quietly. “We kept it private.”
I close the paper. “Let’s define private. How big do you think the circulation of this particular tabloid is?”
“Not private enough.” Her shoulders slump and she sounds so unhappy. I want to pull her into the Jeep, into my arms. Want to fix this for her and promise her it’s all going to be okay. A few days ago, a few months ago? Fuck, yeah. I would have. I would have done whatever I could to make the road smooth for her. You know that Irish blessing about the road rising up to meet you with the wind at your back and the sun on your face? I’d still like to be her own personal Zamboni, smoothing out all the rough edges in life, but I can’t shake the feeling that she’s still playing me. That she hasn’t been entirely honest—and if she can’t or won’t tell me the truth now, what kind of future do we have together?
It’s not like a few thousand more people matters, but I’m in a pissy mood. I don’t know where we go from here, and the look on Hindi’s face just confirms it. She never expected me to find out about my predecessor. Husband number one got swept under the rug of her life and she went on—so what’s to say she doesn’t do the same to me, to us? Jealousy isn’t a good look for me. I know that, and yet I can’t stop thinking about Mr. Alvarez the First.
“Who is he?” Angel Cay isn’t that goddamned big. While Hindi tries to come up with an answer to my question, I fast-walk the four hundred yards back to her bungalow, where my Jeep is parked out front for the whole world to see. I’ve never done the walk of shame, never left someone’s bed and been forced to wear the same, telltale clothes I wore when I arrived the night before. I plan way too fucking well for that. I don’t get caught out, don’t come up short.
I always wondered how people brazened that out. I mean, there you are, so busted. There’s no hiding what you did or with whom. It was impulsive, accidental, and probably fifty shades of wrong, but you went ahead and did it anyhow. Was an orgasm or four worth what came next? Worse, you can dress it up as love at first sight or insta-lust, use any one of a half-dozen fucking adjectives, but a handful of hours do not a relationship make. I never could figure out what drove people to do it, knowing how badly it would end the next morning.
So how do you like me now? It’s my morning after and I’m parading up Angel Cay’s main street.
“I ran away to Vegas when I was seventeen,” Hindi says. No. Scratch that. She fucking shouts the words as she scurries along behind me. Anyone in Angel Cay in blissful ignorance about the state of our personal lives has just been schooled. “I wanted a do-over on my life. I wanted, just once, to not be a disappointment. My dad wouldn’t stop harping on what a screw up I was. I couldn’t get
my shit straight or right or rainbow-colored enough for him, so I took a sabbatical from his crap and ended up in Vegas. And I met Alain and we thought it was…” She inhales. The woman has an amazing pair of lungs. Bet she could totally make it from one end of the pool to the other without having to surface for air. “Love. Lust. A glorious, wonderful, fun mistake.”
I yank open the Jeep’s door and get in. “So you had a shitty childhood and your answer was running away to Vegas. I actually do understand that, Hindi, but what the fuck happened when you got there?”
The basic facts are printed in black and white. I read them. She met Alain when she auditioned for his show. He took a shine to her, and even though she couldn’t dance to save her life (a fact that I can confirm), he made a place for her. Less than twenty-four hours later, they were standing before an Elvis impersonator, swapping promises.
“Day one? Alain and I got married. Day two? We fucked like crazed bunnies. Day three? My dad showed up and dragged me home.”
It all sounds so innocent. I mean, what’s not to like about love at first sight? Have you ever watched two people picking each other up at a bar? And you’re not planning on being like them, not ever. You’re not going home with someone you barely know, someone whose only relationship skill is picking up a tab and flashing flirty-ass grins off the mirror behind the bar and straight at your heart. Got good aim, too, and before you know it, you’re off that stool, holding hands, and out the door. I know better than to take chances.
“You should have told me.” In fact, I’m almost certain that if you’ve been previously married, you have to produce proof that you’re now single when you go for round two in the marital sweepstakes.
Her face tightens. “You’re right. Of course you’re right. But when was the last time you let me in and told me about your feelings? Do you even have feelings?”
Women get all the credit for being sensitive and emotional. They’re the ones who feel things. They fall in love and they have a million words to describe what the sensation feels like. I’ll bet if you check the payroll at Hallmark, the people writing those card verses are all female. They’re good at it—but that doesn’t mean I have to be bad at it. I have feelings. I just prefer to keep my descriptions to myself.
