You Were Mine (Rosemary Beach 9)

My head was still replaying the amazing sex we’d had. I wasn’t ready to think past that. “I have to get ready and go to work. And you’re right, we need to talk. But for now, can we just be us? No labels. Just us?”

He frowned. “Does being ‘us’ mean that if I want to grab you and kiss you in a public place or call you just to hear your voice, I can? And that you’ll come sleep here with me every night?”

Sleeping with him every night was the one thing I wasn’t sure of. I wasn’t ready to depend on him. My questions about his plans for the future and his relationship with his parents still hadn’t been answered. I wasn’t sure he could answer all that now.

“Yes to everything but the sleepovers. I think for now, we should have a few boundaries. Lines we don’t cross. Just to make sure we aren’t moving into something we aren’t ready for.” Or that he wasn’t ready for. He loved living on the road and moving from place to place. How long before he remembered that and resented me for being the thing holding him here?

He let his head fall back as he muttered a curse. He didn’t like that line.

I set my cup down on the bar and slipped my arms around his waist. “It’s not that bad. You just . . . you need to make sure this is the life you want.”

“Sweetheart, you in my bed every night is exactly the life I want. I’ve wanted it since I was eighteen. I don’t need to make sure of anything.”

I so wanted to believe that. “Here’s where we stand, Tripp. You didn’t go to college, and you’ve only got experience as a bartender. I’m not sure how you’re living without a job right now, unless you get paid really well to be on the board at the club. Me, I didn’t go to college, and I’m a drink-cart girl at a golf course. We don’t have any idea what our plans are for the future. I’m the girl from the trailer park who’s used to growing up living paycheck to paycheck, and you’re the boy who was supposed to be the heir to the Newark legacy. But you ran from that life because you didn’t want it. So here we are. Do you really want to get a job as a bartender in Rosemary Beach when your savings run out? I doubt that very much. And this condo isn’t big enough to raise a family in, so when you get married, you’ll need to get a house. We both know you can’t afford a house here, so you would have to move.” I stopped and felt panic rising in my chest. This was all the stuff I didn’t want to think about. “All of that is why I need boundaries. I need to protect my heart some. Because when you leave here, because you will—you’re meant for bigger things than being a bartender—I will be left here to pick up the pieces.”

When I moved away from him, he let me go. I was afraid to look him in the eyes after that. He hadn’t been thinking about any of it. He had been living in the now. I had just shown him the future.

I couldn’t trust Tripp with my heart, because with him, it was forever. I didn’t think about any of this with Jace. He had thought I wanted a proposal because I’d mentioned it once when I was drunk. But the truth was, I didn’t plan the future with Jace. Deep down, I had expected him to leave me, too.

“You’d better get ready if you don’t want to be late,” Tripp said, breaking the silence.

My stomach sank, and tears stung my eyes. There were no reassuring words or even emotion in his voice. He wasn’t even trying to convince me that there would be a chance with us. He knew I was right.

I stepped back and nodded without looking up at him, then hurried to his room to get the clothes in my bag and leave. I changed and threw the clothes from last night into my duffel. I would not cry. The pain in my chest would not shatter me. I was going to be OK. I was going to be OK. I was going to be OK.

He didn’t move toward me to hug me or tell me good-bye. So I took his lead and went for the door. If what I had said pushed him away, then I was glad I knew it now. Because all I’d described was a list of scenarios. What would happen when we had to face those facts in reality?

“Why me, Bethy?” he asked, and I glanced back to see him standing in the hallway, watching me leave.

“What do you mean?”

“You didn’t question any of this with Jace. You just lived in the present. I know he had no idea what he was going to do or what path he was going to take. He was living off his parents’ trust fund and enjoying life, his degree unused. Yet you were his. You were happy and trusted that everything would be fine. So why me? Why do you need to know all this with me?”

I hated to say it out loud. Admitting it made me sound like I hadn’t loved Jace enough, and that was never the case. I did love him. He just hadn’t been my big love. I’d had that and lost it. After that, you can survive anything. “With Jace, I didn’t worry about how I’d continue breathing if he walked out of my life. With you, I want it all. If I get a taste of what it could be, I won’t ever want to let it go. I fell in love with you when I was sixteen, and that’s never changed. But trusting you with my heart again is different. With you, I need to know it’s forever.”

I didn’t wait for him to respond, and he didn’t try to stop me as I opened the door and left.

Tripp

Woods leaned back in his office chair and smiled as he rubbed his chin. “I’d ask why, but I already know the answer. This is you putting down roots.”

“It’s time. I’m twenty-six years old,” I replied.

“And there’s Bethy,” Grant added with an amused tone.

Yes. There was Bethy. She was the reason behind every decision I made.

“I know I’ve been preoccupied over the past year and a half, but how did I not know your grandfather passed away? I feel like a jackass,” Grant said.

My mother’s father, King Montgomery, had been a traveler. He rarely set foot in Rosemary Beach. He didn’t believe in sitting behind a desk all day. He loved to see new places and experience new things. He’d had a heart attack on a hunting trip in Africa. I couldn’t imagine seeing him suffer from an illness, bedridden. Knowing he died fast doing something he loved had made it easier to accept.

He and my father had never seen eye-to-eye. I think it was one of the reasons I loved the old man. He believed I should choose my own destiny. That was why he gave me the condo when I graduated from high school. I think it was his way of giving me a home to come back to if I did, in fact, choose to run.

“I wasn’t back in Rosemary Beach yet. No one here knew him that well,” I explained.