Dashing Through the No (Summersweet Island 3)

Bodhi just keeps smiling at me as he closes the distance between us, making my heart beat faster in my chest when he reaches up and cups my cheek in his palm, gently rubbing his thumb back and forth while he stares down into my eyes until I just want to grab onto his shirt and yank his mouth down to mine.

“My dad left in the middle of my high school graduation, while I was giving my valedictorian speech, to go to the dance recital of one of his clients’ daughters.” He smiles down at me even as he tells me this shitty story.

“What a dick. Tell me where he lives and I’ll torch the place,” I mutter, making Bodhi throw his head back and laugh, and my insides get all weird and warm.

Not wanting to dwell on that unusual feeling, since it probably means I’m dying of an ulcer or something, I give him another shitty story of my own to make him feel better.

“I lied. I saw my parents once more, four years after they dropped me off. They walked into my great-grandma’s cottage while it was all decorated with balloons and streamers, and my mom said, ‘What’s with all this shit?’ And I looked up at her and said, ‘It’s my birthday.’”

When Bodhi’s face scrunches up and he looks like he might cry, it’s my turn to laugh, which is really some fucked up shit, because talking about my past never makes me laugh in any way.

“It’s fine,” I reassure him. “I followed them outside when they left and hid behind a bush next to the front porch steps to listen to them argue out in the driveway. My dad wanted to come back and give me money for a present, and my mom was losing her mind about it.”

“Did your dad win?” Bodhi asks, cocking his head to the side, his hair falling down into his eyes, making my hands itch with the urge to reach up and move it out of the way, because this man has some killer blue eyes.

“He did.” I nod. “He marched right back across the yard and up onto the porch and handed me a twenty-dollar bill right in front of my mother.”

“I hope you blew it all on something ridiculous, like a shitload of candy.”

“Oh, I didn’t spend it. I lit it on fire right in front of them, tossed it into the grass to burn, and then went back inside to eat my cake.”

“You’re fucking savage, and I’m here for it,” Bodhi tells me, inching his flip-flop-covered feet even closer to me until his chest is bumping against my arms still hugging my planner to my me.

Reaching into his back pocket, he grabs his phone and holds it out to the side of us.

“When’s your birthday?”

“Uh, October 25th, why?” I ask, as he taps against the screen of his phone with his thumb before sliding it back into his pocket.

“Just put your birthday in my phone with two reminders so I will never, ever forget it. And just so you know, I buy the best fucking birthday presents ever,” he informs me, and I just want to toss him down on the floor and mount him like a goddamn bike.

“Live a little, Tess Powell,” Bodhi speaks softly, the ocean breeze ruffling through his hair as we cruise to the mainland. “Toss the planner overboard, stop making a plan, and just see where life takes us.”

My skin prickles and feels all hot and itchy, and my heart starts thumping rapidly in my chest when I take a step back from him and pull the planner away from me to look down at it. For the first time in my life, I suddenly don’t want to be tied to a plan or a schedule. I just want to stand on the top deck of a ferry, riding it just because it’s fun, with a man who makes me feel like I don’t have to be someone I’m not. Like I don’t have to be a smiley, happy, easygoing woman on a first date, who has to be nice and agreeable to everything and hide her crazy if she ever wants to get a second date. Fuck that shit. I’m letting my freak flag fly, and if Bodhi can’t handle it, then it’s his loss.

“Here, hold this,” I order Bodhi as I shove the planner into his chest, and he has just enough time to grab it before it falls to the floor.

Reaching into the back pocket of my black, holey, skinny jeans, I pull out a pack of matches I swiped from SIG earlier and then get the travel-sized bottle of lighter fluid out of the inside zipper pocket of my crossbody. Taking the planner back from Bodhi, I walk a few feet away from the railing, over to a small metal trash can bolted to the floor next to the stairs that lead down to the lower deck. Chucking the planner inside the can that already has a paper cup and a wad of used napkins in it, I pop up the nozzle of the lighter fluid bottle with my thumb, and squirt a generous amount all over the planner until it’s completely soaked. Pushing the nozzle back down and shoving the lighter fluid back inside my bag, I open up the book of matches and rip one out, slide it against the striker until it ignites, and then quickly toss it in before I change my mind.