I made it up to my room, showered, did my makeup, and got dressed quickly. After helping Frankie with the zipper of her floral dress, we were headed down the two flights of stairs to join everyone.
When we made it to the living room, I spotted Cane standing by the front door with his phone in hand, and Kelly sitting on the loveseat next to Mom, who’d finally gotten rid of her laptop and had changed into a royal blue jumpsuit.
“Oh, girls. Good. You’re ready.” Mom shot to a stand and Kelly gracefully unfolded, smiling at us. “We should get going. Your dad’s waiting outside, and we don’t want to be late for our reservation.”
“Reservation? Sounds fancy already,” Frankie said with a small shimmy of her shoulders.
I reached the door where Cane was still standing. He looked great in his sky-blue button-down shirt and black dress pants. His hair was styled just the same, and even passing by, I could smell his cologne.
He slid his phone into his back pocket, locking eyes with me for a fleeting moment before bouncing them over me.
I didn’t have to look to know he’d given his attention to Kelly.
20
CANE
As long as I don’t look at her, I’ll be fine.
That’s what I kept telling myself, but it was a fucking lie. Why couldn’t I get over this girl? Kelly was on a trip with me, looking beautiful as hell. For dinner, she wore a tight red dress and tall red heels, her hair styled in an elegant updo. She looked amazing, yet I was focused more on the eighteen-year-old wearing the little black dress and sandals instead.
They were polar opposites—Kandy and Kelly. Kelly was sophisticated and neat and classy. Kandy had her classy, neat moments, but she was far from sophisticated. She was reckless, wild. She was everything I shouldn’t have wanted, yet I craved every single inch of her anyway. She didn’t mold her way into society. She was her own person. That reckless spirit of hers was trouble, but it was so familiar to me. She reminded me of myself when I was her age.
Seeing her out by the showers rinsing the sand away surprised the hell out of me. She put on a show—she knew I was watching and that I wouldn’t look away—couldn’t look away. She had me under her spell, and I was certain that if Kelly hadn’t been on that trip with me, she’d have snuck to my room just to suck my cock again right after. I had no doubt whatsoever, and that thought alone made my cock throb and ache.
Dinner was held at a beachfront restaurant. The girls loved it, raving over the view. The sky had transitioned and was tinted with pinks, blues, oranges, and splashes of purple. It was like nothing any of them had ever seen before, so of course, like girls their age do, they took a thousand pictures on their phones until they got the right one. I’d always loved the sunsets in Florida. They always relaxed me.
I did my best to occupy myself with sports talk with Derek, talking about anything and everything in hopes of avoiding a conversation that included Kandy or even Kelly. I got the sense that Kelly knew something was wrong with me. She rubbed my arm or leg too many times and asked if I was okay way too many times to count.
She wanted to get to know me so badly, but if she knew what I was really thinking about, she would have been running the other direction.
“You’re really chugging those beers down, honey,” Mindy said to Derek as he took a hard swig from his fourth beer.
“It’s a good thing I’m not driving then,” Derek laughed, and Mindy looked a little on edge. Her eyes flashed over to meet mine, and I knew that look. Knew it all too well.
See, I wasn’t the only person at that table with secrets. Derek had a lot of them too, and normally he did his best to hide them, but for some reason, he wasn’t that day.
I took Mindy’s looks as my signal to set him straight. “D, how about we go for a little walk, man?” I asked, pushing back in my chair. I focused on Mindy. “If you’ve got room, feel free to order some dessert for yourself and the girls.”
“Oh, Cane. Seriously. You’re being too good to us. Dinner was enough. Thank you, though.”
“Uh—what?” Kandy’s friend exclaimed. I think her name was Frankie. Well, I assumed she was, seeing as Kandy had told me before that she had a best friend. Kandy didn’t exactly introduce us when we showed up at the runway—not that I expected her to. The death stare she gave me was more than enough for me to understand she didn’t want to be fucked with at the moment. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Jennings, but I never, ever deny dessert!”