She read something in my eyes, though. She knew that surely that was why I was staying away.

I didn’t bother to hide it.

She could know that I wanted her all day long. But she also could see that despite that, it wasn’t going to change my mind.

At least, I’d thought that was what I was projecting.

But she smiled a smile that I couldn’t quite decipher and took hold of my wrist.

She guided me out of the shadows and toward the throng of people that were closest to us.

Sierra was there with Malachi. Rowen with Dax. Ford with Ashe. And then Avery with Derek.

Sierra saw us coming and widened the circle, allowing room for us to engage into the conversation.

When I finally came to a stop right next to Ford, Carolina let go of my wrist but stayed close to me.

“So, you were quarantined with Saint, right?” I heard Sierra ask.

I gritted my teeth as I tried to control the urge to flee.

Saint Nicholson didn’t flee. Not from two tiny slips of girls who scared the Jesus out of him. Nope. Nuh-uh.

“Uh, yeah,” Carolina said. “We were. For almost two weeks.”

Twelve days. We were quarantined together for twelve days.

And now I couldn’t sleep without her next to me.

I’d gotten a total of about two hours each night as I tossed and turned. Tonight would likely be no different.

“So, what happened there?” Malachi asked. “I’ve been meaning to ask but shit’s crazy right now. I didn’t really think you’d want to talk about it.”

I didn’t. Not at all. But saying that, I wanted to keep what Carolina and I had to ourselves. I wanted to put it in this nice little protective bubble and keep it for just me.

But Carolina obviously didn’t care to keep things secret.

She let it all hang out, starting with the way the dumbass Martin had ‘exposed’ us and ending with how the person that’d had ‘Ebola’ in the first place hadn’t actually had it, but an autoimmune disease.

“Wow,” Ashe said. “All that and you had to stay cooped up for two weeks? That sounds awful.”

It would’ve been had I had to do it with anyone but Carolina.

As it was, it only proved to me that she’d meant more to me than I was willing to admit before the incident.

“It wasn’t,” Carolina admitted, mirroring my thoughts. “If it’d been with anyone else but Saint, I might’ve said it would be awful. But it was with him. And I’d been trying to get him to pay attention to me since last year when he’d been sliced up by that swan diving maniac who’d taken the arctic plunge.”

“Marty, the dumbass,” Ford grumbled. “We ran eight more calls on him this year.”

I crossed my arms over my chest, the scar from the slice that Marty had given me on my arm on display.

Most days I didn’t even notice the scar. And when I did, I didn’t think of Marty. I thought of Carolina.

“Didn’t he try to shoot your brother in the head not too long ago?” Malachi asked, looking at Carolina.

My brows rose at that.

I hadn’t heard that from anyone.

“He did,” Carolina confirmed. “Actually, what he did was use a toy Airsoft gun. Though, they didn’t know that at the time. I think that was the final straw. Marty’s in prison for the foreseeable future.” She paused. “It just so happens that I knew the judge that presided over the case. And Marty will no longer be a problem.”

There was silence and then, “Damn, it’s nice to have a judge on our side. Saint, when are you marrying her?”

There was a long moment of silence before Carolina started to laugh.

“We’re not together, silly,” Carolina said as she turned to survey me. “We never were.”

With that, she walked away, leaving me there with what felt like my beating heart falling out of my chest.

When I turned back around, it was to see varying degrees of sympathy on all the guys’ faces, and not a little bit of annoyance on the females.

It was Sierra, though, who said, “Don’t just stand there. Go after her.”

I, for once, listened to the advice of someone else and headed in the direction that I’d seen Carolina go.

I found her in the hallway that led to the bathroom.

She was standing there, leaning against the wall, as if she was waiting for me.

I frowned when I saw her, coming to a stop in the mouth of the hallway.

“We’re not going to do this,” she said. “You need to shit or get off the pot.”

My brows rose as I moved closer to her.

“What?” I asked.

“You can’t have it both ways,” she pressed. “You can’t have me, but not have me at the same time. I know something’s going on. I know that you’re worried about something. That you’re pushing me away. Before it was something that you just didn’t want me to know. Something that you felt like would be a deal breaker. But now, you’re truly worried for my safety. Something’s going on, and I want to know what it is.”

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