“I know you loved your time here when you were young. And I know you loved your grandfather, but what you had here was a small sliver of your life, Laiyla. The least important sliver in everything that makes up who you are. This is nothing but a temporary reprieve from the stress you’ve been under in LA. But that will end, and you’ll be bored to death. Then where will you be?”

I open my mouth to deny it, but she speaks first. “Whatever fling you’re having here isn’t worth ruining everything you have back home. Good Lord, Laiyla, look at where you are.” She lifts her hands and gestures to the marina, and seeing it through her eyes, I can see why she thinks it’s a dive. “You’re a grown woman. Start acting like one.”

She turns and walks off the dock before I can respond. I wait for their car to drive down the road to return to the houseboat.

20

Levi

By the time Laiyla walks in, I’ve got all kinds of emotions raging inside me—anger, disappointment, hurt, fear.

She comes into the boat already saying, “I’m so sorry. They’re truly intolerable sometimes. And it gets worse when they’re stressed—” She meets my gaze and her words cut out. “Shit, I was hoping you didn’t hear most of that, but by the look on your face—”

“Who’s Michael?” I demand more than ask. The idea of someone else loving Laiyla hurts like hell and makes me question everything—her attraction to me, her commitment to us, everything she’s said to date, whether or not we should even be together. “You’re seeing someone back in LA?”

“No.” She shakes her head emphatically. “No, it’s not like that. Michael is the son of someone who works with my parents. They set us up because our parents were pushing us toward relationships. We tried it for a while, but it didn’t work out. Now we just meet up as friends to keep our parents off our backs.”

“Then why didn’t you introduce me to them?”

“If you heard anything, they said—”

“I heard everything. You had the opportunity to tell them about me, and you didn’t.”

She opens her mouth, but nothing comes out.

“Because I don’t live up to their expectations,” I answer for her.

“No one lives up to their expectations, including their own daughter. This is a perfect example of why I’m struggling with our relationship. They want what they want the way they want it, and they push and manipulate until they get it. At the heart of it, I believe they want what’s best for me. The problem is that they think their choices are better than mine.”

“You had the opportunity to prove them wrong. I could have met them. I could have taken them to the development, showed them what I’m building. I could have made them believe your decision to stay here, stay with me, is the right one.”

She’s shaking her head. “No, you don’t understand them—”

“And you didn’t give me the opportunity to understand them or for them to understand me.” I’m sliding off the rails. My insecurities are rising to the surface. Memories of losing her haunt me like shadows. “I don’t know what to think about any of this. I don’t give a shit about this other guy. What I care about is the lying. You’re either lying to your parents or you’re lying to me.”

Her expression shutters.

Bull’s-eye.

I turn my back and pace, trying to silence my fears, trying to get my self-protection to back the hell off. But something her mother said rang too true for me. That her life here was the least important sliver in everything that makes Laiyla who she is. I can’t fucking argue with that.

“You left me once before because they didn’t approve,” I say. “How do I know you won’t do the same thing again?”

“Levi, I was a kid.”

“And now? How can I believe you’re going to stick this out if you won’t even introduce me to them? Your mother’s right. Your life here was barely a blip on the radar of your life. If there’s nothing holding you here, what’s to keep you from going back to LA when life in the country gets boring?”

I need her to find the words to convince me. I ache for them. I love you. I’m right where I want to be. I’m all in with you. Any of those would work, but she doesn’t choose any of them. In fact, she doesn’t choose any at all, and that’s a choice in itself. One I can’t live with.

All I can think about is the way she left me before. All the years I wasted because I couldn’t let go. This time, I’m not letting her drag me along until she walks away. This time, I have to let go first.

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I start toward the door, and she steps into my path, hands on my arms. “Levi, wait. This is all twisted around.”

I stop and meet her eyes, but all I see is indecision, and she doesn’t say anything to make be believe otherwise. “I’ll trade with Mitch. I don’t want to have to see you every day.”

21

Tags: Skye Jordan Wildfire Lake Romance
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