Chapter Six

~ Reba ~

“Your friends are nice.”

We were back in the SUV on our way to the mansion. We’d walked along the boardwalk and beach with Bare and Pet after the show. Pet had chattered about her wedding that would be at the Wellston, the condo building that Bare was building to the north side of Cherish Cove. His three closest friends had bought in, all of them commissioning places in the building. And now I knew where Mars would be moving next month.

“Yeah. They’re pretty great. So are my other close friends, Ian and Flip. Ian just got married to Petra’s best friend, Willa, when I was in Vegas last week—that’s what I went there for.”

“Oh, wow… You’re all so young but engaged or married.”

“Yeah, well, all but me. We’ve all been through shit. Makes ya grow up, you know? Plus Willa’s pregnant. And Flip’s girl is about to pop. Not sure about the whole story there, though.”

“Wow,” I breathed again. I couldn’t help thinking about how I’d gotten married at twenty and it had been the worst choice in my life.

“Flip…is that really his name?” I asked to push away the encroaching dark thoughts.

“Sort of. It’s from Phillip. Sometime in first grade it got shortened to Flip, and it’s stuck ever since then. His family even calls him that. Applies, too. He’s in Motocross and flipping is the least of the dangerous stunts he ends up doing during races.”

Huh… Tonight was blowing all my stereotypes of Mars and his friends. I’d just thought they were rich spoiled kids. But now, I learned this Flip kid raced. Mars did volunteer work. Pet had told me about Bare’s custom motorcycle shop—a place he’d opened on his own, without his father’s knowledge or help. What the hell was Ian doing? Solving world hunger? At this point, I wouldn’t doubt it.

“So you’ve known each other forever and know everything about each other.”

Mars didn’t answer right away. His fingers tapped on the steering wheel. “Not everything. We all have our demons, and we don’t necessarily share about them.”

“I can understand that.” If his fingers hadn’t been linked with mine on the console again, I might have pulled away and curled my arms around myself. Yeah, I had demons, too. And I suspected his were related to the way his dad, Martin, looked battered on a regular basis, though he tried to hide it. I could show him a thing or two with makeup. Hiding bruises was how I got started with that hobby.

The silence stretched between us while we cruised down the dark, mostly deserted highway on our way north the Cherish Cove.

“You okay?” he asked after several minutes.

“What?” His voice startled me, since I’d been so absorbed in my thoughts. “Yeah. I’m good. I was just…thinking.”

“Lost in the past?”

How was he so intuitive? Was this something he’d learned at the shelter?

“Yeah. But I don’t want to talk about it. It’s…messy.”

“Does it involve how you came to Cherish Cove?” he pushed, hedging against the part of my life I wanted to lock away.

“Yeah.”

He squeezed my hand, and for once, it didn’t elicit a sexual reaction. It comforted. Assured. Then again, maybe it was because my awareness had reached maximum and I was on overload, so nothing he could do aside from getting naked could push me much farther right now. Which was crazy. We hadn’t even kissed or made out.

“I won’t ask about that, okay? But is it alright if I ask why here? How did you land in a tiny coastal town on Lake Michigan?”

I laughed through my nose, just a rush of air. “I grew up in Cherish Cove.”

“You did?” he asked in shock.

“Yeah. I even grew up on the Kennedy estate. With my grandpa, your family’s last butler.”

“What? How did I…”

“How did you never see me? The butler’s cottage is a distance from the mansion, and I was under the threat of severe punishment if I ever went near your place. After my parents were killed when I was little, I was always there or in town with Nan. Her granddaughter, Sadie, is one of my best friends. Her and Ginger.”

I didn’t have to tell him who Ginger was. Everyone knew Ginger B. She’d had a national home improvement show on cable until recently.

Tags: Brynn Paulin Romance
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