Secrets We Hunt (One Night #2)(5)

“That what never happened? Me fingering you or you ghosting me like our friendship meant nothing to you?”

She sighs again, and I look down at her. Her eyes are closed, and I can see her chin trembling as she takes subtle deep breaths through her nose. She looks like she’s barely holding her shit together. It makes me think there’s more to why she cut me out of her life than I thought. Maybe it wasn’t just her being a teenage girl going off for bigger and better things.

“Zo-Zo,” I say in a soft voice, softly taking her face in my hand and making her look at me. Her brown eyes are wet and filled with a sadness I wasn’t expecting to find. There’s something deeper going on here, and it makes something ugly stir in my gut. I can feel my anger grow along with my suspicions that it may not have totally been her choice.

“Don’t,” she warns as she takes in the look on my face.

“What happened?” I ask her, my tone hardened already.

“You got so many tattoos,” she says, letting her hand wander down my forearm and up to my bicep. “And you got, like, bigger,” she laughs. “Where did all these muscles come from? The Wesley I remember was a skinny little teenager.”

“That’s unfair,” I say, dropping the touchy subject for a minute to let her relax. “I wasn’t that scrawny.” She looks back out at the ocean, and I play with her hair. “I grew up, I guess,” I tell her. “My uncle and I had a pretty big falling-out, so I had to get out there and make my own life. I kind of fell into bounty hunting and had to work on myself.”

“Bounty hunting,” she says. “Who would’ve thought? I always imagined you stepping into your uncle’s shoes, taking over his business and living in the corporate world.”

I scoff, thinking back to the huge falling-out he and I had at my graduation party. I had told him I was taking a gap year to travel and be with Zo?. I knew she was planning to travel around the world, and I was going to surprise her by coming with her. She had been begging me for months. My uncle didn’t like that.

“He wanted me to go to school, become his clone, and take over,” I tell her. “But I told him I didn’t want to. I had other plans.” I leave out telling her what they were seeing as how she disappeared from my life before I could tell her. “He didn’t take it well. Kicked me out about a month later when he realized I wasn’t going to bow to his will.”

“Shit, Wes,” she says, looking at me with her big, sad eyes. I look away. Until I know what actually happened with her, I can’t fall into our old routine. I refuse to be happy with her for a night and then watch her leave me behind again. “I’m sorry. He was always a dick.”

“What about you?” I ask her. “I hear you get to travel around the world, writing and experiencing all the things you always talked about doing.”

“I do,” she says, her face lighting up in the dark. There’s only the warm fairy lights Quin had hung around the yacht to light the deck now that the sun has completely set. It gives her skin a warm golden glow that I wish I could bottle and take with me. “I’m here visiting Mom’s side of the family right now. I figured I could kill two birds with one stone, see the family and get to see Quin get married. After this, I’m going to Morocco to see Dad’s side. He’s meeting me there, so I’m excited to see him as well.”

“It looks good on you, you know,” I tell her. “Doing what you love. You seem happy.”

“I am.” She nods, smiling up at me before looking down and taking my hand in hers. My scarred and tattooed hands look ridiculous next to her soft skin. Her thumb traces the scar that runs from my wrist to my thumbnail.

“I brought my fists to a knife fight,” I tell her, laughing when she looks up at me in shock. “Risks of the business.” I shrug and let her continue to trace her fingertips across scars and old tattoos that I regret.

“What did you tell your uncle you wanted to do?” she asks me after a moment of silence.

“That doesn’t matter,” I answer, trying to brush her off.

“It matters to me.” Her voice is soft and sad. She always had a way of breaking through any barrier I put in front of her, so it shouldn’t surprise me that the walls I built because of her are so easily broken down.

“I told him I was going to travel with you,” I say, keeping my face forward, staring at the city lights behind the shore. I can feel her staring at me, her eyes are boring into my fucking soul and it makes me fidget.

“You were going to come with me?” she asks, her voice small and distant.

“I was.” I nod.

Her hand squeezes mine a bit tighter, and I look down at where they’re joined before looking back at her. She still looks like my Zo?, but the years have made her more of a woman and less of a girl. She’s seen things, been places, and created a life for herself. I take in everything about her now, from how her eyes crinkle at the corners to the freckles I never noticed before scattered around her cheekbones and nose like constellations.

“There’s a pool on this level, you know,” she says, drawing my attention back to her eyes. “Maybe we could go for a swim, catch up some more.”

“That’s all you want to do, Zo??” I ask her, leaning over her more and pushing her hair out of her face. My hand goes to where her legs are crossed and pushes her thighs apart. “You wouldn’t be tricking me into finishing what I started earlier?” I cup her and shove a finger underneath her panties to tease her hot opening. She gasps, and her nails dig into my forearm. I tilt my head and smile at the reactions I pull from her.