All That Jazz (Butler Cove #1)(67)
“Bless you, my love,” I say to her as she drops them down to me.
It wasn’t Joey who jumped in after me, it was Devon. Joey wades ashore with our picnic supplies, and then swims back and around the boat several times with powerful strokes. I guess it’s his workout today.
I help Keri Ann unpack the food. I’m starving.
Joey walks out of the water, rivulets streaming down his body to his faded navy board shorts. He flicks his hair, made darker from being wet, and runs his hands through it, combing the longer hair off his forehead.
I fiddle with the colored thread and jewelry around my ankles, taking a sudden, massive interest in whether the clasp on one of them is coming undone. It’s not.
I look up as Keri Ann thrusts a sandwich under my nose. She lifts an eyebrow at me, flicking a glance at her brother. I scrunch my nose at her and take the sandwich.
After we all eat our fill, we loll about on the sandbar chatting until the tide starts coming back in to shrink our little island. It’s so weird that Jack Eversea, currently one of the most famous actors on the planet can act so down to earth. People always say about celebrities, that they’re just human. It’s so hard to see it that way until you actually see it that way. Jack, Joey, and Devon talk about sports, music, the best burger they’ve ever had, funny stories about being stuck in a hotel room because of a security issue, and one of the film crew blowing the doors off the bathroom, and none of them could get away from the stench. Normal human stuff. Joey grosses us out with stories of cadavers from med school.
On the surface, it’s one of the most relaxing days I’ve had in so long. It’s the undercurrent that seems to be turning into a riptide every time I glance at Joseph that I’m concerned about. There’s a tsunami of energy swirling between us. It’s unresolved feelings about what happened in the kitchen, poured like lighter fuel on the smoldering remains of what happened between us years ago. And those few words he uttered that changed everything. I’ve tried to keep them out of my head since I heard them because they make no sense, but now they are all I can think about.
I never said I didn’t want you.
The boat heads back to Daufuskie Island to drop Jack and Keri Ann off for the night. I give her a tight hug. My friend is on the cusp of throwing her entire soul into this relationship with Jack Eversea. None of our lives will ever be the same no matter what happens. Today seems like a pivotal moment in life for all of us.
As we head back to Butler Cove, Devon claims he has calls to make.
I climb up to the front sun deck, my towel around my shoulders over my dress to keep me warmer in the evening wind. As we head across the Calibogue Sound, I spot fins from a pod of dolphins, and it makes me smile. I sense someone behind me, and then the smell of Joey envelopes me as he folds a sweatshirt around my body. I close my eyes behind my sunglasses and breathe in slowly. I feel him settling down beside me.
When I open my eyes, he’s next to me, his knees bent, arms leaning on them and staring out at the horizon. The low sun makes his skin glow. He’s so beautiful. Painful and beautiful. I swallow the lump in my throat. My photographer’s brain captures the image, the straight nose and forehead. The curve of his Adam’s apple. The wind whispers through his hair. He looks for a moment as if he’s lived lifetimes since he was born. And I suppose in a way he has. How does that song go? How a face can change when a heart knows pain? Or is it fear?
“You’re staring.” He turns to look at me. His eyes have something in them I can’t decipher. I hold his gaze, not knowing how to respond, but not looking away.
He reaches up and hooks his finger on my sunglasses, gently pulling them off. My instinct is to retreat, pull them back, look away or crack a joke. I do nothing, and he looks into my eyes. I feel suddenly naked.
Only milliseconds pass, but I can feel myself tensing incrementally, drawing up my armor, locking and sliding each piece into place.
“Don’t,” he says.
“Don’t what?”
“Back away.”
I roll my eyes, breaking his gaze. “I’m not moving.” I push my sunglasses back to my eyes, and he lets me. It disappoints me on some level.
He’s looking at me like I’m lying to myself, and I try to mentally shrug it off and glance back out to the metallic colors of the water before us as the sun sinks lower.
He lets out a long breath next to me. A sigh maybe, but it’s caught in the wind.
“You seem to be liking Eversea more,” I say to make conversation. Albeit a prickly subject.
“I’m worried he’s going to crush her.”
“I know. Me too.”
“Really?” he asks sarcastically. “You seem to be cheering them on.”
“I want her happy, you idiot. Of course, I’m cheering them on. He makes her happy.”
“All I’ve seen is him making her miserable.”
“Then you’re not looking close enough.”
He shrugs. “Didn’t he come to Butler Cove in the first place because the tabloids were ripping him apart? Now he’s going to have my sister as collateral damage the next time they decide to go after him. And worse than that, they could go after her. The whole thing is just a f*cking disaster waiting to happen.”
“What did he say to you on the beach after the race?”
Joey squints out into the sunlit horizon. “He said, he knew I didn’t like him, but that he was completely in love with her, and that he’d … he’d rather rip his own heart out of his chest than ever let anything hurt her. That he’d protect her from his life the best he could. And he promised me he wouldn’t interfere with her plans for college and what she wants to do with her life … whatever she decides that is.” Joey rakes a hand through his salt and windblown hair. “He said he’d give up his dreams before he let her give up on hers.”