By the Book (Meant to Be #2)(73)

He stood up again, and then joined her on her lounge chair. “Oh, I’ll do better than that,” he said.

She got very little reading done by the pool that day.





When they got into the car after dinner, Izzy looked over at Beau. “So that was weird, right?”

Beau sighed. “I forgot. You’ve never seen that before, have you?” He started the car. “We haven’t really gone anywhere together where anyone has paid attention to me. No one at the beach cares who I am, if they even know. All surfers care about is how good the surf is that day, that’s why I like them. But that waiter definitely knew.”

She looked at him sideways. “He seemed kind of…scared of you? Am I making that up?”

Beau shook his head. “No.” He stared out at the street as he started the car. Izzy thought he would be angry at how hostile their waiter had been toward him, but the look on his face was more resigned than anything else. “I got a reputation when I was younger, and it never really went away. After that bar fight, and that car accident, and everything. No one will ever believe this—especially after what I did to my mom at the funeral—and I’m not trying to pretend I’m perfect, but a lot of that reputation was undeserved. The bar fight was just me defending my friend Madison. Some guy grabbed her ass, so I punched him. It probably wasn’t the most appropriate way to handle it, but people always did that to her, and I knew how sick of it she was. And then the car accident, I was driving another friend home—he was very high and grabbed the steering wheel because he thought it was funny.” He turned and looked at her. “I was totally sober that night.”

She put her hand on his arm. “I believe you.”

He smiled at her. “Thanks. So anyway, it became a whole thing. How I was the angry, bad one, of our whole group, you know.” He looked over at her when he stopped at a light. “I was also the Black one.”

She nodded. “Yeah.” She raised her eyebrows at him. “Are you writing about all this?”

He sighed dramatically. “She has a one-track mind over here, doesn’t she?” He grinned at her. “I’m going to write about it. It’s on my list. I just haven’t gotten there yet. I’ve been going a little out of order. Someone once told me I could do that.”

She elbowed him, and he cackled.

She turned to him as they drove home. “Have you talked to any of your friends? Since you’ve been here?”

He shook his head. “They texted me for a while, checked in on me. Well, my good friends did. But I ignored them. And now it feels too late.”

She put her hand on his. “If they’re good friends, it’s not too late.”

He swallowed. “Yeah. I guess.”

She wouldn’t push it.

When they got in the house, Beau stopped her by the door again and bent down to kiss her. She still couldn’t believe this was happening. This whole weekend had felt almost magical.

“You know,” she said, “starting tomorrow, we’re going to have to stop kissing in the hallway like this. Michaela will be around. We don’t want to make her uncomfortable.”

He pushed her hair back from her face and leaned forward to kiss her again. “Mmm, good point,” he said. “I guess that means we have to take advantage of this while we can.”

Finally, a while later, she pulled away.

“I have to get up early tomorrow, so…”

Beau slowly let go of her. “See you tomorrow, Izzy.”

She smiled at him before she turned to go upstairs. “See you tomorrow, Beau.”


As she walked to the kitchen in the morning to get coffee, she heard his laugh from down the hall.

“What’s gotten you in such a cheerful mood this morning?” Michaela asked him, right as Izzy walked into the kitchen.

“Oh, you know, the weather was great this weekend, it’s probably that.” Beau turned when she walked in. “Good morning, Izzy.”

She tried to smile at him like normal, in the same way she’d done before. How exactly had she smiled at him before? She couldn’t remember now. At first it had been her fake cheerful smile, she knew that. But at some point, it had changed. And then it had changed again. She knew she couldn’t smile at him the way she wanted to, the way that said “I had a great time kissing you all weekend, and if Michaela wasn’t just a few feet away, I’d be kissing you right now,” especially since Michaela was looking right at her. She hoped she just looked sleepy and walked straight to the coffee maker.

“Morning,” she said, trying to direct her greeting to both of them.

“How was your weekend?” Michaela asked.

Izzy could feel Beau’s eyes on her as she moved to the fridge for milk.

“Oh, good,” she said, without looking at him. She poured the milk into her coffee and replaced it inside the fridge. “Apparently, there was a snowstorm in New York this weekend, so I feel very smug about being here, obviously.”

Beau and Michaela both laughed.

She looked over at the baked goods corner. There were lemon poppy-seed muffins, and Izzy put one on a plate. “Okay, well, I’d better go back upstairs. I um, have a call in a few minutes.” She started to leave the kitchen.

“Izzy.”