The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea (The Devils #2)(28)

That he came to get me, though, feels like the first embers of sunlight coming out behind Diamond Head, warming a cold gray sky. I hope tomorrow I manage to hold onto this feeling, that I remember what it’s like when someone actually cares. And then I hope I get on a plane and get my ass back home, because I know this situation can’t lead anywhere good. Josh isn’t mine, and even if I wasn’t with his brother, and he wasn’t with Sloane, he’s too smart and too good to ever fall for someone as damaged as me.





18





JOSH





I can’t believe my brother hasn’t fucking noticed she’s not with him. I can’t believe she puts up with a man who doesn’t notice that much. Is there any polite way to tell your brother’s girlfriend she can do so much better? To ask what the hell she’s thinking?

“My dad had a Jeep,” she says. Her eyes are closed. “It was such a piece of shit, and so old, but I loved it.”

She’s never, not once, mentioned her father. I feel like she’s finally letting me peer behind the curtain and I don’t want her to pull it closed again.

“Yeah?” I ask. I take a left when I should turn right. I don’t want to get back to the hotel too soon.

“We’d go for a drive, and he’d sing these stupid songs and I’d hold the six pack. My job was to open a new one for him just as he emptied the one he had in his hand, and then we’d split the last one.”

My stomach sinks. I thought I’d get some cute childhood anecdote. A tiny pigtailed Drew being driven to soccer practice or going to McDonald’s. “You’d split it? How old were you?”

She shrugs. “Nine? Ten?”

I glance at her and take an extra turn. “Drew, that’s…kind of terrible.”

She shakes her head, her eyes still closed. “It isn’t though. You’re just seeing it as, like, a responsible adult. Drinking bad. Spinach good. Like that. But as a little kid it was just fun. He liked having me around and I felt…I don’t know. Special. He was the only member of the family who liked me just as I was.”

“You’re talking about him in past tense.”

“He’s dead,” she says with no emotion whatsoever. She could be reporting his year of birth, his eye color. “Drunk driving accident.”

“I’m—”

She starts to laugh. “Oh my God, your face! I’m kidding! I mean, not about the dead part. He’s extremely dead. But he wasn’t drunk driving.”

I wait another minute just to make sure this isn’t a joke too. “Drew, I’m so sorry. I had no idea.”

She hitches a shoulder, leaning back to close her eyes again. “It was a long time ago.”

I turn toward the Halekulani at last, feeling slightly ill and thinking about Sloane’s quiet warning the other day—She’s messy—and knowing there was some merit to it. Reaching beneath the surface with Drew is like reaching blindly into broken glass. But the way she’s so cavalier at times, the way she acts as if nothing matters, it also seems like resilience, like the thing you’d do if you thought caring would destroy you. It worries me but I admire it at the same time.

I pull up to the valet and open her door. If it was up to me, I’d just carry her upstairs, but just because I didn’t recognize her earlier today doesn’t mean other people won’t. I place a hand on her shoulder to wake her, leaning over to unbuckle her seatbelt.

Her long lashes slowly flutter open, and suddenly our faces are inches apart and we’re way too close. My gaze dips to her mouth before I can stop myself. I imagine leaning closer, pressing my lips to hers, and for a moment there’s something in her eyes saying she’d let me.

Fuck. I’m imagining taking advantage of my brother’s drunk girlfriend. It’s got to be a new low.

I take a step backward. “Can you walk? I can carry you, but I’m worried someone will take a picture.”

“I’m invisible now,” she says in a stage whisper. I think they probably heard her one town over.

I laugh to myself. “Yes, super invisible.” I help her out of the Jeep and wrap my arm around her. She can’t walk a straight line even with my help, so we cut through to the pool area, where it’s dark and vacant, rather than go through the lobby.

“Are we going to swim?” she asks, giggling.

I scoop her up like a child. “No, I’m just trying to get you to the room without witnesses. Do you have your key?”

She shakes her head no, resting her head against my shoulder and then she sniffs my shirt. And sniffs again. “You always smell so fucking good,” she says. There’s a hint of a groan to her voice and my body reacts before I can stop it.

“I need to be bathed in boiling water,” she adds.

“Man, you get weird when you’re drunk,” I say, but I’m smiling. “I didn’t expect that about you.”

“You just thought I’d be all sleazy, didn’t you?” she asks. “You thought I’d be like the Naked video. Dancing around with only the naughty bits blurred out.”

I wish she hadn’t reminded me of the video. Yeah, I hate the song, but no straight male hates the video, and I don’t need to be thinking about what wasn’t blurred out when she’s in my arms and my hand is inches away from her breast and she’s groaning You smell so fucking good against my neck.