The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea (The Devils #2)(35)

The sun begins to burst over the horizon at last and we watch quietly, my thigh pressed to hers, her hand resting on the rock just behind me, brushing my back every once in a while.

Someone offers to take our photo together.

“He has this affliction,” Drew tells the guy as I hand him my phone. “He’s unable to smile. I’ve started a Go Fund Me on his behalf but we haven’t had much success because he looks so cranky in the photo.”

The picture is taken. I thank the guy and glance at it when Drew is looking away.

I was smiling.





22





DREW





An hour after we return, I attempt to rouse Six for his day of golfing and he says Five more minutes and pulls the pillow over his head so I go to breakfast without him.

I sit at the table with Josh while his parents go through the buffet, trying hard not to laugh at him in his dumb golf shoes and belted shorts and polo.

It’s not that he looks dumb in golf clothes. It’s that everyone looks dumb in golf clothes.

“Something to share?” he asks, raising a brow. “Go ahead. Your struggle is palpable.”

“You look like an idiot,” I reply, unable to restrain my laughter. “Why are golf clothes so dumb?”

His lips push forward, in an attempt not to smile. “Golf clothes are a mark of civility. If you were from a better family, you’d know this.”

“Wow,” I say, picking up a roll, fully prepared to pitch it at his head. “I can’t believe you went there.”

“I can’t believe you think lobbing food at me in the middle of The Four Seasons will prove me wrong.”

I close my eyes as I laugh, and when I open them, Six is standing at the head of the table.

“What did I miss?” he asks, and it feels as if I’ve been caught doing something I shouldn’t have, which makes no sense. Six would love a food fight in an upscale restaurant more than anyone.

“I was just saying you look like idiots in your golf attire.”

“Josh does,” says Six, “because he’s too fucking big and he has no tattoos.”

“Yes, he does,” I reply too quickly.

“One,” Six says. “On his arm. Big deal.”

Josh actually has two, but I say nothing, as I wouldn’t know about the other one if I hadn’t been watching him climb from the pool way too closely for the last several days.

“What are you going to do all day without me, babe?” asks Six, taking the chair beside me and wrapping his arm around my back.

Josh’s gaze freezes on that arm for a moment. A vein pulses in his temple. “You should work on your song,” he says, his eyes moving to mine.

Six frowns. “What song? She doesn’t write her own shit.”

I’m not sure why I was willing to let Josh know but don’t want to discuss it with the guy I’m actually dating. Who’s a musician. “Just something I’ve been playing around with,” I reply.

“Babe,” Six says with a laugh. “You don’t even play an instrument. Leave the songwriting to the pros.”

I feel something silvery and cold slide into my blood. He knows I started out performing my own stuff. With as little as we’ve discussed about our respective pasts, I know he’s heard this much, and he’s either forgotten or just feels this strange need to take me down a peg, to put me in my place. And I suspect I know which it is.

“I could play guitar and piano before I could read, as a matter of fact.”

“So eleventh grade?” Six cracks. It’s mean. It hurts. But my first thought is Don’t overreact.

Stop being so dramatic my mother must have said a thousand times, whenever I was upset about something Richard or his father had done.

But Josh has gone perfectly still, like a snake about to strike. I’ve never seen him so furious, which tells me my anger and pain might not be an overreaction after all.

“I know you didn’t just say that to her,” Josh snarls. His hand is gripping the coffee cup so hard he risks crushing it.

“Settle down. It was a joke,” says Six, turning to me. “But babe, lots of people claim they can play, but that doesn’t mean they can actually play. So you see where I’d have to call you out a little.”

I climb to my feet. Beth and Jim are approaching, but I’m too furious to stop myself. “I actually play as well as you do,” I reply. “And by the way, I’ve never seen you play an F chord correctly live. Not once.”

And with that, I march away from the table. This is normally the point where I’d worry I’ve gone too far, but Josh’s reaction to what Six said is burned in my brain—like he simply couldn’t believe the words he was hearing. It leaves me wondering if maybe I haven’t gone far enough. If maybe I’ve been letting a lot of people walk on me for a very long time, because the worst things they say about me aren’t nearly as bad as the things I say about myself.

So I’m going to let myself stay mad a while longer. And the only thing to do in the meantime is get out one of Six’s precious guitars, which he never tunes right, and write my fucking song.





I’m at the beach that afternoon, half-asleep, when I hear the sound of a towel unfurling beside me.