“You’d think with all their competitiveness they’d want to kill each other
,”
I muttered
. “
But clearly they’re still blissed out.”
“Yeah.” Alyssa began playing with the paper on her water bottle.
“Uh-oh, what did you hear?” By now sweat was pouring down my face. Alyssa stretched
her arms above her head giving me quite a pleasant view of her tight little bo
dy. Maybe rowing wasn’t so bad.
“Nothing
.”
She waved me off
. “
Or, I don’t know, maybe it’s something. I don’t know
.
Y
ou know Angelica.”
“Angelica?” This had to be good. “What does Angelica have to do with anything?”
My muscles burned as I kept the rowing motion up while my eyes were trained on Alyssa
.
S
he would tell me if I was going to hit something. Not that there was much to hit out
on the open water, then again we were rowing to the next beach over.
Alyssa looked above my head
. “
We’re gaining on them.”
“Focus.” I snapped
. “
What did Angelica say
?”
Alyssa shrugged
. “
This morning after breakfast s
he was just telling Nat how fickle guys can be and how Alec wasn’t always this tame.”
“Tame? Alec is anything but tame
.
H
e’s just…
housetrained.”
“Like a dog?” Alyssa glowered.
“Like all men should be when they settle down with their woman
,
” I countered. Crap
.
I think I just pulled a muscle. Was it bad to cry in front of a girl? With Alyssa’s
help we went around the bend to
the next beach over.
“Anyway
s
.”
Alyssa took a swig of water.
“Angelica was probably just trying to make Nat feel jealous or something.
The
conversation ended with Angelica blurting to Nat that if Alec was so happy why was
he on anti-depres
s
ants.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah.”
“There’s the flag!” Alyssa shouted
. “
Faster!”
“If you say that one more time…” I ground out
. “
Please tell me you didn’t let Nat know you knew about Alec’s pills.”
“I feigned indifference. I
didn’t
think it would be smart to tell her how worried you were. It would just make things
worse.”
“Did they fight?”
The shore was coming fast. Finally. I was r
eady to burn my own damn canoe.
“Nat didn’t want to ruin teambuilding day
,
and she didn’t want to do something on camera, you know?”
“Good call.” I put in a few more good
pulls on the oars
and then stopped when I hit the shore. I helped Alyssa out and took her hand. We ran
toward
the stupid flags where we were supposed to build our castles and stopped mid-stride
just in time to see Nat punch Alec in the face.
With a low whistle, I nudged Alyssa
. “
Yeah, I think they’re having that important chat in front of God and everyone.”
Alec
“You lied to me!” Nat huffed. The sting of her punch was radiating all the way down
my neck. Who the hell taught her how to throw a right hook like that?
I put my hands out in front of me nea
rly tripping on the heavy sand.
“I didn’t lie.”
“You’re
lying
now!” She pushed against me causing bo
th of us to fall to the ground.
“I omitted!” I defended myself and rolled so that I was on top of her straddling her
body. “And before you hit me again, at least let me explain.”
“Fine.” Her teeth clenched together
. “
Do it fast.”
A camera was
thrust
into my face as a producer cleared his throat
. “
Get closer to Nat, maybe angle the camera from the sand looking into Alec’s face.”
I rolled my eyes and counted to three. If the cameraman didn’t back up
I
wouldn’t be
the only one with a black eye.
“I’m waiting.” Nostrils’ flaring
,
Nat glared up at me.
Licking my lips, I nervously itched the back of my head
. “
It’s
not like it’s anything new, Nat
. Your mom prescribed them to me. It’s just been…
really stressful
.
Y
ou know that. People get depressed. It isn’t a big deal and I didn’t want to burden
you.”
“By not telling me you burden me, because then all I do is worry about what you
'
r
e
hiding.” A tear rolled down her cheek. I wanted to point out that Nat was one of the
least emotional people I knew. She didn’t really cry often
,
and it took a lot for her to lose her cool, but lately, it seemed she was losin
g her mind right along with me.
The fact was. No matter how
I answered, I was hurting her.
“I’m sorry, Nat.”
She exhaled and glared at the camera before looking up at me with giant brown eyes
. “
Was that what was bothering you the other day? You were afraid I’d find out and judge
you or something?”
“Yes
,
” I lied. Shit
,
the lies were getting too easy. “I didn’t want you to know. I was afraid you’d be
concerned
,
and
well
,
you know how I’m used to dealing with al
l
the baggage on my own.”
My hands moved to her face. I wiped a few stray tears and kissed her softly across
the lips. “I love you.”
One of the mak
e-up artists sighed to my left.
“I love you too.” Nat sniffled
. “
But no more hiding things from me.”
“Okay.” And there went lie number two. “Now can I get off of you or are you just going
to punch me again?”
“I may still punch you.” Nat shrugged
. “
Guess you’ll have to trust me.”
“Right.” Slowly I moved
away from
her and offered my hand.
“Hey!” Demetri yelled from behind us
. “
Nice black eye!”
I flipped him off.
“Nice finger!”
I turned around and made a move to chase him down
,
but Nat tugged on my hand. “Castle
.
W
e have to build the castle! We aren’t losing to Demetri
.
T
he guy can’t even walk without getting a side
ache.”
“Sorry. I was distracted by my girlfriend clocking me in the jaw, won’t happen again.”
Nat smirked and threw the little plastic bucket at me
.
“Dig.”
“Yes
,
m
a
’am.”
We frantically filled the buckets around us with the wet sand and began constructing
our castle just as Jaymeson and Angelica made it to the beach. I didn’t have to turn
to know they were present. Angelica made sure of that
with her yelling and screaming.
“Muzzle her, would you?” I yelled back to Jaymeson.
“Tried. Apparently they only let you muzzle dogs, not humans.”
“I don’t see what the problem is
.
” I chuckled.
Jaymeson laughed right along with me and tugged An
gelica to the space next to us.
“Gross!” Angelica swatted her hands at the wet sand, some of it landed on our castle.
Nat grumbled under her bre
ath and glared over at Angelica.
“Just build the damn castle
,
” I heard Jaymeson say.
“And if I don’t?” Angelica taunted.
“Then I’ll bury your entire body, leaving your face exposed to the sunlight and put
peanut butter on yo
ur nose for the seagulls to feed
on.”
“Graphic
,
” I muttered under my breath to Nat who was trying
ridiculously
hard not to laugh.
“Fine.” Angelica huffed and began working with Jaymeson.
According to our instructions
,
Nat and I only had one more section of the castle to build. It wasn’t that big but
the directions said we had to hav
e at least eight bucket towers.
An hour later and w
e were just on the last tower when I heard someone screaming my name.
Actually, scratch that. I heard several
people
screaming my name. I blinked against the sudden flash of light and noticed reporters
littering the beach like one of us had just de
cided to strip naked in public.
“Alec is it true? Are you on anti-
depressants
? Did Nat threaten to break up with you? Did she punch you in the face? Are you dying?”
I glared at
Ruben
.
Wouldn’t be the first time he’d purposefully leaked something to the media. The only
people who knew our location was the film crew.
Ruben
called into his walkie
-
talkie and soon our security detail pulled up and began slowly l
eading the media off the beach.
“Guess the cat’s out of the bag then
,
” Angelica sang to herself
. “
Soon everyone will know all your dirty little secrets, Alec.”
“Pretty sure they know them all now
,
” Nat answered just as I opened my mouth.
“Oh
,
honey
…
” Angelica stopped putting sand in her bucket and turned a wicked smile
toward
Nat
. “
You sweet, innocent little lamb. You know absolutely nothing. Isn’t that right, Alec?”
Forgetting about the cameras for a brief second, I wondered if I would actually get
arrested for striking a woman. I clenched sand hard in my fist until I was sure I
would have bruises of tiny sand marks etched on my skin.
“Five more minutes!”
Ruben
announced
. “
And the castles have to be finished before you row back to the next shore and move
on
toward
your last game of the day!”
“Ignore her
,
” I whispered to Nat as I released all the sand from my hand and w
iped it across my board shorts.
“Can we be done?”
s
he asked in
a small voice.
I inspected our castle. I
t was damn near perfect. “Yup!”
Hand in hand we ran back to our boat and began row
ing back to the original shore.
Nat was silent until about halfway
across
. “
What did Angelica mean? Does she know something I don’t?”
Hell
,
yes. “Don’t worry about it. She’s just jealous because I’m the only Daniels brother
she hasn’t slept with.”
Nat’s eyes closed. “I didn’t realize how badly I needed to hear you say that until
now.”
“Say what? That she’s jealous?”
“No.” Nat shook her head
. “
That you haven’t slept with her. I was worried that…
well
,
I mean
,
it would explain a lot.”
I almost laughed. She was relieved I didn’t sleep with Angelica, yet she had no idea
what I did do that night. No idea the choices I made and how they would affect her
even now as she was
stressing about another woman.
“I didn’t sleep with her. If I remember correctly I rejected her.” I cleared my throat
and looked down at my feet as I continued to row. “I may have kissed her.”
“WHAT?” Nat roared.
I ducked. Self
-
preservation and all that. Besides who really wants to sport two black eyes
,
both from your girlfriend?
“When?”
“Before
you and I
were dating
,
” I answered honestly. Finally. I could at least tell the truth about that. “I
,
uh, well
,
we had to do some promo together. We both had a lot to drink and I kissed her
.
A
ctually
,
she kissed me and then I pushed her away, but still.”
“Gross.” Nat shivered. “No offense, but you’re an idiot.”
I gulped and tried to laugh with her but it sounded
too
hollow. Oh
,
I was an idiot
all right
. I was a damn fool. But instead of push
ing
me to confession
,
a
ll it did was make me want to control the situation more. I pushed the truth so far
back into my head that
I
wasn’t even sure what reality was anymore.
But one thing was certain.
I couldn’t keep hurting her every damn day and not want to die a
thousand deaths because of it.
I was going to choose me.
Which meant
,
in
the end
,
I was choosing us.
But that
also meant I was screwing my brother. Just like before. Only this time I knew forgiveness
wouldn’t be so freely offered. And if it was it would be right before he
pushed me off a very tall cliff.