She sidestepped, so I did too. We both stepped like that for a moment, going left and right, before she dropped her head back with a heavy sigh.
“Tell me what you were going to say, or I’m going to kiss you and make you so mad you yell it at me,” I warned her.
“You most certainly are not going to kiss me again!” She straightened, slapping her hands onto her hips.
I grinned. “I don’t need to. You’re pissed at me already.”
“You are such a shit.” She shoved her hand into my chest, but I didn’t move. “Jesus. Are you made of stone?” She prodded me hard with her fingertip. “Move, damn it. You’re like a statue.”
I held my hands out to my sides. “I’ve not done a lot except party and seduce women for the past couple years. I’ve spent a lot of time in the gym.”
Her gaze darted all around my body before she shook her head. “Good for you,” she said, but it was weak.
“Now what were you saying before you started attacking me?”
Lani rubbed her hands together in front of her stomach before she wrapped her arms around herself. “Brett...have you ever really paid attention to what the people in Whiskey Key think of you?”
I raised my eyebrows and shrugged a shoulder. “Not really.”
Slowly, she unwound her arms from her waist and dropped them to her sides. “They’re all waiting for you to destroy yourself,” she said, looking down at her feet in the sand. “They don’t think there’s anything good left inside you. Everything I’ve heard about you just screams that they’re waiting for the day you’re found dead in the gutter or something. The worst part is that I don’t know if they’d care.”
I took in a deep breath and stepped away from her. I knew it wouldn’t be good, but shit. No wonder my family was staging an intervention. Was that really what people thought of me? That I was one more weekend blowout away from the end of everything?
Lani’s eyes were focused back on me, but she didn’t say anything.
“What about you?” I asked her without looking at her. I stuffed my hands in my pockets. “Is that what you think?”
“I don’t think it’s that far from the truth.”
I jerked my attention toward her, glaring.
“What? Do you want me to lie to you, Brett?” She tucked her hair back behind her ear. “Because if you want me to, I’ll coddle you and tell you they’re wrong and that you’re not doing anything stupid.”
“No,” I said on a heavy exhale. “I want you to be honest with me.”
She turned her face so she was looking out at the water. The sea breeze teased her dark hair around her face, and every time she tried to move it away, it blew right back there. “I don’t know why or how you ended up being this person, but you have to take responsibility for it. Nobody is going to believe in you if you give them nothing to believe in.”
“That’s easy for you to say. You’ve never done a thing wrong in your life.”
Lani smiled, but it was sad. “I’ve done things wrong, but that’s because I don’t just wear my heart on my sleeve. I tend to pull it off and chuck it at people. I’ve trusted the wrong people and had my heart broken. I just wear those scars on the inside because they’re nobody else’s business.”
I studied her as she spoke. Her voice was flat, no emotion in it whatsoever. Her expression didn’t change either, except for her tiny, sad smile. She didn’t make a fuss over what she’d just said, she just said it. Like it didn’t matter anymore.
But all I could think about was that somebody broke her trust and broke her heart in the process.
“You just need to...I don’t know, Brett.” She sighed and looked at me. “Do something good. Something that you’re not going to hide. Do something that shows people there’s still a good guy somewhere beneath the bullshit.”
“And if there isn’t?”
“Bad guys don’t give roses to apologize.”
She was right there. But she was...different. She always had been.
“Just do something, okay? Make my life a little easier. Do something super amazing that I can write about. Something that’ll make people believe in you again.”
I already did it on a weekly basis, but I couldn’t tell her about the shelter. If she didn’t understand what she’d been to me when we were teenagers, she wouldn’t understand what the shelter was to me now.
An escape—the moms and kids I spent time with every single week were an escape for me. Mostly because the smiles on their faces put everything into perspective.
“There’s the color run this weekend,” Lani said after a moment. “I’m covering it for the paper. Just...think about it, okay? Most people are running for charity.”
“I don’t have time to raise money.”
“You don’t need to raise it.” She smiled. “By the way? Whiskey Key Elementary teachers are running to raise money to renovate the gym hall and set up a vegetable garden. If you were interested.” She walked back in the direction of her grandma’s house. “If you run, let me know.” Her smile turned a little smug. “You’d look good on the front page, covered in pink and purple paint.”
I laughed as she turned and ran across the sand.
I couldn’t deny that her idea was a good one. I’d spent years hiding the good side of me down in Key West. Maybe I needed to do something good in Whiskey too.
Goddamn her for making me want to be a better person. It was so much fucking easier not to be.
Fuck it.
I ran after her down the beach. “Lani!”
“What?” She stopped at the edge of her grandma’s property.
Shit, she was the one who should be doing the run.
I didn’t say a word. I grabbed her face and kissed her. She squealed as my lips pressed against hers, but she didn’t push me away. Maybe she was too shocked to do it because she didn’t grab me either, but still.
I released her just as quickly as I’d taken hold of her. “See ya.”
“What the hell was that for?” She demanded, following me around to the front of the house.
“That was for smacking my ass in the store. And this,” I grabbed her by her ass and pulled her body against mine, “Is for making me want to be a decent human being.” I kissed her again before releasing her and pulling my car eyes out of my pocket.
Her mouth dropped open and she stepped forward, hand poised as if she was going to slap me. She stopped herself only inches from me.
A slow, sly smile crept over her mouth as she backed toward her front door. “Yeah? I’ve been kissed better for worse reasons.”
Well if that didn’t sound like a motherfucking challenge, I didn’t know what did.
I yanked open my car door, my cock twitching inside my pants. “One day, Lani Montana, you’ll learn your lesson. Today is not that day, is it, kitten?”
“Fuck off with your kitten!” she shouted. She stormed inside and slammed the front door, leaving me standing in the driveway, chuckling.
I turned and came face-to-face with a very confused-looking Connie. “Hey, Connie.”
She looked between the house and me. “What did you do to her?”
I shrugged a shoulder. “I pissed her off because I kissed her. Oh, and I called her kitten.”