Jacob snorted, tying his hands behind his neck as he continued pacing. “Yeah, not exactly what I had in mind, but I had to sleep somewhere. Her room door was as sealed shut as her legs last night.”
At the same time I wanted to punch him for talking about her like that, I kind of wanted to kiss him too. They hadn’t slept together—they hadn’t even slept in the same room. All because of her. Why hadn’t she let Jacob in? Why hadn’t she let him close like she had so many times before when he’d messed up and apologized?
I was a damn fool to think it had anything to do with me, but what other explanation was there? Why else would she not let the man she’d promised to marry into her room last night? Yeah, she had a reason to be seriously pissed about the wedding fiasco, but was there more?
Was I the more?
The only way to know for sure was to find her.
Sliding out of bed, I pushed through the hangover and jogged into the bathroom to crank on the shower. I smelled terrible and figured Cora had enough experience with Jacob showing up smelling like death warmed over from a night of drinking—she didn’t need me showing up the same way.
“There’s a storm coming, and instead of looking for Cora, you’re here getting in my face?” I asked.
I pulled a bottle of water out of the mini fridge just outside the bathroom and tossed it at Jacob. He needed to sober up and, from the looks of him, take a shower too. No matter what went down today, we were all going to be truthful with each other. Once and for all. No more lies. No more deceit. The truth.
I wasn’t sure if that would mean I’d lose her and my brother in the same day, but was keeping them close with lies so much better?
“Hey, for the record?” Jacob’s voice was muffled by the sound of the shower as I crawled inside. “I don’t think you did it. I don’t believe you could do that kind of thing to me . . . but I just need to hear one of you say it. You know?”
We were both quiet long enough for me to drop my head in the shower and feel like a total piece of shit for sleeping with the woman he claimed to love. Jacob might have done some nasty things to me, but he’d never gone so far as to sleep with the girl I was with. Not that he’d had many opportunities to do so.
“I know the feeling,” I whispered, letting the hot water beat down my back as I tried to figure out what was right and what was wrong.
I wondered if there was any such thing as right anymore. I knew it was wrong for me to love Cora, but just the same, it was the most right thing I’d ever felt.
When I hopped out of the shower a couple minutes later, Jacob was gone. I wasn’t sure if he’d gone back to his hotel room or out to search for Cora or more in search of a drink, but he was gone.
After throwing on the first clothes my fingers came across in my suitcase, I slid into a pair of sandals and flew out the door. Despite the wind, it wasn’t cold, much like the storms we got in Miami. The wind was strong, but nothing compared to some of the storms I remembered from back home. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.
Jogging toward the hotel, figuring I’d start searching there, I pulled out my phone and tried calling her. The call went immediately to voicemail, so either her phone was dead or turned off. I tried once more before punching in another number.
“It’s barely nine in the morning and you chugged about a pint of shitty vodka last night. What are you doing up right now?” Maggie yawned, but I knew she hadn’t been asleep. She’d always been an early riser, plus med school had gotten us accustomed to long nights and minimal sleep.
“Mind recapping last night for me? Just so I know who I have to apologize to?”
“Besides me for having to wrangle your drunk ass all the way back to that loveshack cabin on the opposite end of the hotel grounds that you thought was such a great idea?” Maggie snorted. “You need to go on a diet, because I felt like I was wrestling an elephant last night.”
As soon as I lunged into the lobby, I scanned every chair and corner in the place. Other than the employees and an older couple snoring with papers spread open in their laps, no one else was there. “Have you seen her?”
“Who?”
I continued to scan the lobby, cradling the phone on my shoulder. “Cora? Have you seen Cora?”
“I’m in a hotel on the other side of the island because that’s how much space I need from you people. What makes you think I’ve seen her?” There was a brief pause. “Wait? Does that mean she’s missing or something?”
Sticking my head into the couple of restaurants and the lounge ended in the same result—no Cora. “Jacob hasn’t seen her since last night. She’s not answering her phone.”
Instead of going to the elevators and trying her room, I went back outside. Cora wasn’t in her room—if she wanted to be alone, she wouldn’t be hiding in the most obvious place people would look for her.
“Wait. Hold up. So there was a runaway groom and now a runaway wife?” Maggie let out a whistle. “God, I can’t get this much drama even with my cable subscription.”
As I made my way along some of the walking paths winding around the resort, the ball in my throat grew. Where was she? “You haven’t seen her? Promise?”
“No,” Maggie answered immediately.
“Would you tell me if you had?”
She laughed like my question was amusing. “Yes, believe it or not, I would. You turned me Team Cora with your final story last night of why you fell head over heels for her.” She paused like she was waiting for me to catch up, but I didn’t have a damn clue what I’d said last night. With the way I was feeling and the amount of alcohol I’d consumed, I could have said just about anything. “You know, when your date to freshmen homecoming stood you up and Miss Cora went with you instead since your asshole brother was getting asshole drunk and passed out? So she went with you and you pretended to be Jacob and no one was the wiser—Jacob especially, since he spent the night in a drunken stupor in your dad’s pool house.”
My feet stopped rushing along the pavement. “I told you about that?” I sighed, reminding myself why excessive drinking was to be avoided at all costs. If not for my liver’s sake, my dignity’s. “That was a secret both of us were supposed to take to the grave.”
Maggie made a clucking sound with her tongue. “Well, when Jacob finds out about what happened between you two here, the grave’s not too far off for you, I’m guessing.”
“Funny.” I started moving again, and when I reached the end of the hotel grounds, I journeyed onto the beach. No one was lounging on the sand today. Even the beach bar from hell was boarded shut. “If you hear anything, will you let me know?”
“Like you even need to ask. And if things start getting really juicy, right before you’re all about to sit down and have that heart-to-heart, let me know so I can be there in full-body Kevlar. I wouldn’t want to miss it.”