Page 102 of Best Vacation Ever

“No one touches my girlfriend!” he yells, struggling against the people holding him.

Alessio’s still on his ass in the sand, but quickly scooting away from Terry. I’m standing there with my jaw on the ground, trying to process everything that’s happening in what feels like seconds.

“Faye! Get security!” Adam orders, pointing to the hotel that’s barely visible through the onslaught of rain.

For the first time in forever, I don’t argue with him. I have no idea how this is going to play out, but the last thing I want is my friends getting hurt, or even havingthemkicked out of the resort for fighting.

I spin around and run through the sand, struggling because not only is it wet, but Kellan’s flip-flops are too many sizes too big for me. Without pausing, I kick them off, running full force for the hotel. The second my foot connects with the stone path, I realize I messed up, because my foot flies out from under me. It doesn’t happen in slow motion; it’s too quick for me to process.

One moment my feet are under me as I’m sprinting, the next I’m airborne, and then there’s nothing.

—

When my eyes open again, Adam’s face comes into focus incredibly close to my own. He’s snapping his fingers an inch from my eyes.

“Fayanna?Faye?”

“Stop that.” I shove his fingers from my face and groan when that makes me dizzy.

He leans back a bit but stays way too close for comfort.

I’m lying on the hard ground on my back in the rain, Adam’s crouching beside me, and my head is absolutely pounding.

“Faye?” he pushes again.

“What?” I roll my neck and sit up, which does nothing to ease the hammering in my skull. Why does he keep repeating my name like that? And why is he so damn close to me? The rain is cold despite the warm weather and slams loudly onto the ground. I shove my hair from my face since it’s soaked and sticks to my skin. When my hand brushes the back of my head, I wince from the pain.

“You slipped and banged your head,” Adam tells me. There’s something in his eyes that I’ve never seen before. Is that . . . concern? “You were unconscious for a couple minutes.”

That explains the dizziness and the jackhammer going to town in my skull. No one’s on the beach anymore, which is weird because last I checked there were like ten people going at it with no intentions of leaving. Kellan’s not here, and my stomach plummets. I was unconscious on the ground and he just left me?

Adam follows my gaze and turns back to me. “When you weren’t moving everyone was crowding you, which wasn’t helping. I yelled at them to back off. Kellan and Alessio ran to find the hotel doctor and call an ambulance.”

“I don’t need an ambulance, I’m fine.”

Adam’s jaw clenches. “Can you get up? Sitting in the rain isn’t helping.”

I squint at him. Is he concerned or just annoyed that my slip is screwing up his good time? I twist my back to crack it.

“Where’d everyone else go?”

Adam swipes his hair off his forehead, but the rain pushes it back. “Terry punched Dylan in the face trying to get to Alessio.

I think he broke his nose; I don’t know. There was a lot of blood.

But then we saw you slip and not get up, and Terry took off.

The girls went to get security, and Dean helped get Dylan to the lobby to stop the bleeding.”

But why did Adam stay? Because he was forced to? Or because he wanted to?

“Are you going to sit there all day or get up?” he asks.

I just smashed my head and blacked out, and he’sstillbarking orders at me. Maybe it’s the fact that my head is pounding, that my tailbone aches and my left shoulder is sore. Or maybe it’s the fact that I told Kellan I love him, and he didn’t comment, and that Adam was yelling at us, and Dylan’s somewhere bleeding, and Terry’s running around cursing Alessio, and Adam’s stuck here taking care of me when he obviously doesn’t want to.

Maybe it’s a combination of all those things that makes me blurt out, “Why do you hate me?”

He blinks at me. “What?”