Page 78 of Deadly Little Scandals

It was just supposed to be talking.

It wasn’t supposed to hurt.

“Jessi!” Nick’s aggrieved tone barely managed to penetrate the cacophony of reprimands my brain was launching in my direction.

People can only hurt you if you let them.

I grabbed my keys and shoes and was already halfway past him when I processed the name he’d said and the particular shade of annoyance in his tone when he’d said it.

I recognized them both.

“Jessi,” I repeated, turning back to face him. “Your little sister?”

“And you must be the girlfriend.” Jessi grinned. Now that she was no longer backlit by the sun, I could see a resemblance—and just how young she looked.

“She’s not my girlfriend,” Nick told her.

That shouldn’t have hit me hard. It shouldn’t have hit me at all.He’s right. I’m not his girlfriend. I’m really, really not.

“Sawyer…” Nick started, then backtracked. “Wait for me at my car, Jess.”

Nick’s sister looked at the two of us, then shrugged and issued a parting shot. “Whatever you say, big brother. I’ve always admired your ‘work’ ethic.”

“Smart-ass,” he grumbled as she turned and flitted away.

“I should go,” I said once she was gone. I didn’t give him a chance to reply. I was halfway to the edge of the boat when his voice stopped me.

“You never asked me why I stood you up at that party.”

I quelled the impulse to turn around and face him again. “I don’t care,” I said.

“That’s strange,” he replied. I could practically hear the smirk in his voice. “Because you definitely cared when Jessi showed up, before you realized she was my sister.”

He sounded just satisfied enough about that, I had to turn around. “Asshole.”

Nick took that as a compliment. “That night, I canceled on you because there was a problem with Colt.”

His brother.“Is he—” I started to ask.

“He’s fine,” Nick told me. “Still comatose. Still not here when he should be, and I still think of that sometimes when I look at you.”

I hadn’t had anything to do with putting Colt in that coma. I hadn’t helped cover it up. But I was who I was, and the Ames family and mine were intertwined, going back generations.

“And then,” Nick said, “I think that if Colt were here, he’d tell me I was an idiot.”

I swallowed. “For being with a girl like me?”

“There are no girls like you,” Nick said. “You’re not like other people,Miss Taft.”

He only called me that when he wanted to piss me off, so why did I feel like this time was different? Why couldn’t I shake a single thing he’d said?

“I should go.”

“Should you?” Nick countered, stepping closer to me. “Tell me one thing first, Sawyer. Why is it that you feel everything else so deeply, that you love everyone else in your life—from your grandmother and Lily to godforsaken Campbell Ames—so loyally and so fiercely, but you can’t even admit to a moment of jealousy when it comes to me?”

My mouth felt dry all of a sudden. My skin was humming. “It wasn’t jealousy,” I said.

It was a warning of all the ways this thing between us could go south.