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R oan’s dark eyes blaze into mine. The corners of his mouth tug upward into a cocky smirk. “You think I’m hot?”

I roll my eyes, not wanting to give him the satisfaction of repeating myself. “As if you didn’t know that.”

My parents come back into the kitchen. I need to make an escape before they read the emotional turmoil all over my face.

“I’m going to take a shower,” I say shortly, leaving the kitchen before anyone can stop me.

“Is everything okay?” I hear my mom ask Roan, but I don’t stop to hear his answer.

In the bathroom, I turn on the hot water as far as it will go, then stand under it, hoping it will melt my frustration away. Why does Roan make me feel so uncertain about everything? And at the worst possible moments?

There’s a knock at the door. “Jenna? Can I come in?”

My body goes hot and cold at the same time. It’s Roan.

“I’m naked,” I say, my throat feeling thick.

“Already seen it.”

“Very funny.” I look around. The shower wall is made of frosted glass. It’s also steamed up from the hot water. “Okay, come in. But don’t look.”

“If you insist.”

I hear the bathroom door open and then close again. I fight the urge to cover my naked body with my hands.

“What’s wrong?” he asks, his voice now much closer than before.

I don’t know what our relationship is anymore, I want to say but can’t. I don’t know what I want it to be.

“Oh, no idea. Maybe I’m getting my period.”

“Our cousins constantly give us grief when we blame mood swings on their periods, and now you’re doing it? How is a man not supposed to be confused?”

I grin. “You’re not the one allowed to say it.”

“Ah, I see. Sounds very fair. But tell me. What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know. My mom is great.”

“She is.”

“Everyone else used to think so too.”

“And?”

“And they pretended to be friends with me, but they liked her better.”

“Okay.”

“That’s why I don’t have many friends. Basically, just Nina and Stephanie, who’s currently building wells in Somalia or something, so we’re not in touch right now.”

“And you have me.”

“Well, but do I have you?”

“You do.”

“Because of Mom?”

“I didn’t even know your mom until yesterday. I want to be friends with you because I like you.”

“Really?”

“Of course. Hey, Jenna, you always come across as so tough. You’re smart and quick-witted and funny and confident. It’s easy to forget that like every person, you can be vulnerable too. But I’m glad you’re sharing this with me.”

“The crybaby?”

He laughs. “The crybaby. But I want to get to know all your facets. The crybaby, the defiant one, the stubborn one, the volcano, the crazy one. And however many other sides you have.”

“But then you might not like me anymore.”

“I already like you, a thaisce . Nothing can change that now. You’re my friend.”

I don’t know how long it’s been since I cried. Usually, I’m not the overly emotional type, but in this moment I’m crying. I’m crying for the girl who, despite all the love, was sometimes incredibly lonely.

“Are you crying?” he asks carefully.

“No,” I claim, while the tears are coming.

The next moment I’m taken into his arms, as naked as I am, as dressed as he is, and as wet as we both are now. He doesn’t touch any delicate areas, but just the fact that he’s touching my bare skin is already very exciting.

“It’s all good. Don’t cry,” he murmurs against my head. “Please, don’t cry. I can’t bear it.”

Of course, these words don’t make the tears dry up; on the contrary, they flow faster and faster. I cling to him. His touch is not about excitement anymore. Now it’s just the feeling of security that I need.

And he’s completely the wrong person, because he’s part of the problem. But I accept his warmth in this moment because I have no other choice. And because I want to. I like him. As a friend. And I have to try to keep it that way, because I’d rather have him in my life like this than not at all. And I know myself. I’ll run away as soon as it gets too close. Then I’ll have lost him, and I just can’t imagine that.

“You’ve gotten all wet,” I say after a while.

“It’s not bad.”

“I’m naked.”

“I know that all too well.” I feel it rumbling in his chest.

“Sorry.”

“You never have to apologize for being naked.”

I look up at his grinning face. “Thanks.”

His expression becomes tender. “I wasn’t lying when I said I like you, that I’m your friend. Just because of you, because you’re amazing.”

“Okay.”

“Trust me.”

“I’ll try.”

“Good.”

He bends down, gives me an incredibly gentle, absolutely platonic kiss on the lips, before pulling me to him again, hugging me.

“Where can I find towels?”

“There in that cabinet.”

He lets go of me, looks me in the face the whole time, which I like. So I don’t think he wouldn’t respect my boundaries. When he hands me the towel, he does it turned away. I wrap myself up, wait until he’s peeled off his wet clothes and wrapped a towel around his hips, too. The problem is just that now I can see so much more than he can see. And it’s still just as sexy as in my memory.

Fuck my life!

After getting dressed, I step back out onto the patio. Mom immediately throws me a questioning look. I know I’ll have to talk to her later, but for now, I just smile to show her I’m okay. When I sit down, she squeezes my shoulder.

Roan and Dad are chatting at the barbecue, drinking beer, and flipping the steaks in between sips. It’s such a cozy, domestic scene that it almost makes me uneasy.

Is this the kind of future I want? As much as I love Nina and Jared’s relationship, I’ve never pictured something like that for myself. That much togetherness has never been my thing. I don’t want to be in one of those couples where I never go anywhere without my significant other. It would be smothering.

I need my space. The chance to miss someone sometimes. Time for myself, alone. I need room for my secrets, my own thoughts that I don’t have to tell anyone. I couldn’t stand it if someone was always there, in my space, hovering.

“What are you thinking about?” Mom asks quietly.

I look back at Dad and Roan, but they’re busy with the grill and their new bromance. “How do you put up with Dad being with you all the time, every day, now that you’re both retired?”

She smiles slightly. “Well, it wasn’t easy at first. We had our own careers for thirty years. It was hard getting used to always being around one another. The first few weeks were awful. He was always there. I was always there. But then we found hobbies that we enjoy, both together and separately. Your dad golfs, I have my charities, and we both take salsa classes on the weekends.” She looks at me. “Being a couple doesn’t mean giving up your independence. It means relying on someone to be there when you need them.”

“So, you’re saying it can work even if two people aren’t all over each other like spider monkeys?”

She laughs. “Of course it can. People are different. You’re the independent type; you always have been. You’ve managed everything on your own and hardly needed our support with anything. Of course you would look for that same independence in a relationship.”

“But I have the feeling that there is no man who sees it the same way.”

She shrugs. “What about Roan?”

I look at him, unable to keep my eyes from drifting down to his perfectly sculpted ass. “I don’t know. But I think we both agree that we’d rather be friends.”

She cocks her head to one side. “Are you sure about that?”

Now it’s my turn to shrug. “Sure.”

“Have you seen the way he looks at you?”

“Like a friend.”

She laughs. “Okay, then I’ll let you believe that.”

She gets up and goes back into the kitchen. I take another long look at Roan. As if he senses my gaze, he turns to me and smiles.

He really is a great guy. The woman who eventually lands him will be lucky.

But that isn’t me. Right?

When Mom comes back out, she silently signals something to Dad. He comes to the table and clears his throat.

“Your thirtieth birthday is something very special,” he begins, clearly having rehearsed the words.

“Because I’m old now?” I ask.

“Oh, silly girl, you’re only ever as old as you feel,” he says. “Just wait until you turn forty. Or sixty, for that matter.”

“Get to the point, honey,” says Mom with a pointed look.

“Okay, I’m obviously being booed off the stage.” He takes an envelope Mom hands him. “We thought long and hard about what we wanted to give you, but we couldn’t think of anything appropriate. I’m sure you wouldn’t want an alpaca, and Meryl is sure that you wouldn’t have liked a study trip. So we agreed on this.” He hands me the envelope. “Happy Birthday.”

“Thank you,” I say, before looking curiously into the envelope. It’s a check. A check for a huge sum. I look at it speechlessly.

“It’s not a real check,” he explains. “But we’ve set up an account for you with this amount. Maybe you want to build a house one day or whatever. Then you’ll already have a little foundation.”

I don’t know what to say. “Wow. This is way too much.”

Mom waves her hand in the air. “We only have one daughter.”

I shake my head. “I can’t accept this.”

Dad shrugs his shoulders impassively. “That’s not for you to decide.”

I start to cry, and Mom takes me in her arms. Emotional support when it’s needed. It’s definitely too much. Far too much.

Later that afternoon, I take Roan to Barefoot Beach, which is everything you would imagine a beach in the Sunshine State to look like. White sand, turquoise water, all of it glistening under the Florida sun.

We put sunscreen on each other, swim, lie on the beach, and simply enjoy each other’s company.

“What did you want to be when you grew up?” I ask, idly running my fingers through the sand. The warm sun is making me sleepy, and I turn on my side to look at him.

He turns his head toward me, a smile on his lips that expresses pure contentment. “I think at one point I wanted to be everything.”

“So why didn’t you become a firefighter? Or an astronaut?”

He throws a hand over his eyes to shield them from the sun. “I never wanted to be an astronaut. I would have had to study for that, and I never liked learning. I hated school and would have dropped out if my family let me. It was never an option for me to go to college.”

“That’s kind of a shame.”

He peeks out from under his arm to look at me. “Why?”

“Because you’re really intelligent.”

He scoffs. “No way. Like I’ve said before, you’re the smart one in this friendship.”

I shake my head. “Intelligence and education have nothing to do with each other.”

“That’s true. I’m sure you have students who are totally stupid yet somehow skate by.” He grins. “Like my idiot cousin.”

“Cillian isn’t stupid, actually,” I admit. “He’s definitely an ass, but he was getting good grades. He was one of those students who’s an expert in minimum effort for maximum result.”

Roan grins. “I’d say that trait runs in the family. Maybe not when it comes to Orla and her siblings; they’re all workaholics, but the rest of us are definitely like that.”

He sits up and reaches for the suntan lotion. “It’s hot, and you’re pale. Time to reapply. Turn onto your stomach.”

I obey, and he kneels over me, spreads a generous amount of lotion on my back, and starts to massage it in. My toes curl into the sand as he kneads my muscles, which are still stiff from the day of air travel.

He opens the bikini top. I go still.

“I don’t know if that’s particularly friendly,” I remark, my throat as dry as the sand around me.

“You don’t want a sunburn, do you?” he asks, his hands still caressing my bare skin. His voice sounds unnaturally hoarse.

“How considerate of you,” I say dryly. But I make no move to stop him.

“What about you?” he asks. “What did you want to be when you grew up?”

I pause, deciding whether to tell him the truth. “For a very long time, I wanted to be a cleaner at the hospital,” I finally admit.

He laughs. “Why is that?”

“When I was six, I got my tonsils out and spent a few days on the children’s ward. The cleaning ladies were always there, with these huge trolleys full of things; they had these big scrubbing brushes and looked like they were the bosses. That impressed me.”

“That’s an unusual wish for a kid.”

“Yeah, till I realized at some point that cleaning is no fun at all.”

The sunscreen rubbed into my back, Roan’s large fingers expertly retie my bikini top, then he kneels down next to me and begins applying cream to the backs of my thighs. “And what about after that?” he persists.

“Hmm, I don’t think I had a plan for a long time after that, but then when I was twelve, I decided I wanted to become a lawyer, like Mom. That lasted about two years, and then I thought for ages that I would become a journalist or something. That’s why I studied politics. But after graduating, I wasn’t sure what I actually wanted until this job practically fell into my lap.”

“Do you enjoy your job?” he asks, his hands kneading the flesh of my upper thighs, sending pulses of desire through my body.

“Most of the time, yeah. Other times, not so much,” I admit. “I enjoy teaching. I like getting my students interested in the things that interest me, but sometimes it’s also draining. Because humans are exhausting.”

He grins. “Like my cousin?”

“Let’s leave him out of it,” I say, maybe too snappishly. But I don’t want to talk about his annoying cousin anymore while trying to enjoy a day on the beach. I try to pivot. “It’s just hard when someone comes into my office who hasn’t performed well. They’re so desperate sometimes…You feel like you’re destroying their dreams by not giving them a passing grade. Or when someone feels entitled to a good grade, just for existing.”

Roan is listening, but his brow is furrowed, and it’s clear he didn’t miss my harsh tone. “Why leave Cillian out of it? What do you mean?”

Crap.

I bite my lip. “Oh, it’s nothing.”

He leans up on one elbow. “It was particularly bad with him. Is that what you’re saying?”

I turn my head away. “I’ve already said too much. Sorry.”

“Jenna.” His voice is serious as stone. “Tell me. I’ll find out anyway.”

I sigh. “You already know most of it.”

But he’s not willing to let it go. He sits up, his perfect lips turned down into a frown. “No, I only know that you two have some kind of issue. Everyone has been dancing around the details, and I’m sick of it.”

I groan against my arm. Irish people are so stubborn. Slowly, I straighten up so I’m sitting next to him. “He saw me at your fight.”

Roan shrugs, looking confused. “So what?”

I heave another sigh, tired of dragging this out. “He saw me half-naked, and all dolled up during the fight, then he saw you practically dragging me to the locker room, and he drew his own conclusions.”

Now, his face is murderous. “What kind of conclusions?”

I give a short shrug. “That I’m a tramp.”

“Excuse me?!” His expression now looks murderous, and I think Cillian is lucky he’s not here right now.

Well, in for a penny, in for a pound. I brace myself for the coming explosion. “And then, at my lecture he screen-tossed a photo of me from that evening on the wall, via the projector.”

“He did what ?” Roan roars, clenching his fists.

“I tried to just ignore it, but that only pissed him off more, so he started calling me a slut,” I explain, talking too fast. “I kicked him out of my course, but a few hours later, he went to my boss with his daddy, who offered the university a significant ‘donation’,” I put finger quotes around my sarcasm-dripping words, “and I had to take him back on the course.”

Roan stares at me open-mouthed. “Uncle John paid the university money to let his son insult you? Did I get that right?”

“Well, he paid to get Cillian back into my class so he could graduate this year. Otherwise, he would be missing credits.”

Roan shakes his head slowly. “I can’t believe it. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t want to cause any trouble.”

“You didn’t want to…what? What kind of nonsense is that? Jenna, I promised your dad yesterday that I’d protect you. Do you think I was joking?”

“But you only said that yesterday!”

“Didn’t you get that I was doing it before?”

He crosses his arms in front of his chest, drawing my attention to his sculpted pecs and rippling six-pack. Honestly, a naked upper body just looks so good on him.

“When did I ever ask you to protect me?” I ask, a little distracted.

“Isn’t that what friends do?” he retorts in an angry tone. “Look out for each other?”

I lick my lips. I have to stop getting distracted by his powerful biceps. I force my eyes to focus on his face, but unfortunately, that is also so sexy that I can barely pay attention.

“Yes, of course,” I murmur. Then I shake my head. “Wait, why are you upset?”

“I’m not upset with you, just that you don’t think I care about you.”

“I never said that.” I shake my head, irritated at not being understood.

“Not important enough.”

I throw my hands up in the air. “Blood is thicker than water, Roan.”

“Don’t talk such fucking bullshit!” He glares at me. “You’re my friend, that gives me the fucking right to protect you.”

“The ‘right’ to protect me?” I scoff. “Are you out of your mind?”

“No, you’re out of your mind if you think I’d side with Cillian over you.”

“We’ve known each other for two weeks!”

“So what? What’s that supposed to prove? That you can’t like a person until you know their entire life story?”

I pinch the skin above my nose, between my eyebrows. The hot Florida sun is beginning to feel oppressive. “Stop twisting my words. I didn’t want to put a strain on your relationship with your family.”

He glares at me, not backing down. “Let me deal with my family. The ones I care about would never do shit like this, and the others don’t count enough.”

But I’m not backing down, either. “I couldn’t have known that! All I saw was how close you all were!” I return angrily.

It’s a good thing this strip of beach is deserted otherwise everyone would hear our argument.

“You could have asked, you know, instead of keeping secrets from me.”

“I thought I’d never see you again. It was supposed to be a one-night thing, remember!”

His glare deepens, burning into me. “That’s bullshit, Jenna! When I left your place that morning, we already had plans to meet up again. Just admit that you should have told me about Cillian!”

“It wasn’t your problem to fix! Besides, I’ve seen how you deal with problems.”

Roan pauses and blinks. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

I sigh, my anger dying down a notch. “Before you even knew the whole story with Cillian, you beat him up.”

He gives me a mocking grin. “Beat him up? I gave him one hit.”

I roll my eyes. “See?”

“I see that you can’t admit a mistake.”

“You’re such a dumbass.”

I push against his chest with both hands. Or at least I try to, but he doesn’t move an inch. The man is built like a slab of granite.

He reaches for my face, holding it carefully in both hands. “I’m going to tell you this once, Jenna, and you’re going to listen. Is that clear?”

I glare at him. “Fuck you.”

He pulls me against his chest and looks down at me, his expression somewhere between angry and caring. “You are my business. I like you, and that’s why you’re my business. Whether you like it or not. And I expect you to be honest with me and let me handle things you can’t handle yourself.”

“I can…”

He puts a finger to my lips, and I’m half-tempted to bite him.

“Shhh, I’m talking. Cillian’s a little shithead. He always has been. As you’ve noticed, he lets his daddy buy him out whenever he gets into trouble, which is why he doesn’t understand anything that’s explained to him rationally. He only understands strength—physical strength—because he doesn’t have it himself. Get it? Besides, he’s my family, which means I’m responsible for him.”

“But I’m not family, so you’re not responsible for me.”

His gaze turns dark, and I swallow nervously. “You are my family,” he says, his voice deadly serious.

“I…” I lick my lips, speechless.

“You heard me, Jenna. You’re family.”

I have no idea why, but tears come to my eyes. I can’t speak, so I just nod. He tenderly strokes the pads of his thumbs under my eyes, wiping away my tears, and then pulls me close again. I breathe in his scent deeply.

“Never again think that you mean nothing to me,” he murmurs.

I nod. “You mean a lot to me too.”

He presses a kiss to the top of my head. “I know, a thaisce .”