Page 35 of My One

“And now you feel the same?”

Avery shrugged. “Not too much, but the feeling comes and goes, I guess.”

I scrunched my brows in confusion. “Comes and goes?”

“When I’m concentrating on stuff, I don’t think about it, and I guess I feel fine.” He shrugged a shoulder.

I stared into his azure eyes that reflected the setting sun. “Monday, first thing, we’re taking your blood.”

He smirked. “You sound like a vampire.”

“If I were a vampire, I’d cure you by turning you so we could live together forever.”

“You think I’m—sick?”

“Sick as in a cold?”

“No.” He shook his head. “Sick as in cancer sick or something.”

“What?” I drew my head back. “Why would you think that?”

“You saidcure.”

“Let’s not think about this until we run the blood work, okay?”

Avery nodded slowly and took a deep breath. “Okay.”

“We should plan that trip to Dublin,” I suggested.

He balked slightly. “Dublin?”

I shrugged. “We talked about it a few years ago.”

“Yeah?”

“Maybe help to take longer than a weekend away.”

Avery nodded. “Yeah, Dublin sounds good.”

We walked down the beach toward where Avery thought the lighthouse was, but the farther we walked, the more apparent it became that the lighthouse wasn’t walkable. The shore started to get rocky, and finally, we’d walked as far as we could. The lighthouse was still in the distance, but since we didn’t have our shoes, we decided to walk back to the hotel.

“We can drive there tomorrow,” Avery suggested.

“Sounds good to me. It’s getting dark, and we need to eat before our swim.”

He pulled me to him as we kept walking. “So, sex in public is okay as long as people can’t see?”

I bit my bottom lip, thinking about being promiscuous by having sex in public. “I guess there’s only one way to find out.”

We walked along the shore, enjoying the warm breeze and the quiet that wasn’t the hustle and bustle of New York City. Avery pulled his phone out of his pocket and glanced at the screen. “A California number is calling me.”

“Oh?” I asked. “Are you going to answer it?”

His gaze flicked to mine as we stopped walking. “It’s probably a telemarketer or something.”

I shrugged. “Maybe or it’s—”

“I don’t want to talk tothem,” he answered, already knowing who I was referring to. Avery’s parents lived in California, but he hadn’t heard from them for years. The phone continued to buzz on silent in his hand.