Page 53 of Not a Friend (Crescent Light #1)

Now

Selfishness and clarity A clear perspective I’ve known for so long I want it all

I stayed out of our suite the rest of the evening, needing space to think about what my relationship with Kieran had become in a matter of days.

Something had shifted, changed in a way that was irredeemable. He showed a side of himself I never wanted to see again. But now wasn’t the right time to face it, not when emotions ran so high and he was so far gone. All I wanted to do was get through the rest of the night unscathed.

After finding my flower workstation tidied, I trudged to the walk-in—careful to prop the door open with a milk crate—and spied a few new arrangements with sad, lopsided-looking flowers inside.

A soft smile tugged at my lips at the thought of Nate attempting to build the flower arrangements by himself, just to make sure the job got done.

I toyed with flowers, sprucing them up a bit and plucking stems from the others until they looked somewhat uniform .

I searched the ceremony space for Gemma or Grant, but it was vacant, save for the rows of empty seats and the giant wooden archway at the end of the aisle. A rogue hammer lay discarded on the ground, and a handful of empty cardboard boxes were piled atop a chair in the last row.

Making myself busy, I set about cleaning and organizing all the boxes left around the ceremony space and inside, stacking everything into the designated storage room. I milled about until the sun began to set, and there was nothing left to do but trudge back to my suite.

Gemma found me before I found her.

“Oli!” she shouted distantly from an Adirondack chair on the outskirts of a brick fire pit. Around her sat Grant, Martinez, Jared, Miles, and Leo. The whole gang, except one.

My heart warmed at the sight of my friends huddled around the fire.

I was greeted with a chorus of hellos as I took the remaining empty chair closest to Gemma.

Martinez and Miles roasted marshmallows on long metal sticks as Jared and Grant bickered over something on Jared’s phone.

Leo simply stared into the flames, transfixed.

As much as it felt somewhat incomplete without him, I was grateful Nate was missing from the group. I was still a bit shaken by what happened with Kieran, and being near him would confuse my emotions more than they already were.

“Hey, babe,” Gemma said, untucking the blanket wrapped around her legs and tossing half of it to me. Her eyes lingered on Nate’s zip-up I still wore, but she said nothing about it.

“Hi,” I replied, settling in. “I took care of the boxes that were left outside. ”

“Thank you. The resort staff were supposed to come pick them up, but I guess they haven’t made it over there yet. I appreciate you.” She leaned closer and offered her hand.

I took it, looping my fingers with hers.

She squeezed softly. “Do we need to talk about what happened earlier?”

It was a multilayered question. Do we need to download about what happened in that walk-in? Do you need to vent? Do you need a come to Jesus about your relationship?

I sighed through my nose, momentarily transfixed by the fire, then met her baby blues and shook my head. Half of me didn’t want to talk about it because the other half of me already knew what needed to happen. There was no coming back from it.

She gave my fingers another gentle squeeze. “Got it.”

The group of us sat around the fire, talking, laughing, and spending time in each other’s company.

Martinez tracked down a server inside the main building to bring us all glasses of wine—white for me—along with more marshmallows for him to char.

We didn’t talk about our jobs or the weather.

Nobody asked where Kieran was—or Nate, for that matter.

We didn’t focus on anything in particular at all. We simply hung out, like old times.

Eventually, the sky grew dark, and the fire died out. One by one, our little group dispersed until Gemma and Grant declared they had to part ways until it was time to say I do —my cue to head to bed. With a yawn, I gathered Gemma in my arms and hugged her tight.

“You are a perfect angel goddess,” I murmured into her hair. “You sure you don’t need me to slumber party with you tonight? ”

“My mom already called dibs on my last sleepover before the wedding. Trust me, I wish it was you instead. She doesn’t understand that a facemask will ruin my spray tan.”

We both laughed.

Grant pulled me into a hug. “Thanks for everything, Olive.”

“Call me if you need me in the morning, okay? I’m happy to help with whatever.”

“You’ve done enough already! Tomorrow is the easy part.” Gemma slipped her freshly manicured hand into Grant’s. I gave her a look, making her amend her statement. “I’ll let you know if I need anything, okay?”

“Good.”

The walk back to the suite was a long one. Exhaustion settled into me, my brain shutting down little by little with each step.

I changed into pajamas in silence, ignoring Kieran in the corner of my eye. He lay awake in the bed, watching me, saying nothing. I didn’t have the energy to talk to him.

Instead, I crawled into bed with my back to him and closed my eyes. A few minutes later, he rolled closer to me, kissed my bare shoulder, and fell asleep.

Sleep gripped me, making me snooze my alarm three times before I bothered to open my eyes.

When I stretched, my arm landed on an empty pillow. A quick glance around the room revealed Kieran’s tennis shoes and headphones were gone. Probably a morning run .

I’d only had one glass of wine at the firepit the night before, but I might as well have had the whole bottle. My stomach roiled, my body ached, and a dull headache pressed behind my eyes.

Pulling on a loose-fitting pair of jeans and a sweater, I made my way down the hill to breakfast. I kept my head down as I spooned a heaping pile of fresh fruit and a piece of toast onto my plate. My social battery was dangerously low, and I needed to charge it again before the ceremony.

Sitting at the only small table left empty in the dining room, I picked at my fruit and opened my email on my phone.

Luckily, there wasn’t a significant change from the day before.

Only one notification caught my eye. I’d set up alerts a while back to flag any new posts from artists I followed for work so that I wouldn’t miss anything important, like album drops or new music videos.

Opening the alert, I studied the official announcement for Crescent Light’s European tour.

My eyes lingered a few extra moments, as they always did with Crescent Light, before I locked my phone again and put it face-down on the table.

Kieran was still in his running clothes, huffing deep breaths when I opened the door to our suite.

“Hey,” he said, cracking a handsome smile. “There you are.”

I said hello back but didn’t feel inclined to say much else as I knelt next to my suitcase to dig through my toiletry bag. I felt him behind me as he leaned down to kiss the top of my head. Like nothing was wrong. Like nothing at all out of the ordinary had happened.

“I was going to see if you wanted to get breakfast, but you were already gone.”

“Yeah, I already went down,” I said, standing. “I’m going to take a shower.”

He followed me, leaning against the bathroom doorframe just as I turned the water on as hot as it would go .

“Can I join you?”

A crossroads. Asking to join me in the shower was his form of apology. An effort, an invitation for closeness, for intimacy, in hopes everything was forgiven and forgotten. Saying yes would smooth things over amicably until we could have a real conversation.

Did I want to continue fighting? Not really.

But did I want to give in? Move on and push our issues aside just to keep the peace? Pretend like everything this weekend didn’t happen?

With a gentle hand to his chest, I urged him out of the bathroom. “No.”

Everything was clearer when thought about in a shower.

Nate’s questions from the night before rang over and over again in my head like a mirror held in front of my face.

Was there anything Kieran and I had in common? Did he care about any of the things I cared about? Our hobbies, our friends, our lifestyles, the things we liked: was there nothing we were aligned on?

Were the red flags just so subtle that I never looked at them all together? Was it that I didn’t want to see them until now? It seemed I always had a justification to excuse the little things that bothered me, a reason behind the edits I’d made to myself to better fit his mold.

This weekend didn’t reveal anything new at all. It only shined a spotlight through the holes in our relationship that I didn’t want to see.

Then there was Nate.

How was it possible to be so weak around someone? How was talking and laughing with him after everything so easy, so natural?

No matter how much I wanted to be able to stay away from him, I never could. From the day I met him, he had occupied a spot in the back of my mind, a place in my heart, and no amount of time had made him go away .

The second I set eyes on him, no matter how long it had been, I got sucked into his gravitational pull. I couldn’t resist it if I tried.

Fighting with Nate in the walk-in had shifted something. I hadn’t realized how much I needed closure. How much I needed to tell Nate I was sorry and hear it back from him. How much I needed the release of having it out, to say every unsaid thing.

He could still read me like a book, even after all this time. Was that dangerous? Or was I just uncomfortable with being that deeply known?

Maybe that was the reason I was scared to see him this weekend. Because at my core, I hated that someone had the power to look right through my facade.

At one point in my life, it might have scared me to know that someone knew me. That someone could give me butterflies while simultaneously cutting me open and revealing parts of me I didn’t want to look at. The parts I wasn’t proud of.

But it didn’t anymore.

We were bound to each other. It was as if there was some subconscious part inside of me that saw and recognized the complimentary piece inside of him. Hurting each other in the past didn’t undo that, and neither did distance.

I was certain now that while time had done both of us a world of good and gave us space to do some growing up, it would never change that inexplicable spark.

It would never change the fact that I was in love with Nate Cassidy.

Oh my god.

I’m in love with Nate Cassidy.

Turning off the hot water, I wrapped myself in a huge fluffy towel and stepped out of the shower. I watched myself in the mirror, staring deeply into my eyes .

This woman. From the top of her head to the soles of her feet, every dip and curve, every soft, dimpled contour, every freckle and scar, she was exactly who she was meant to be.

She knew who she was. She was a hard worker. She was intelligent and capable and artistic and creative. Worthy of the best friends anyone could ask for. Worthy of unconditional happiness and support and success.

Why would she settle for someone who didn’t cherish, support, and accept every single part of her?

Why would she settle for less when someone like Nate existed in the world?