Page 55 of Right Side of Paradise

Unconditionally

Get into your body and out of your head.

Lyric left me with those words when I walked out of her shop Sunday, and I was clinging to them.

Granted, she didn’t know the extent of what I was attempting to suppress. Maybe that’s why there was a forty-eight-hour cap on her advice.

I’d been running myself ragged the past two days.

Paddle boarding as soon as I woke up and just before sunset.

Swimming.

Walking up and down the island.

Shopping for shit I didn’t need on Rainbow Row.

And most importantly, avoiding the three men who didn’t deserve having to deal with me at my worst.

Last night, I completely ran out of fuel. I didn’t even remember putting myself to bed. When I got in the shower, my whole body ached like I had the flu when it was really just my muscles cursing me out for the nonstop movement.

But what the hell else was I supposed to do when it seemed like my mother had blocked me? Either that, or her phone was conveniently off every time I called or texted her.

I needed to sit down somewhere and appreciate that my thirtieth birthday was Friday and I didn’t have a plan. If this were any other birthday, I’d be checking into a new hotel in a new country, scared I would miss something if I went to bed.

Now all I wanted to do was sleep.

This was deeper than a difference of opinion.

Yes, my feelings were hurt. But I was in shock. Plain and simple.

My mother and I had never had a petty disagreement. We never blew up at each other. She’d never talked to me the way she had on Sunday, and I didn’t know if I would ever get over that.

Brock was one thing. His dramatics had been more surface level. By the time we left Salt, he was drunk as hell, but he wasn’t repulsed either. He hugged me and told me we would talk another time.

But my mom…

My mom .

I was still trying to understand the words she threw at me.

She thought I was a pass around. That Soul, Christian and Rico would never respect me, or love me.

It was fucked up. That was all I could say about it.

“Are you leaving us?”

When the bed moved beneath me, the sound that came out of me was ungodly.

Because the “bed” was Christian, and I’d been too lost in my head to notice.

If it wasn’t for the bear hug he trapped me in, I would’ve landed on the floor when I tried to roll away.

“Why am I on top of you?” I mumbled into his pec. The muscle flexed under my cheek, and I knew he’d done it on purpose.

“It was the only way all three of us were fitting on this little ass bed.”

Three ?

I raised my head and found Soul taking up the rest of the full-size bed in a deep sleep, his face less than an inch from Christian’s broad shoulder.

“Last night was the second night you didn’t come to bed.” Chris waited for our eyes to meet. “I’m not the only one who can’t sleep without you.”

Dropping my head to his chest again, I listened to the thrumming of his heart.

It was strong. Steady. Sure .

Everything I equated with Christian.

“Are you isolating yourself because you’re trying to figure out a way to leave us, sweetheart?”

The way he steeled his voice fractured my battered heart, and the way his heart rate quickened under my cheek made a lump take shape in my throat.

“No, I would never leave you.”

He settled his hands at the small of my back, kneading away some tightness there, his slumberous gaze on me the whole time.

“You scared me.”

I only knew he said those three words because I was watching his lips. His voice was so soft—so guarded—I would have missed it if I blinked too long.

“I didn’t mean to.”

“I know, sweetheart.” He tried to smile, but it never really formed. There was too much caution in his expression to fully relax. “I’m not tryna downplay what you’re feeling, but you gotta check in with us.”

His hands glided over my back. I was wearing one of his t-shirts that hit me mid-thigh, but from this position the cotton was bunched around my hips.

Christian fingered the hem. “You know I spend too much time in my head to deal with silence from you,” he added, a thread of teasing slipping through his patient tone.

I laid my palms flat against his chest and rested my chin there to peer at him.

“I know, I’ll do better.”

Warmth swept across his features, and his smile made me smile. For the first time in days.

Sighing, I spread my legs so I was straddling his waist instead of awkwardly laying on top of him. “I don’t know why it feels like somebody just broke my heart.”

“Because she did. Everybody knows you and Soul have cotton candy hearts.”

“ What ?”

“Soft as fuck,” he clarified, smirking when I muffled my laugh against his skin. “Certain shit really is that deep to y’all. But cut yourself some slack. I know you wouldn’t be this hurt if what she said wasn’t heartbreaking.”

This was why Christian was my safe haven.

He was just as selective with his words and as soft spoken as me.

But he could talk me off a cliff with a single word.

He was always in my corner. My quiet protector, and the man I trusted with my first time because I knew he’d be gentle in all the ways that counted.

And I was right.

That night revealed how gentle all of them were, but I still had no regrets choosing Christian.

Which made my mother’s words sting even more.

These men laid the world at my feet when I woke up every morning. There was nothing I couldn’t ask them for.

I was the one who tried to make it a solely physical relationship, and the man underneath me right now was the reason that failed before it could ever start.

They wanted me as much as I wanted them. Forever. I never questioned that, and my mother not letting me explain cut me deep.

A vibration disrupted the quiet, shaking the nightstand. The phone I’d fallen asleep clutching was there with the earbuds I fell asleep with too.

Reaching over, I picked it up so it wouldn’t wake Soul.

It was wild how much I wanted the name on the screen to be my mom’s.

Disappointment didn’t get to settle long before I rushed to stand up.

“Shit, it’s Lyric.” I paced reading her message.

Lyric :

hey girl, I just got to the shop. Let me know when you’re on the way, I’ll grab us iced matchas from up the road

I forgot I let her talk me into being my first guest after we talked on Sunday. Suddenly, the two-day grace period I gave myself didn’t seem like enough. But I wasn’t about to cancel on her when this was my idea to begin with.

“I have to go,” I said quietly.

Christian massaged his beard, watching me intently.

“After you eat breakfast with us.”

Christian was looking at me, but the muffled voice didn’t belong to him.

Soul lifted his head enough to look at me with one eye peeked open.

“Soul—”

“I wasn’t asking.”

My rebuttal died a quiet death when I snapped my lips shut.

“We gave you two days.” He stretched, his legs tangling with Christian’s as he rubbed the sleep out of his eyes.

“You get to be hurt, that don’t mean you get to neglect yourself, Harley baby.

You been surviving on air and sleep for two days.

Before we came in here last night, Rico said he was making breakfast today.

” He covered a yawn. “I’m sure it’s done by now.

Eat with us then go do what you gotta do. ”