Page 53 of The Sun & Her Burn

And it was mean because I felt mean and had all morning.

A greedy, irascible voice in my head kept snarlingmine, mine, mine.

I wanted Linnea with me.

At my side on a hike in Runyon Canyon, jogging down Carbon Beach, at some fancy dinner at a place likeSpago.

And I wanted Adam there, too.

It was as gluttonous a desire as it was an absurd one.

I’d thrown Linnea in Adam’s path so he would not be outed as bisexual to the press.

There was no room formeinthem.

InLinam.

I was alone on the outside as I’d always been.

My fists clenched on my towel so tightly I tore the edge with a loud rip.

Linnea watched me, but I refused to look up at her.

I was raw, my skin washed away by the brine of the sea, by the heat of her looking at me and seeing through into what lay inside.

The car door slammed shut behind me after I strapped our boards to the roof, and my fingers squeaked on the wheel as I gripped it too tightly.

She let me stew, singing along softly—poorly—to the playlist she played through Bluetooth as we drove through Los Angeles toward Malibu. I had agreed to drop her off at Adam’s and viciously regretted it now.

My finger jammed into the intercom at the gate, and I grunted out my name when the speaker came on, pulling into the opening gate too fast.

Linnea didn’t say a word, but I could see her fingers drumming on her thigh.

Adam’s big, beautiful house came into view, and I hated that, too, because it was exactly the kind of house I would have chosen for myself. Most of it was pale gold stone, styled almost like an Italian villa but from the modern touches that carved huge sections of the house into unblemished panes of glass and black millwork. It was both modern and classic, gorgeous and sophisticated.

I had been house shopping in Los Angeles nearly every time I came out to film or do a press circuit for years, yet I had never found a house that called to me the way this one had.

Of course, Adam had been the one to find it.

Yet another thing that should have been mine that he had first.

I put the car into park so brutally it ground the gears.

Dio mio, I scolded myself as I raked my hair back through my damp, salty hair,get a grip.

Without thinking, I twisted to take in Linnea because I knew she was the perfect anchor.

She sat with one bare foot up in the seat, an arm wrapped loosely around her slim, browned leg, her hair a wet, waving mass around her shoulders. I could only see a sliver of her profile as she stared out the window at the front of the house, the rounded tip of her nose, the ridge of her full, petal-pink mouth, and the thick fringe of her spiky lashes.

Even so, she was beautiful.

Even turned away from me and toward the other man waiting for her on the opposite side of the door.

Stay, I wanted to say with such suddenness I almost gave in to the urge,stay here with me.

For the day?she might have said.

Forever, I could tell her.