Page 23 of Rebooked For Us
I turned around anyway. He was standing at the galley entrance, calm as a Sunday morning, wearing a long-sleeve linen shirt to match his pants, a smug look sitting comfortably on hisface. I cataloged him, greedy for every detail I’d missed in seven years, even the ones I already knew by heart.
Deep brown skin that he always kept moisturized. Full, close-cropped, clean beard. Amber eyes, lighter than I remembered, catching gold whenever the light hit them right. Ducane Simmons was a masterpiece, and he had always known it, which was the most annoying thing about him.
He caught me looking as I went somewhere else in my head fast.
The first time I ever saw him, I had just gotten myself kicked out of a classroom and walked outside fully prepared to be annoyed for the rest of the morning. Then I heard it. A deep laugh, full and unhurried, stopped me where I stood, although the last thing I felt like doing was stopping or even being bothered. By the time I turned around, he was already keeping pace with my stride on the steps.
“That mouth gon get you in trouble, Storm.”
That voice. I had not planned on smiling or on a lot of things that followed.
“Skye. Earth to Skye.”
I blinked. “What? Hmm?”
“My assistant upgraded your booking this morning. Premier partnership with the resort, you’re in the east wing villas.” He was so straightforward about it, which irritated me because I knew the real Ducane. But maybe this had always been him,too. Either way,he was completely aware of what he was doing. “I had lunch sent ahead because I know how you get when you haven’t eaten.”
I stared at him. “I had a room, Ducane.”
“You have a villa now.” He stepped forward and checked his watch like we were done here. “Don’t forget to eat. Dinner is at 7. A car will pick you up.”
He walked off the plane before I could respond,leaving me gripping the beverage cart handle with my mouth open.
I made it halfway down the aisle before Lydia caught up with me.
“Girl.”
“Girl, nothing. You ought to get your pay docked for making me deal with him.”
She laughed, not knowing the history. Had she known, she’d understand.
“Seemed pretty cozy to me.”
“Please,” I scoffed.
She held her hands up and went back to work.
I stood there for another second, then went back to the cart because I had a job to finish. My feelings were not on the checklist. Not right now. Right now, I needed to get myself together and figure out why I had agreed to this dinner in the first place.
I already knew why. I just wasn’t ready to say it out loud, not even to myself, not even in an empty galley where nobody could hear me admit it.
By the time I got into the cab headed to the resort, I was still unsure. The whole ride, I sat with the window cracked, letting the warm air hit my face, replaying the moment I’d looked Ducane Simmons in the eye and said, “One dinner.” One dinner felt like nothing. One dinner also felt like the first crack in a wall I’d spent seven years building.
Out of sight, out of mind. Except he was never really out of mind. It was just managed. Filed away somewhere I didn’t visit on purpose. One scent in a hallway and the whole filing system fell apart.
I didn’t miss him. That was too simple for what this actually was. It was something else pulling at me, something I had never fully packed away no matter how hard I tried, and it pissed meoff because I had spent years building a life around a version of events that only worked if I didn’t look at it too closely. Ducane was supposed to be history. I had let him believe that was the end of it.
Now he was back around, giving me lines about owing me something.
Ducane and I shared something bigger than us. I could admit that in the back of a cab on an island where nobody knew me. We had been in a whirlwind romance. That love snuck up on us because it started as a friendship, and by the time I understood what was happening, I was already in it all the way.
Deep.
We did everything together, spent every free hour in each other’s orbit. One thing led to another, and a fire that had been smoldering finally caught.
The first day, he chased me out of a classroom and didn’t stop. That was Ducane. He came. He always came. He told me once he’d burn it all down if I needed him to, and I believed him, because he never once gave me a reason not to.
So when I cut him off and waited, I wasn’t waiting for a stranger. I was waiting on the man who chased me down because he decided he wanted me. I gave him every reason to go, and I still thought he’d stay.
