Seaside Embrace(24)

She’d been going back and forth about opening her own studio. Hunter and the girls made her feel like she could do it, but handling all of Marco’s work plus teaching classes, she wondered how it would be any different if she owned the studio.

She’d already been through the pros and cons a million times, and she knew there were more pros than cons, but still she wavered.

Her phone vibrated, and she didn’t have to look at it to know it would be from Hunter. She’d never answered his text about being more than fuck buddies. What was so wrong with being fuck buddies? Her stomach twisted. Why was he suddenly affecting her this way? The one thing she’d always been sure of was her sexuality. It was the one area she could control in her life, and she’d used it well, to clear her head, to handle her emotions. Now Hunter was trying to take that away from her and make her not only say she wanted him, but if she was reading him right, he wanted her to date only him, too.

She was perfectly happy being fuck buddies, and then he had to go and turn all nice and romantic. The Wicked Oyster? A walk? Mind-blowing kisses? She should be leaping off of cloud nine directly into his insanely muscled arms. Instead, she was beginning to panic. She wasn’t dealing with Marco, who deserved a swift kick in the ass. She couldn’t even commit to opening her own studio. Her mind flip-flopped like a fish out of water. How could she move forward with a relationship with Hunter? She couldn’t commit to him until she could at least commit to herself.

Hours later, after teaching three more classes, dealing with a bitchy mother who always tried to hurry her daughter out of class early, and answering the studio emails, Jana finally checked her phone messages.

After seeing that the earlier text wasn’t from Hunter, but from Bella, and a message from Leanna shortly thereafter, she clung to a thread of hope as she opened Bella’s message.

Bad news. Theresa looked over the bylaws for Seaside, and apparently we’re not allowed to rent out that space. It can only be used for community gatherings.

Jana’s jaw dropped open. Tears burned in her eyes, and a lump of sadness clogged her throat. She hadn’t realized that she’d been clinging to the hope of renting the space as desperately as she must have been.

She pressed her lips together, unwilling to fall apart over something she hadn’t even seriously considered doing a week ago. It was a silly dream.

She forced back the tears and responded to Bella’s text. That’s okay. I knew it was a long shot.

Wiping a tear that slipped free, she opened a group text to Harper and Sky. I need to go out. Meet me at Undercover?

She was contemplating texting Hunter, when her phone vibrated with a text from Sky. Of course. What’s up?

As she sent her response to Sky—Rec center is a no go—she received one from Harper. Just wrapped up my work. Meet you there!

She forced a smile as more unwanted tears tumbled down her cheeks. She could always count on her sister and Sky. She tried to regain control of her emotions and reread Hunter’s text from earlier: We’re going to be more than fuck buddies. You might as well accept it.

She considered answering him honestly—No, Hunter, we’re not. I’m a mess, and right now I need a fuck buddy more than ever. After last night, she figured if Hunter read that response, he’d want to know why, and why wasn’t something she could understand, much less make him understand.

Instead, she texted an answer he couldn’t argue with. We make great fuck buddies. Why mess with perfection? She bit back the pain that caused, which was made worse by the guilt threatening to strangle her over the blatant lie. But how could she offer him anything else?

She was working through administrative paperwork for the ads she’d scheduled when he responded.

Exactly. We’re perfect together.

Yeah, they kind of were, but how long would Hunter really be happy with just one woman? She wasn’t sure she even knew how to be someone’s girlfriend anymore. She sent him a response that she hoped would end his pursuit for more. She wanted to be with him, but her life was complicated enough, and what they’d had before she’d been dumb enough to challenge him to be romantic wasn’t complicated at all. They had hot sex. No questions, no strings. It was perfect.

Last night was fun, thank you. But I think I liked you better when you promised me sunsets and gave me orgasms.

She turned off her phone, crossed her arms over her desk, and rested her forehead on them. Jana hated liars, and she hated people who hurt others.

Right then, she hated herself most of all.





Chapter Sixteen


UNDERCOVER WAS PACKED. Hunter had forgotten that it was open mic night. At the moment, a redhead was butchering a Maroon Five song. Hunter and Clark had ordered a pizza and a pitcher of soda and they’d been talking for the past two hours, but every time Hunter brought up Nina, Clark skirted the issue. Hunter felt himself losing patience, and he knew it wasn’t Clark’s fault. It was the messages he’d received from Jana. She liked him better when he promised her sunsets and gave her orgasms? What the hell was that supposed to mean? She was the one who wanted sunsets. He wondered if he would ever understand women.

He topped off their drinks and looked at Clark. Clark wasn’t a drunk, and the soda tonight was more to make a point than anything else, but he was getting the impression that there was more to his and Nina’s separation than he was letting on.

“Just tell me this,” Hunter said. “I’m trying to figure out how two people who loved each other so much that they couldn’t imagine a future apart ended up where you two are now.”

Clark shook his head and splayed his hands toward the ceiling, as if he had no idea. “I’ve been wondering the same thing for months. It’s like…” His eyes searched the bar, but Hunter could tell he wasn’t searching for someone. He was searching for answers.

“You really don’t have any idea? You just woke up one morning and realized you felt trapped? You had to get out?”

Clark’s brows drew together, and he stared into his drink for a minute before answering. “You know how you guys heat up the metal, and then you pound it on the anvil until it’s the way you want it?”

“Sure.”

“And when it cools, sometimes you have to reheat it and reconfigure it because you’re not really happy with what you got out of it?”

Clark was speaking Hunter’s language. This he could understand. “Yeah.”

“Well, you know I adore Nina. My love for her hasn’t changed, and to be honest, going through this—” Clark looked away, his eyes suspiciously damp. When he looked back, his voice was stronger. “Going through this has made me see her in a whole new light.”

“But you hardly see her anymore. You’ve spent more time getting hammered than you have with Nina.” That might not be true, but it was pretty damn close.

“Maybe so. But do you know how much I miss her? Do you know why I poured my guts out to a stranger?”

Hunter shook his head, hoping Clark wasn’t going to admit he’d cheated on Nina, because that was something Hunter didn’t think he could get past. Loyalty was everything when it came to family.

Clark leaned across the table and said with a serious tone, “Because I’m afraid that if I tell Nina how I really feel, it will make me seem weak and pathetic, and she might not take me back. But I have to get this shit off my back or I’m going to go fucking crazy.”

Hunter looked at him for a long time before responding. As much as he didn’t want to hear that his buddy had cheated, Clark was like family to him, and he couldn’t turn him away. “What the hell did you do?”

“Why do you jump to that conclusion? I didn’t do anything. I left for the exact reasons I told you I did. But come on, Hunter. How pathetic is that?”

“I don’t get it. If you left because you felt like you were boxed in, like you weren’t appreciated or noticed and you missed being intimate with your wife, why didn’t you just tell her? Hire a babysitter? Fix it?” Hunter glanced up toward the bar. He could no longer see Colton serving drinks, or the stage for that matter. The crowd was standing room only, and his mind moved to Jana again. When they’d decided to come to Undercover, he’d hoped she might be working, but she was nowhere in sight.

“Because on the surface it was all those things.” Clark leaned back. “But it wasn’t until I was talking to that chick on the phone that I realized the rest, and the rest of it is what makes me really look like an asshole.”

“You lost me. What’s the rest of it?”

“I’m spilling my guts about how Nina doesn’t notice me anymore to this woman, telling her how nice it is to hear someone ask me how my day was and shit like that, and she moves straight from that to asking me if my wife still blows me. She says that’s how I’d know if Nina loved me.”

Hunter swallowed the bile rising in his throat. “Please tell me you didn’t discuss the details of your sex life with her.” His mind turned to Jana. Those were the types of details he’d share with Grayson or Clark about any other woman, but the thought of sharing those intimate details with them about Jana? That made his blood boil, and she wasn’t even his wife.