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I needed to find him and reassure myself he was safe. I hadn’t checked in with Miles or Carter again, I knew they would call me if there were new developments about the cartel and their potential pursuit of us, but it was always there in the back of my mind. I didn’t think I was a target, but Carter seemed to think it was a possibility, which meant Laurie shouldn’t be out on the beach alone.
I threw on a pair of swim trunks, grabbed a shirt, and rushed out the door, barely remembering my wallet and phone. I hurried to the pool where we had sat the day before, but he wasn’t there. Heart pounding, I took the walkway to the beach.
I didn’t see him at first. There were already a number of people out there trying to enjoy the cooler morning air. I looked at all the loungers, but he wasn’t sunning himself. When I looked out over the ocean, I found him.
He had waded in up to his waist, and he was facing away from me, his wet hair making him less noticeable. I headed down the steps, ignoring the heat of the sand on my feet.
When I reached the cold water, Laurie must’ve sensed someone was moving toward him. He turned, and when he saw me, he smiled. Some of the tension drained from me, but I was still filled with concern for him and uncertainty at what was happening between us. “You shouldn’t have come out here without me.”
Laurie frowned at me. “What do I have to do to prove I don’t need a babysitter? You were sleeping, and I wanted to get outside.”
“You could’ve woken me up. I can think of plenty of things we could do if you were looking for exercise.”
“I…um…I wanted some sun and fresh air.”
“Laurie?”
He looked out across the ocean. “We should tell Beck.”
“I know. Do you”—I swallowed, hoping I could get the words out—“regret last night?”
After a few tense moments, Laurie turned around and held my gaze. “No, but I feel like I should.”
“Please don’t. I want this to work. I want you to come to New York with me.”
“Worth, I want that too. Who wouldn’t want to be swept away by a prince like you to go live in your castle? But I’m not part of your world and that will be so obvious to you there. I won’t just live off your handouts.”
“I told you, I have more money than I can spend.”
“I know, but I need to be my own person. I need to establish my own life, and I haven’t been able to do that.”
That was important to him, and I understood it. I needed to do that for myself, too, because drifting along doing nothing but entertaining myself hadn’t made me happy and doing what my family wanted sure as hell wasn’t any better. “What if we could find something new together?”
Laurie sighed. “Remember how I asked if we could take this one day at a time?”
I couldn’t believe I was the one who wanted to push for more of a commitment, more certainty that he wasn’t going to walk away when this ended. I would pursue him no matter where he went, but I didn’t want it to be that way.
Because you expect everything to go your way.
This was sure as hell going to.
“Did you eat breakfast?” That was a subject I knew we wouldn’t argue about.
Laurie shook his head. “No, and I’m actually really hungry.”
“Let’s walk back to the pool and get something to eat there.”
I tried to stick to conversation that wasn’t about our future, but I didn’t last long. “We could always build a fashion empire. That would be a new start for both of us.”
He stared at me. “Worth, you can’t be serious about that.”
“I’m very serious.”
“I don’t want you to just create a job for me.”
Why wouldn’t he believe I meant so much more than that? “If it were someone else asking, what would you say?”
“I wouldn’t believe the offer was real.”
