JAYA

Since the guys crashed our girls' trip travel plans, it isn't very surprising they took it upon themselves to also crash our humble but depressing plans to huddle up at the two-star motel five blocks from the beach.

As soon as we landed and told them about our plans, they gave us a hard look and shook their heads because we wouldn't be staying at the death motel.

Apparently, just twenty minutes away from the crusty motel, there was a Barton Hotels suite overlooking the beach that the guys deemed more appropriate and less likely to require us to get a tetanus shot after a weekend stay.

While Sera grumbled and complained at their audacity to step all over our plans and in favor of a sleek hotel suite with separate rooms, kitchen, bathrooms, and large windows overlooking a private pool, the rest of us girls accepted our upgrade with excited yelps.

Yet, as I survey the rooms in search of my friends after waking up in an empty room, Sera appears to have settled with our fate quite well. Her legs and arms are sprawled out on the plush queen-sized bed, and she's snoring the morning away, looking quite pleased with herself.

When I notice a figure hunched at the side of the room, ruffling through Sera's suitcase, I let out a screech. The figure stands up with a hanger and T-shirt in hand and turns to look at me with a blank face.

"I'm putting her stuff away," Aristide replies in a low, dry voice without a trace of embarrassment at the fact that I just caught him going through Sera's luggage. "She was exhausted last night and crashed as soon as she finished dinner so didn't have the time to do it herself."

I nod at the obvious phrase, remembering last night after we all ate dinner around the table downstairs, laughing and messing around until everyone slowly started heading up to their rooms.

Sera was the first to pass out, moving to the couch after eating her weight in food and dozing off even with how loud we were being. Promptly, Aristide scooped her up and carried her sleeping form to the room.

"She hates living out of a suitcase," Aristide states to my silent question before hanging another one of her shirts.

I nod obligingly with a smile, and when he fixes another one of Sera's tops on a hanger, I quietly slide out of the room. Theirs is a weird relationship, and though he's always cordial to me, it's easy to tell that Aristide is a dangerous man. A dangerous man I do not want to upset.

As I begin making my way downstairs, I hear loud voices from downstairs and something clattering on the floor, making me hasten my steps.

"You're so useless, please step aside!"

Something else falls to the floor, and this time Rochelle groans in annoyance while Gage laughs as if he's not five seconds from being knocked upside the head with a spatula.

She's one of the smartest people I know, and she'll make a kickass surgeon one day, but the girl is still working on her patience at the moment. Gage is seriously walking on thin ice.

"Morning!" I greet the two with way too much cheer when I enter the kitchen, trying to dispel the murderous energy radiating from Ro and distract Gage from his innate need to goad her.

His eyes jump to me and his smirk transforms into a smile and I already know he's about to say something smart. "Morning, Jayabug."

Yesterday, I made the mistake of speaking to my parents on speakerphone, and Gage took my childhood nickname and ran with it.

"You know you don't have to call me that, right?"

"Had a good night, Jayabug?"

"She's Jaya to you. Don't fucking call her that." A muscled, sweaty, glistening Fin enters the kitchen by Gage and slaps the back of his head before grabbing an apple and biting into it.

"Ouch!" Gage yells out, but we collectively ignore his pain. Ro because she's happy at his suffering, Fin because he doesn't give a damn, and me because my mind is too busy with the vision of seeing a certain sweaty form.

I wish I could peel his shirt off.

When he drops a kiss on my exposed shoulder, I shiver and lean against him for support. "Good morning, sweetheart. Slept well?"

I nod and bite my lip when his hands slide underneath my shirt, working their way up my warm stomach and settling there. I should feel a type of way that he's so freely touching my stomach rolls, but honestly, he's seen me at my most vulnerable, so I feel free with him.

When we got in yesterday, I was still mad at the little stunt he pulled in the air that I somehow got Amara to ditch Jacob and share a room with me, citing the excuse that we had to keep them on their toes a bit.

In the end, six rooms meant that while the men each got their own space, Amara and I roomed together and Ro and Sera did the same.

"Aw, y'all are cute. But please, this is a kitchen," Ro deadpans with a frown. "Take that lovey-dovey shit out of here, please."

"You heard the chef," Gage speaks up and points at us with a smirk. "No love in our kitchen."

Fin, undeterred by our friends, continues kissing up my shoulder, planting delicate kisses along my neck, and whispering sweet nothings against my ear even as the self-declared chef and sous-chef begin arguing.

Ro gives Gage a look and scrambles the eggs in the pan. "Our kitchen is actually crazy given the fact that you almost burnt my eggs."

"It's not my fault you used the incorrect pan, Elle."

"That's not my name, Gage. I've told you already. Ro or Rochelle."

"Elle is in your name, though," he smarts like a kindergartener, and soon they're not only arguing about who knows how to cook eggs correctly and whether or not a non-stick pan is the superior pan, but also why Elle is not a suitable nickname for Ro.

"They do know we can order room service, right?" Fin rumbles against my ear in question.

I shrug and turn around to look at him for the first time today, trying to not let how smitten I still am with him show through. "They probably know. But you know how Ro is. The fact that there's a kitchen is a challenge to her."

He stares at me for a second too long, his eyes lingering on my lips and then drifting up to my eyes. "You're sleeping in my room tonight." Then he's striding away as if his word is law and he has made a declaration that cannot be challenged.

_________

After pulling on shorts and a tee on top of my swimsuit, I hustle out of the room I share with Amara-the same room that I won't be sleeping in any longer per Fin's decree-and go in search of the man in question.

Everyone is already tanning and chilling by the beach, but I had to spend ten minutes being a dutiful daughter and placate my mother that I'm doing well, lest she takes a flight to Miami and hunt me down.

Fin also got stuck with an emergency at work that had him on the phone the whole time the rest of us had breakfast and he couldn't even take the time to shower after the gym.

I had to stack a plate with eggs and waffles to take upstairs to the poor guy because he couldn't find the time to get away from his computer.

I'm not exactly sure what he does at his father's company, but I'm aware that his father made it a point to assign him to a significant role in the preparation of becoming CEO one day.

When I enter the room he slept in last night, the well-made bed mocking the disastrous one I slept in, I don't see him anywhere in the large space. I frown because I know that he was just on his laptop before my mom called.

"Maybe he already left?" I mumble to myself, but even just saying that doesn't sound correct. Fin would not just leave me alone to go bask in the sun.

Confused, I'm about to leave and go search for him downstairs when a door on the far left of the room opens, stopping me in my tracks. Fin's damp hair and skin cause an automatic smile to stretch my lips.

"Hey, I was about to go look for you downstairs. My mom kept me on-" the words die on my tongue when my eyes wander down the length of him. Down to his chest. His naked chest.

And I freeze.

"Jaya."

I completely freeze.

I stop breathing, stop blinking, and stop any movement.

The only thing that still works is my eyes as they take in the expanse of his chest. His beautiful, beautiful chest that is marred with scars that might be thin but are still long and mean.

Immediately, without thought or reason, I hate those scars.

"Jaya, sweetheart. Look at me."

But mostly, I hate whoever did that to him.

I want to claw their eyes out and punch them in the face and make sure that they regret ever even looking at my man.

"Who did that?" My voice sounds foreign, shaken, and gravelly. Murderous. Like I could really kill someone and face the consequences without even blinking twice.

Fin passes a hand across his chest, his eyes hard on my face as if he's worried I'll go off any second now. I spot different emotions in his eyes.

There's frustration-probably with me, with the fact that I can now see what hides behind the clothes; anger-not at me, but at the scars, at the story behind them; and lastly, humiliation-and this one, I do not understand.

I don't know where I went, but in the second in which my brain was somewhere else, he manages to pull on a shirt, once again hiding his heavily scarred chest from me as I try to recall all the Church services I've been to and why committing murder is not the right course of action.

Especially when I don't know exactly who I need to kill.

The towel is still tied around his waist when he approaches me, the humiliation that I see in his eyes pissing me the hell off.

"Stop looking like that," I grit out with so much venom that I don't even know who I am anymore.

Fin doesn't seem too shocked by my anger when he closes up on me, not touching me but not really needing to given how close he is.

"Like what?"

"Like you're ashamed that I saw. Like you think I'm gonna pity you and feel sorry for you."

He's silent for a second as he looks down at me, blue eyes twinkling with an intensity that is screaming too many things at once for me to hold on to one specific thing.

"So, you don't feel sorry for me?" The question is spoken softly, almost teasingly and I feel the strong urge to slap him.

"Of fucking course I feel sorry. I feel sorry that you're such a knucklehead and wouldn't want me to feel bad for someone I care about. But want to know something? I mostly feel like I want to kill someone and I've never felt this way before in my life."

Still not touching me, he leans down and kisses my forehead. "You're the most adorable."

I grunt. "I want to be serial killer-ish at the moment, not adorable."

Almost to himself, he says, "Too fucking cute." But I hear it whisper against my skin.

"Give me a name, Fin."

He leans back and gazes down at me as if I hung the moon and the stars as if I'm an alien descended from space and in the process of taking over the earth, and as if he can't believe that I'm actually feeling criminal thoughts at the idea of someone inflicting so many scars on his skin.

"A name?"

"Yes, a name. Someone I can kill." A thought occurs to me then, terrifying and seeming almost impossible, but still a valid thought. "D-Did . . . your parents do tha-"

Before I can finish posing the question, he's shaking his head harshly and his jaw has set. "Fuck no. My parents would never, ever do some shit like this."

I breathe out a sigh of relief, but my blood still boils at the fact that someone dared do that to Fin and he obviously doesn't want to tell me who. "Tell me who did it, Fin. And why, and when, and everything else I need to know."

He gives me that weird disbelieving stare for another second before he's shaking his head and moving to grab a pair of shorts laid out on his bed.

"Of course, you'd be the one to see me," he grumbles to himself while stepping into his shorts without even bothering with underwear.

You would think that in such a moment I would not notice his lean, muscular body, and that might be a fair assessment, but also a completely wrong one. Even in my state of irrational anger and on the verge of manic tears, the vision of his sculpted ass does things to me.

"I've managed to keep them away from my friends for years." He turns around and throws the towel and scores it at the corner where a basket for soiled towels sits. "Yet with you ..."

I ignore his words and ask again, "What happened to you, Fin? Please, just tell me."

"I was distracted with thoughts of you in a bikini and needing to hold you that I jumped in the shower and forgot to lock the door," he keeps rambling on as if I didn't ask him a question that is quite literally tearing me apart.

Because it must be bad. For not wanting to ever show his body, it must be pretty bad.

Not the safe and cute kind of bad accident like falling off of a bike when you're five and being left with a bruised knee, or fighting with your sibling and earning a scratched-up arm.

No. This must be a very bad bad.

"Fin?" I seek out his eyes, but they roam around the room as if he's looking for something. "Can you just settle down and just tell me-"

"No." He shakes his head, and finally, his eyes land back on me. "I can't tell you."

I steel against the rejection, grateful that I at least did not flinch. I've never known how bad rejection can hurt until Fin. His refusal to simply share things with me hurts me more than it pisses me off, and I want to scream and yell that he's unfair, but I swallow my words.

"Why can't you tell me?" I hate the way my voice sounds, how fragile and pleading, but I can't stop. "Why can't you just open up and be honest to trust me-"

"We've talked about this, Jaya." His face hardens and he crosses his arms. "I need more time."

"Well, fuck your time," I practically spit out, annoyance and hurt at how little he must trust me driving me crazy. "Fuck it, Fin. Seriously."

His eyes narrow, a dangerous glint snacking through the blue. "What is that supposed to mean?"

"It means that I'm tired of having to wait to get to know the real you. I'm tired of feeling left out of some big missing piece, and I'm fucking tired of being the only one here willing to be vulnerable."

He watches me, his eyes calculating a million problems in a second as I stand in front of him, waiting for something. Downright anything.

When he doesn't open his mouth for a while, I let out a frustrated growl and cross my arms as well, imitating his stance. "All I'm asking for is a little truth, Fin. Just some truth. Even just a tiny bit will suffice."

He still regards me silently for a couple more seconds, fighting with himself or something else, until the sound of a ringing phone pierces through the air, effectively breaking the tension. I watch as his head turns to stare at the phone on the bed, his body visibly growing hard as stone.

"You want some truth, Jaya? Well, fine. Here you fucking go," he speaks sarcastically, but the tension in his body is quite clear as he answers the call and puts it on speakerphone.

I look down at his device for a second, confused by why a phone call would give me some truth and why the other end of the line is completely silent. Looking up at Fin, I see his eyes trained on me as if he's waiting for me to collapse anytime soon.

"Hello?" I speak tentatively into the phone since no one's talking and Fin seems more inclined to jump off the balcony than to say a word. "Is anyone there?"

There's sharp breathing at my words, a ruffling of some sort as if the person on the other end just received the shock of their lives, then a gruff, low, "Jaya?"

I don't recognize the voice, but Fin must do because a panicked look I've never seen in his eyes before takes over his eyes when I ask, "Um, who's this?"

There's a brief pause, then, "Jaya, honey. This is Charles Keith."

I shake my head after I consider the name. ". . . Charles Keith?" Is that name supposed to mean something to me?

"Yes, Charles Keith. Charles, your dad."