Savior Complex: A Small Town Love Triangle Romance

I shake my head. “You’ve been planning for this all year long. You use this for your business.”

“By next year, there might not even be a business,” he says, his eyes flashing as he pounds the sand.

“Because of her,” I mutter. He doesn’t respond. I want to ask him why. If he leaves, he’s giving up his family’s legacy—all for a woman I know he doesn’t love. It’s all so fucked up, the way he’s trading one promise for another. It’s infuriating how fucking blind he is, and it makes me question whether this is really a man I’d give up my morals for when I can’t make sense of his logic.

But when I look back at him, I see the man I met so many months ago. The one who is bent on saving everyone around him, even while he’s the one drowning. The one who, just this once, is asking for something he can hold on to. Something I want to give to him because I need this anchor too. Even if I’m the one who will lose in the end.

“Stay with me,” he whispers, his voice shaking with hope.

“I will.”

His mouth crashes on mine, and I breathe him in, my hands combing through his hair as he lays me back on the sand.

“Fuck, I wish I could take you right here,” he growls against my mouth, and I laugh, pushing against him.

“I’m fairly certain there are laws against that,” I say. “ I also think we’re breaking enough rules as it is.”

Fuck the rules. Fuck the consequences. Fuck every way I’m going to die when this is over. Because right now, Brayden is all I need. And if I can’t have him forever, I will take him for now.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Brayden

Within two hours, Nina and I are in the back of an Uber headed toward an Airbnb I found down the coast. It’s expensive as hell since it’s last minute, but I’d pay ten times this amount for this weekend with Nina.

I told Jake that a friend of mine in Louisiana had a ranch emergency and I was heading out to help, and taking Nina with me since she didn’t know many people.

“She knows all of us,” Jake countered, and I’d heard the disbelief in his voice. I hated lying to him, even more so because I knew he wasn’t fooled.

“We’re just going to shoot down there and back,” I said anyway. “We’ll be back in time to catch the bus back home together.”

Lying is apparently becoming my forte. But as I lace my fingers with Nina’s, I push aside any guilt I have in favor of enjoying every remaining second I have with her.

As we pull in front of the house, Nina gasps before turning to me with a huge smile.

“It’s literally on the ocean,” she squeals. “How much was this? You have to let me pay half.”

I shake my head because I want to treat her. To spoil her. To make everything I can of this weekend, because we both know we have a time limit. So no, I will not have her help me pay for our weekend together.

Once inside, Nina looks around the house, exclaiming over the beach theme of each room, and the massive view of the ocean right outside the wall of windows. It’s not as private as I would have liked, but you either get the beach or privacy in a house in Galveston, and I figure curtains are created for a reason. Besides, just watching her eyes light up as she opens the sliding doors and breathes in the ocean air, it’s enough for me to find new reasons to love her.

Because I have completely fallen for her—body and soul—and it’s going to tear me apart to let her go. But goddamn, I’m going to enjoy every second of her until the moment we have to say goodbye.

There’s a knock at the door, and I excuse myself to answer it.

“Expecting company already?” Nina laughs, turning to shoot me a curious smile.

“Something like that.”

I open the door, and the delivery guy on the other side is there just long enough to check my ID for the wine before he leaves me with my groceries.

“You deserve a night out,” I say as I carry grocery bags into the house. “But tonight we’re staying in, and I’m cooking for you.”

“You cook?” She starts to unpack the bags, but I swat at her ass and order her to sit down. She raises an eyebrow at me as I pour her a glass of Cabernet Sauvignon, then one for myself.

“Yes, I cook,” I say. “You’re not a child of Angie Winters without learning your way around the kitchen. Prepare to be impressed.” I clink my glass with hers, then go back to unloading the groceries.

It’s not a baseless brag. The truth is, cooking is my second love behind horses. By the time I was twelve, I had a few dozen signature dishes I would make for my family when I could talk my mom into letting me make dinner. My favorite was pan-seared gnocchi with sausage, broccoli leaves, and blistered cherry tomatoes. And I didn’t just get store-bought gnocchi. No. Even at twelve I knew the art of folding flour and egg with potatoes and shaping it. How do you purchase gnocchi in a package when you’ve experienced the real thing?