The Rule Book: A Novel

There was so much blood on the boat (and Derek) that they brought us back to the resort. Not to mention the fact that I fainted and freaked everyone out. Kamaya insisted on bringing us back to have the resort’s onsite nurse check Derek’s nose to make sure it wasn’t broken. Thankfully there was no threat of a concussion from me, since Derek caught me before I fell.

Derek’s nose and my brain are just fine, but my pride is oh-so-bruised. I made a huge scene. One so big that an entire tour had to reschedule their day to accommodate my unexpected ripple in their timing. Everyone was kind for the most part but definitely displeased by the turn of events.

Of course the one moment I was trying to be vulnerable…I slam him in the nose, nearly make him bleed out on a boat, and then I pass out like a dramatic 1800s heroine whose corset is too tight. And it was all captured on camera. I want to cry.

Evidence that Nora Mackenzie (Pender) really is extra.

Derek is in the shower now (washing off my blood) and I’m lying in bed, nursing my deflated ego and wondering if this is a sign from the universe that I need to keep my mouth shut. That what Derek and I had was in the past, and it should stay back there. Buried. With no maps or X’s to mark the spot.

It’s probably a moot point anyway. Derek had a fresh taste of the realities of what dating me is like.

Except the bathroom door opens and steam billows out around a massive, tan male form clad only in a small white towel tucked around his waist, and I think that the universe can suck a lemon. That towel is barely hanging on and I have an internal cheer section rooting for it to fall.

“Sorry. Forgot my clothes,” he says, and I’m definitely staring at the dusting of hair that trails down his muscled abdomen and disappears behind the towel.

I shoot my gaze to the ceiling. “Mm-hm. No problem.”

It’s dead silent in here except for Derek’s naked feet walking over the carpet, reminding me that he’s here and we’re sharing this room and there’s water droplets crawling sensually down his spine. Oh damn, I can even hear the towel brushing against his thighs. Can hear his suitcase unzipping and then the sound of fabric sliding up his legs. His underwear? Did he drop the towel in plain sight? Should I look? No. That would be rude.

I peek and find him already mostly dressed with his back to me, but oh my god the man is still shirtless in black form-fitting sweatpants. His muscles literally ripple beneath his flesh as he raises a shirt over his head and pulls it on, quickly followed by a Sharks hoodie that looks so snuggly I want to climb inside with him.

He turns around and catches me watching before I can look away. I guiltily fall back onto my pillow and shut my eyes.

“Whatcha doing over there?” he asks, amusement running through his tone.

My eyelids remain closed. “Sleeping. I’m exhausted from draining you of all your blood today, so I think I’m going to nap.”

It’s quiet for a while, and then I jump when I feel Derek’s hand touch my forehead. My eyes fly open to find him standing just beside the bed.

“Are you sick?” He’s serious.

“I don’t think so.” But I do feel dangerously close to crying.

“I’ve never known you to nap.”

I raise a brow. “Well…to be fair there’s quite a few years in there you haven’t known me. Maybe I nap every single day now.”

“Do you?” he asks, and I refuse to acknowledge the way he doesn’t immediately pull his hand away but passes his fingers over my hair first, gently pushing it back from my face and tucking it behind my ear.

I shiver a little. Maybe I do have a fever. “No. I haven’t napped since I was twelve years old. But…I’m just tired. It’s been a doozy of a month and I feel like a goose for passing out on the boat and…I think…I think I just need a nap.” My voice wobbles.

No jokes. No playfulness this time. Just honesty because everything is catching up with me and I’m tired all the way to the center of my bones. I need a reset so I can wake up and stop feeling so embarrassed and flooded with feelings for Derek. I need to get ahold of myself before I start reading too much into him telling me he’s jealous. Into his little touches. Into the possibility that he’d ever consider having another shot at this with me, when really, that would be a terrible idea.

Derek eyes me for a few seconds, his square jaw flexing once before he moves around to his side of the bed. I go up on my elbows and watch his every move. “What are you doing?”

“I’m going to nap with you.”

I laugh nervously. “What? Why?” That’s definitely not going to help me reset.

He lifts the comforter and slides in. “It sounds like a good idea. I never get to nap in my day-to-day back home. So let’s nap.”

“Okayyyy,” I say skeptically, lying back slowly onto my pillow. Again we fall into silence together and all I hear is the soft sounds of our side-by-side breathing and the shifting of sheets every so often. The curtains are open so the room is all sunny and warm. This is nice.

“I’m sorry about your nose,” I say quietly. “And the scene it caused.”

“Who cares about a scene? I’m just glad you didn’t hit your head.”

I’m choked up—emotions clogging my throat from how freeing it is to not be treated like a nuisance for something I can’t control. “Because you caught me. Even though your nose was bleeding and you were in pain.”

He raises an arm above his head. “Quit making me out to sound like a hero. My nose is perfectly fine.” A light scoff falls from his mouth. “God knows I’ve had worse injuries.”

I shift onto my side, tucking my hand under my pillow to look at Derek. He’s lying on his back, that arm with the tattoo I can’t make out above his head still hidden from view, eyes closed. “Were you scared? That day on the field when your ankle snapped?”

He winces lightly and I regret saying it so bluntly like that. His eyes open and they connect with mine, face angled toward me. “I was terrified.” He pauses and looks at the ceiling again. “I can still hear the sound it made. The bone literally snapping. I was convinced that was it for me. That…I would never play football again and it was all going to be gone before I was ready.”

What I don’t tell him is that I was in the stands for that game. That I saw him hit the field and not stand up and I thought I was going to be sick. And then those torturous moments where I had to watch him get carted off on a stretcher and then anxiously refresh my phone over and over again to find out what sort of injury he had—it was hell. I wanted to be there for him. I wanted to hold his hand.

And I guess it’s that memory that has me reaching for his hand under the comforter now. When I bump the back of my knuckles against his, his eyes jump quickly to mine, and for a moment he’s frozen. I’m barely breathing myself. And then all soft and sweet, he inches his fingers over mine, until our hands are tangled up.

I close my eyes again and let the dazzling heat between us lull me into a restfulness I don’t enter easily.

“Nora…we need to talk about what happened before the bloody nose on the boat.”

I grumble a sound with my eyes closed. “Do we have to?” All my adrenaline has worn off and now I regret the vulnerability dump.

“Yes. We do.” And then he turns my hand over so it’s palm up. With his index finger, he starts painting lines over each finger. I tingle with every stroke. “Please tell me.”

It’s…hot. And somehow also sweet. And also a very, very bad idea. But it works to distract me from my fear of telling him the truth.

“The week after we broke up, I came to your apartment. You were just getting back from a date and it sounded like you guys were having a lot of fun, so I ducked around the corner.” His finger pauses, likely knowing what’s coming given what I admitted to him on the boat. “And then I saw this gorgeous woman in an impressively tiny dress kiss you. Right on the mouth. And you kissed her back…so I left.”

I still don’t open my eyes. I can’t bear to see whatever look is on his face. Pity, maybe? Embarrassment? Whatever it is, I don’t want to see. I just want to lie here and immerse myself in the feel of his fingers tracing my skin like nothing bad has ever happened.

“Why did you come to my apartment?” he asks, his voice softer than velvet.

I breathe in and decide there’s no time like the present for the truth. “Because I…missed you too much and wanted to see you. I felt like I’d made a big mistake and wanted to fix it.” I pause when the rush of pain hits me all over again. “Even though I had no right to feel hurt since I was the one who broke up with you—it stung so bad to realize how easily you moved on from me. How easily replaceable I was.”

He breathes out heavily and then his finger moves to my palm. Drawing a pattern now.

“But then,” I continue, “I decided that you were okay, and you had moved on and were happy, so it was something I should do too.”

He’s silent so long that I finally get curious and crack my eyes open. His expression is not one of pity or embarrassment—it’s something completely different. It’s something like relief.

It’s now that I realize the shape he’s been drawing on my palm is a heart. Over and over again. Just like he used to.

“You left a second too soon, Nora.”

“Why?” My heart is thumping against my ribs.

“Because if you’d stayed—you would have seen the truth of just how not over you I really was. How not over you I…” He stops himself.

“You what, Derek?” Say it. Whatever it is, say it!

He breathes out one long breath, his finger still moving over my palm, branding me with a shape I’m not even sure he knows he’s making. “That night, you didn’t stay long enough to see me pull away from her and tell her I couldn’t invite her in because I wasn’t ready to move on from my breakup yet.” He pauses as my mind frantically tries to grab onto this new information like it’s a piece of driftwood in the ocean.

“I couldn’t do it,” he continues. “I couldn’t move on from you that quickly…I didn’t sleep with her, Nora. Or anyone else for a very, very long time. Two years, to be exact. Even though I tried to make it look like I was thriving in the media so my friends and family wouldn’t worry about me, I wasn’t thriving. Because without you, I was lost.” A sad smile breaks in the corner of his mouth. “You weren’t even close to easily replaceable to me.”

Derek’s hand moves away from my palm, sliding to my wrist and gently tugging. My body responds without hesitation, scooting closer and closer to him. I know I should be hearing warning bells, but they’re nowhere to be heard in my head. Someone has ripped them out and buried them under the sand.

He turns onto his side facing me, and his hand glides around me, settling low on my back. I arch into him, feeling a swirl of heat settle in my core, spreading outward. My eyes close when I feel his breath against the side of my neck, smell the scent of his bodywash fresh on his skin, and before I can tell myself to stop, my leg is hooking around his thigh. His hips press into me and I suppress a groan. His mouth lowers to my neck with the most patient, soft kiss, but his hand slides down further to gently squeeze my ass. I don’t know what’s happening and I don’t care because Derek’s hand is—

A loud, firm knock sounds at the door and I catapult off Derek and completely out of the bed like we were about to be caught in some sort of forbidden tango.

“Housekeeping!” someone yells through the door.

Derek is lying there shocked at my sudden spooked-animal stance until his laugh cracks the air. I use the interlude where he’s having the time of his life to sweetly yell through the door that we don’t need housekeeping today, and then I go back to the bed, where I throw a pillow at Derek’s laughing head.

He wipes at his eyes. “The look on your face!”

“Stop it!” I say, laughing a little myself. “It’s been a traumatic day for me, okay? And that,” I say, gesturing toward what we were just doing in the bed, “was a mistake!” Because it was. It had to be. No matter how much fun I have with him, how much I love his smile, the way he lights me up like a firework, the way I respect him for pausing his day to take a photo with every single person who recognized him, how he took care of me even when he supposedly hated me, how much he…wait, I’m losing my train of thought. Where was I going with this? Ah yes, mistake.

Because when you strip all the lies of this fake honeymoon away, we’re nothing to each other besides people who will have to work together when we get home. People who can’t afford to kiss for the fun of it.

Derek is perfectly sober now. His laughter dies and he sits up with a slight frown. “You think it was a mistake?”

“Yes! We can’t…kiss like that in our situation. Our lines are going to be blurred all over the place, and it just…it can’t happen again. In private.”

His head tilts. “In private?” he asks, a curious spark to his words.

Yes, you heard the loophole correctly, Derek.

“I mean…I assume we’ll have to…embrace at some point in public over this week. And I think that’s fine. But in here”—I hover my hand over the bedding in a very Alexa Rose–type gesture—“no embracing. Talking only.”

“So we don’t get blurry.”

“20/20 vision only.”

He stares at me a minute and then grins, accepting my silent challenge. Game on.