Sea Breeze 01 - Breathe

I’m fine. I just needed to see you.”
    “Don’t. I’ll leave.
    “Cage—
    “No.
    “Cage.
    “Okay, fine.”
    She held the phone out to me. “He wants to talk to you.”
    This conversation was nothing like I’d expected. The girl had to be his sister.
    “Hey.”
    “Listen, I need you to make sure Low stays there until I can get home. She’s upset and I don’t want her leaving. Get her one of her damn Mexican soda thingies out of the fridge. They’re behind the Bud Lights in the bottom drawer. I have to hide them from other chicks I have over. All females tend to like those nasty drinks. Turn on the television, distract her, whatever. I’m only ten minutes away, but I’m putting my jeans on as we speak and headed home. Just help her get her mind off things, but
don’t
touch her.”
    “Ah, okay, sure. Is she your sister?”
    Cage chuckled into the phone. “Hell no, she ain’t my sister. I’d never buy my damn sister drinks and call her back when I’m in the middle of a fucking threesome. Low’s the girl I’m gonna marry.”
    I had no response to that. My eyes found her standing over by the window with her back to me. The long thick copper locks curled on the ends and brushed against the middle of her back. She was absolutely nothing like the girls Cage regularly hooked up with. What did he mean, she was the girl he was going to marry? That made no sense.
    “Keep her there, man. I’m on my way.”
    Then he hung up the phone.
    I dropped it on the table and stood there staring at her back. She turned around slowly and studied me a moment, and then a smile broke across her face.
    “He told you he was going to marry me, didn’t he?” she said laughing softly before taking a drink of the orange soda with what appeared to have Spanish writing on the label.
    “Crazy boy. I shouldn’t have bothered him, but he’s all I’ve got.”
    She walked over and sank back down onto the old faded green sofa, pulling her legs up underneath her.
    “Don’t worry. I’m not leaving. He’d rip apart my sister’s house searching for me and scare the bejesus out of her if I left. I’ve got enough issues where she’s concerned. I don’t intend to unleash Cage on her.”
    I slowly made my way over to the only chair in the room and sat down.
    “So, you’re engaged?” I asked, staring down at her bare ring finger.
    With a sad smile she shook her head.
    “Not in a million years. Cage has crazy ideas. Just because he says them doesn’t make them true.”
    She raised her eyebrows and took another drink of her soda.
    “So you aren’t going to marry Cage?” I really would love for her to clarify this because I was incredibly confused and more than a little interested in her. She bit down on her bottom lip and I noticed for the first time how full it was.
    “Cage was my ‘boy next door’ growing up. He’s my best friend. I love him dearly and he really is all I have. The only person I can count on. We’ve never actually been in a relationship before because he knows I won’t have sex with him and he needs sex. He’s also real wrapped up in the whole idea that a relationship between the two of us before we get married will end badly and he’ll lose me. He has this irrational fear of losing me.”
    Did she know the guy had bagged more than three different girls this week and apparently was having a threesome when she’d called? She was so much better than Cage.
    “Wipe that look off your face. I don’t need your pity. I know what Cage is like. I know you have probably seen the kind of girls he’s attracted to, and I look absolutely nothing like them. I don’t live in a fantasy world. I’m very aware.” She tilted her head and smiled at me sweetly. “I don’t even know your name.”
    “Marcus Hardy”
    “Well, Marcus Hardy, I’m Willow Montgomery, but everyone calls me Low. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
    “Likewise.”
    “So, you’re a friend of Preston’s.”
    I nodded. “Yes, but don’t hold it against me.”
    She laughed for the first time, and the sudden pleasure from such a simple sound startled me. I liked hearing her laugh.
    “I won’t. Preston isn’t all that bad. He likes to use those pretty-boy looks of his to get his way, but I’m safe from his attention. Cage would kill him if he decided to bat his baby blues at me.”
    Was it because of Preston’s womanizing or the fact that he was a guy that made Cage protective of Willow? Did he really expect her to wait around