Chapter 4

4

I was pulled out of bed the next morning before dawn even broke. Avery was anxious to watch the sunrise over the beach with us on our first morning, and even though I only had two and a half hours of sleep, I pulled myself out of bed. We stole some chairs from the hotel pool and carried them towards the beach.

We sat with our steaming coffees in hand at four o'clock in the morning. Our feet sank into the soft sand, the water crashing just mere inches from us, the cold water just touching the tips of my toes. As the sun peeked over the mountains, I watched the sky slowly blend into the gorgeous deep blues and oranges. I had never watched a sunrise before. Never been awake to see one. I loved my mornings but I would never be caught dead up before the sun had risen. It was even more beautiful than I thought, and I understood why Avery always preferred to run in the mornings.

"Thank you for coming with me to do this." Avery looked at me over her cup. "Both of you. Even if one of you is asleep," she added, a pointed glare aimed at Alex in passing, curled up and sleeping comfortably in his chair, before looking back to the sky.

The cool breeze from the ocean whispered against my skin, and the soft crash of the waves almost lulled me back to sleep. Avery shook both Alex and I awake when she noticed and decided it was time to grab some breakfast.

We smuggled the chairs back to the poolside before we made our way to the restaurant that had organised a buffet-style breakfast for the week.

It was quite early in the morning, with only a few morning joggers and the odd couple of cars driving on the road. It was easier to hear the birds chattering in the trees and the distant ocean waves.

The early morning also meant we were the first ones in the restaurant for breakfast, and the food was only being placed in the bain-marie.

After piling our plates, we ate in companionable silence, Alex and I still trying to wake up. Of course, Avery was as energised as always, powered by the rising sun.

A while after we finished our breakfast, people started filtering in, the chatter around us picked up with the scraping of cutlery against plates.

We started to throw around ideas of how to spend our day when my gaze drifted over Avery's head to where Reece was on his way over to our table with Jake and Sage in tow. His eyes locked on mine, and his lips rose just the smallest amount as his eyes brightened. Just for me to see. A moment between only us.

He sat right next to me in the small space that I had made for him, his thigh pressed against me and his shoulders brushing mine. I was immediately encompassed by his warmth.

"Good morning, everyone." His voice way too chipper as he sipped his coffee.

I grumbled into mine, and he side-eyed me with an amused smirk. "Ah, not a morning person, are we?"

"Definitely not."

He tsked before nudging me. "Don't worry, I'll fix that. You'll be begging to see me before the sun has fully risen by tomorrow."

A surprised laugh burst from me, and I rolled my eyes. "You are so full of yourself, my god. It is too early to be this bright."

He grinned and just as he opened his mouth to shoot something back, Avery interrupted. "If you guys are going to intrude into our holiday, you may as well make yourselves useful and give us suggestions on what to do around here."

Her frown was aimed at Jake, who sat next to her, his arm slung over the back of her chair before she nudged it off.

"There's a lot of hiking trails around here with some pretty good views. It's not meant to be too hot today, so it could be a good day to do that," Sage suggested quietly at the end of the table, scrolling through his phone.

He was the more reserved of Reece's friends, always observing quietly, making you curious about what was going on in his head. But on the field, when he played baseball, he was aggressive. He was the catcher and had 100-kilometer-an-hour balls thrown at him for fun. In the one game I seen him play, he made it seem easy to throw balls across the field to the far centre field. His hand-eye coordination amazed me, mostly because mine was terrible, and I could not aim at all, even if the target was right in front of my face.

I guess that's what made him and Reece good partners because he could read the field well to communicate with Reece for his next pitch.

We started looking up different hiking trails and chose the one with the most beautiful view from the lookout. We all agreed to meet back up after getting ready, with a reluctant Alex, who was not a fan of being eaten by insects on the walk but agreed nonetheless when we bribed him with food.

Back at our hotel room, we got ready, putting on our leggings and sports crops and Alex in his jogging pants and lightweight shirt.

"I like them," Alex stated out of the blue as I filled up our water bottles.

"What?" I asked absentmindedly, not taking my eyes off the bottles.

"Reece and his friends. I get why you like him so much. His friends are nice as well."

I frowned and shook my head, immediately on the defensive. I turned the tap off before turning to look at him. "I won't go as far as to say ‘so much'. Why would you say that?"

He shrugged. "You just seem close, and I thought maybe something was between you two."

I laughed at his comment. "No, we're just friends."

Alex side-eyed me before nodding like he didn't believe a word.

I'd never told him or Avery that I used to have a crush on Reece. I was still dating Liam and I wanted to bypass the lectures about it being ‘wrong'. The constant guilt reminded me of that fact. I didn't want anyone to know that anytime he smiled at me it was like little butterflies in my stomach, something I'd never felt with Liam.

I saw how real love affected my dad and I didn't want to feel like that. Ripped open and raw. Liam was comfortable and safe, I knew he'd never leave me like that. What I didn't expect was for a four-letter word to scare me away from him the way that it did.

Reece, on the other hand, knew too much about me, and if I'd learned anything from our history, he was a risk that I didn't want to take. Being friends was the safe zone.

If I told my friends any of that, they would try to pair us off and get us alone together. That wouldn't work in my opinion.

But Alex dropped the conversation, and a few moments later, we met the others at the front of the restaurant and rode in the Uber to the destination.

On the short drive there, I could feel the heat start to set in. I wasn't sure if it was the temperature or the radiating furnace that Reece was, but I could barely get any relief from the air conditioning in the confines of the SUV we squished into. Sweat had started to cling to me and we hadn't even started hiking.

We were dropped off at the bottom of the mountain, but it wasn't much of an incline from what I could see. I had it in my head that it would be pretty easy.

It was a bit over an hour hike up the winding trail, a steady gradient up the mountain with roots sticking up out of the mostly smooth dirt path. Trees mostly blocked out the sun, but with that, they also blocked most of the wind in the high temperature, unlike what Sage had declared earlier.

We took many breaks along the way, mainly for Alex and I's sake. We were both out of breath as we got to even land, yet the others hadn't broken a sweat. I found it was not as easy as I thought. But it was worth every heaving breath I puffed out as I looked out over the mountainside.

The view was serene. I had my camera, taking some pictures throughout the hike, but the lookout was the main attraction. I took so many there. Of the view. Of my friends, unknowingly and knowingly.

I flicked through the pictures before feeling a warm presence behind me. His shadow eclipsed me, covering me from the harsh sun. I turned my head to look at him, already knowing who it was.

Reece smiled at me over my shoulder. I don't think there was a time I ever saw him without one. "Don't mind me, I'm just curious."

My attention drifted back to my camera. "Curious about what?"

"What the photos look like. What you see. Everything."

A breath escaped from me in the form of a laugh. "It's really nothing special. I'm just taking photos."

"Yeah, but you're the only one with a fancy camera, so I wanted to see how they turned out." His mouth tilted into a little smirk as he tilted his head. "And maybe sneak a photo or two myself."

Maybe it was the sight of the dimple in his cheek, his curious eyes, or the heat of the sun getting to me, but I handed my camera to him after making a mental note of what setting it was on so I could fix it later. "Here then."

He seemed surprised by the gesture but took it anyway and started fiddling with it. I tried to keep my hands by my side to keep from snatching it back, my earlier bravado fading slightly. I swept my hand out towards the ocean. "I give you free rein. The landscape is yours."

I hadn't even finished my sentence before I heard the click of the shutter. I turned my head, curious to see what had caught his attention, only to see the lens pointed straight at me. The shutter went off again right as my gaze connected with the lens. He grinned, and I felt mine grow before he clicked the button again.

I rolled my eyes.

He pushed me slightly aside, grin still in place. "Sorry, but you're in the way."

I scoffed out a laugh, shoving him back before he took the shot, making the photo come out blurry.

I let him be as he took whatever photos he wanted. My eyes never left him, though. He took pictures of everything, goofing around as he took selfies with all our friends.

With a wide smile, he handed the camera back to me after he had his fun. Looking back at the photos, I saw why. Most were blurry or cut half of everyone's face off. Some were actually quite nice.

I kept flicking through the photos until I got to the ones he took of me. They were blurred but kind of beautiful. The blue of the sky and the whip of my hair. The smooth skin between my brow, which seemed to have a permanent crease. It was like he captured a rare fragment of time where I was left unguarded. That was the beauty of a photograph, capturing a moment in time and holding onto the rare memories.

In one of the series he had taken of me, my smile had taken over my whole face. It had been a long time since true happiness had graced my face like that.

It felt nice.

Reece came around behind me to look and I shook my head as I went back over the pictures. He took a lot more than I thought he was going to. I thought he would be tame but I underestimated him and I should have known he would have taken it to his advantage and gone nuts.

He stopped my flicking on a picture of us that he had taken when he stood closer to the edge of the cliff, and I was still in my original spot a couple of metres away. I was poking my tongue at him as he beamed at the camera. His face was just in the frame, cutting off at his chin as he stretched his arms out wide to fit me into the frame.

He chuckled, his warm breath hitting my shoulder. "God, I'm awful at this," he stated, making me laugh. "Send this to me. And the others. I don't care how bad they look."

"Really?"

"Yeah." He met my gaze as I looked over my shoulder. "You better throw in some of the photos you've taken, too. Just so I have something pretty to look at to remember this place."

I furrowed my brows. "Why? You have your phone."

He shrugged with a slight tilt of his lips as he flipped said phone in his hand. "They look better from your perspective."

My lips twisted. "I doubt that."

He smiled and shook his head. "Make sure you send them, or I'll keep pestering you about them, and you don't want that."

I held my free hand up in mock surrender. "Fine. I'll do it as soon as we're back home."

"Good." The satisfaction on his smug face was almost so much that I couldn't resist, once again, rolling my eyes at his arrogance.

Almost, I say, because I kind of liked it.

And that thought had me turning away and meeting my friends who were all too ready to make the hike back down.