The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea (The Grumpy Devils, #2)

by Elizabeth O'Roark

Tali and Hayes? They’re that road trip sort of couple. The ones who don’t know what’s coming but are in it for the long haul. Marriage thrills them both, and watching them terrifies me.

praying that the rest of this series lives up to tali and hayes’ book 🙏🏽

Your face only has two expressions—mildly disgusted and really disgusted.” There’s a low, warm noise from his throat. One I might almost confuse with a quiet laugh. I want to not be pleased by that. “I wouldn’t confuse the way I look at you with the way I look at everyone,” he says, turning up the hill and heading toward the second bunker. Asshole.

This is practically enemies to lovers bruh he's Brutal

Slowly, she stands up and we walk, side by side, toward the pool. “I’m gonna miss it when we leave.” I like it too. These early mornings with her, which I resented so much at first, are now my favorite part of the trip.

She’s here with my brother.” She takes her toiletry kit and shoves it in her carry-on. “Is she, though? I was hoping once your brother got here it would change, but it hasn’t,” she says. “She’s at the center of every room for you. She’s the center of every conversation. She’s all you can see.”

“There’s also a sunrise hike,” she says. “The hotel provides a flashlight and map.” I can’t help it—my eyes meet Josh’s. The sunrise is kind of our thing now. He raises his brow as if to say Obviously, we’re doing it.

I glance backward, but it’s not Six I look at. It’s Josh. His mouth moves ever so slightly, as if he’s trying not to laugh. Suddenly, the backpacking trip doesn’t seem so awful after all.

It takes so little to make her happy and I wonder if anyone in her life even tries. She peers up at me. “You’re kind of a keeper, Joshua Bailey.”

But Josh has gone perfectly still, like a snake about to strike. I’ve never seen him so furious, which tells me my anger and pain might not be an overreaction after all. “I know you didn’t just say that to her,” Josh snarls. His hand is gripping the coffee cup so hard he risks crushing it.

he’s very much knight in shining armor i love him

I’d like to point out that you’re the one who convinced me to stay on this trip yesterday.” He blows out a breath and pinches the bridge of his nose. “I know. And I shouldn’t have. You deserve someone who worships the ground you walk on, Drew. Someone you can lean on. Who cares more about your happiness than his own.”

“Josh spent all of breakfast and half of the golf game laying into me about what I said, by the way,” he says. “So that was fun.” Warmth spreads through my chest. I didn’t need Six to be scolded, but I kind of love that for once in my life, someone took my side.

My mother is too blind to Joel’s faults to see just how terrible he is for Drew. “I suspect he already has.” My mother waves a dismissive hand. “They’ll still end up together,” she says. “Mark my words. She’s good for him.” But he isn’t good for her. I

I wrap my arm around her. I knew the day I arrived in Honolulu that her cancer had spread. She was frail but also jaundiced, so it’s probably in her liver. She wants us to have this one last trip together without the weight of what’s coming. I’m trying to give it to her.

“You’re gonna go over like a turtle on its back with that thing on, and you’ll never get back up,” he said. “Don’t laugh too hard,” I replied. “If I fall, I’m taking you with me.” Our eyes met. “Of course you are,” he said softly.

“Whale,” someone says, and then everyone crowds around us, trying to see. Josh tucks a finger into the waist of my shorts to make sure I don’t go over the edge. I resented it so much that first day in Oahu when he suggested someone hold my hand so I didn’t get lost. Now I sort of adore him for it.

“I’ll give you a ten second head start. Final offer.” I take off with a screech. Even with the head start, I don’t have a chance of beating him and I know it and it doesn’t matter. I just want more of these moments with him, when he’s so happy and so free. I want to keep them coming as long as I possibly can.

It’s only a second, but infinity rests within it. And I see exactly what we could have been. I see what he wants, what I want, and how terrifying it would be if it was at all possible. He would be more. He would be the long journey into the unknown. And I’m pretty sure, with him, I could be convinced to try.

I can see him trying to find an alternative, but he knows I’m right. “Promise me you’ll be careful,” he says, his jaw locked tight. “Small steps. I’m gonna be right behind you, just…” He blows out a breath and pushes a hand through his hair. “Just promise.”

“You had her fucking inhaler!” I shout. “She could have died because you couldn’t be troubled to show up!” “I didn’t know!” shouts Joel. I have no idea if he’s telling the truth. It hardly matters. He should have checked. He should have killed himself not to abandon her.

And then my gaze moves past him to Josh, sitting alone across the aisle from us. He’s got his laptop out, feverishly typing. He’s just…lovely.

We arrive in Oahu, grab our bags and walk out to the van waiting to take us to the hotel. Six, chatting amiably with our driver, starts to take the front seat. “For the thousandth time,” Josh says between his teeth, “she gets carsick.” This is what it’s like, I think, when someone actually cares about you. They remember you get carsick. They worry about your inhaler.

“You look like a preschool teacher,” he says. Josh, behind me, stiffens. “Watch your fucking mouth,” he says, pressing me into the seat with his hand on my shoulder, his eyes never leaving Six’s face.

And then he kisses me. Not the way he kissed me in the airport. This time, he kisses me as if we’ve been kept apart by war and deserts and decades and he kept praying, the entire time, we’d somehow find each other.

“And you’re sober,” she says. “Tell me something, Mom,” I reply, looking over the menu, “are we always going to throw our worst moments in each other’s faces? Because you’re not cheating on my father right now either, but I managed not to bring it up.”

😭😭😭😭

“But you took me from my home, Mom, and from my school, and from my father, and you just—” My throat clogs. “Left. You were never there. Everyone in that household treated me like I wasn’t welcome and wasn’t even human and you just looked the other way.”

this would be my villain origin story drew is better than me fr