Son of a Beach

by Kate Hunt

  It’s rustic inside, with chalkboard menus and homemade wooden furniture throughout. The place is almost empty. There’s just a couple people sitting at the bar.

  Wait. Is that Travis?

  Yeah. It sure is.

  But he’s not alone. He’s sitting beside a woman, a gorgeous woman, who’s looking at him with an equally gorgeous smile.

  “…so beautiful,” Travis is saying.

  The woman gives him a warm look and reaches out to touch his arm. Meanwhile, I stare in disbelief. Shit. I’m such an idiot. Everything he said to me last night was a lie. I mean, he lied to the maître d’ to get that table. Why did I think he was telling the truth to me?

  “—unbelievably stunning,” I hear him say, his face beaming as he looks at the woman he’s with.

  Blood pounds in my ears as I back out of the bar. All I want to do is crawl into the taxi and speed away from here. But my driver has left.

  Looking around, my vision mildly blurry, I see the hotel about half a mile up the road—its upper floors are peaking up above the trees. So I begin to walk. My heart is pounding violently in my chest, my head dizzy from what I just heard and saw. The woman’s hand on his arm. Travis telling her how stunning she was.

  Everything he told me feels meaningless now.

  The hotel is farther away than it looks, and by the time I reach it, I’m tired, overheated, and pissed. I go straight up to my room, take a long shower, then force myself to sit down and try to work on my article.

  I can barely concentrate on it, though. I just keep thinking about stupid Travis.

  About an hour later, I’ve finally made a little bit of headway on my article when I hear a knock on our shared hotel door.

  “Hey, Bree!” he calls out. “You in there?”

  “Go away, Travis.”

  “What?” he shouts through the door.

  “Go away! I don’t want to see you again. Leave me alone.”

  “Bree, what’s—”

  “Just go!” I yell back. Tears well up in my eyes, but I refuse to let them spill over. He’s not worth it. Not one drop.

  Thankfully, nothing more comes from Travis.

  He’s gotten the message.

  The next morning, I arrange an early taxi and get to the airport hours before my flight. I eat a bland breakfast in a shitty airport café, and then flit back and forth between trying to read a book I can’t focus on and trying to work on my article.

  Thank God Travis isn’t on my return flight.

  This time, I don’t get an upgrade, and both legs of the journey home suck. When I get home, I’m in a sour mood. That sour mood worsens when Travis starts sending me texts.

  Bree? What happened?

  Why’d you leave without saying goodbye?

  Hello?

  Fuck. Did you see me in that bar talking to that woman? Bree, I can explain.

  I don’t want his excuses, though. I don’t want anything else from him. He was a mistake, and I just want to move on.

  I block his number, toss my phone aside, and cradle my head in my hands.

  Three weeks later, my article is published. My boss is pleased, Lacey says it rocks, and I immediately start getting emails from readers who tell me the article made them feel like they were actually there on Pole Island.

  I’m flattered by the response. I really am. But every email I get and every compliment I hear brings back the emotions I felt while I was there.

  I keep telling myself these feelings will fade with time. But my body remembers Travis’s touch. His hands. His lips. His scent. Him, inside me.

  “Bree? Hello?”

  I realize my editor is waving a hand in front of my face like she’s trying to wake me up.

  “Sorry,” I say, straightening my shoulders. “What’s up?”

  “Did something happen on Pole Island?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, with a guy.” She looks down at me, eyebrows raised, a little twinkle in her eyes.

  I feel myself flush. I try to shake my head, but I can’t. Instead, I just stutter, “Um…I mean…”

  “You better read this, Bree.”

  My editor hands me a magazine opened up to another article about Pole Island.

  Travis’s article.

  I try to hand it back to her. “I don’t want to read it.”

  “I think you do. Seriously, Bree. Read it.”

  “Fine,” I say, tossing it onto my desk. “I’ll read it later. I’m in the middle of something right now.”

  My editor shakes her head, but doesn’t push.

  “All right,” she says, tapping my desk before walking away.

  After she leaves, I almost grab the magazine and toss it straight into the recycling bin beneath my desk. But I can’t make myself do it. Reluctantly—promising myself an after-work cocktail to get over it later tonight—I begin to read.

  And read.

  And read.

  When I reach the last word, I have tears in my eyes.

  It’s not an article about Pole Island. I mean, it is, but it’s mostly about…well, us. The article Travis has written is about how Pole Island is the quintessential place for a romantic getaway, but how he’ll never be able to go back because he left with a broken heart.

  I go back to the beginning and start to read it again, still in partial disbelief that all the words are actually there in front of my eyes. I finally understand that it’s for real when I read the end of the article a second time:

  And that’s when I did something I’ll forever regret. When I was waiting to meet up with Bree for dinner, I went to a beach bar, and I started chatting with another woman. I was on such a cloud nine from the previous day and I wanted to tell the whole world about it. It only occurred to me afterward how it might have looked from the outside—and I believe Bree saw us and assumed the worst. But it wasn’t what you thought, Bree. Not at all. The whole time I was talking to that stranger, all I could talk about was you.

  I swear to you, Bree, everything I said to you when we were on the island, it was the truth. There’s another truth that you need to know, though, too. One I should have told you while I had the chance.

  I’m in love with you.

  My editor appears behind me right on cue to see the tears rolling down my cheeks.

  “I told you you needed to read it.”

  “How…” I wipe my face. “How did that even get published?”

  She laughs and shakes her head.

  “That’s the thing. He got fired for it. Just as they were going to press he swapped the file his editor had already approved for this one. Is everything he wrote true?”

  “It is,” I say, barely able to get out the words.

  “Oh, honey. Hey. It’s okay.”

  My editor lets me cry into her shoulder.

  Tears of regret.

  Tears for my stupidity.

  Tears for believing Lacey over my heart.

  But not just that.

  Tears of joy for the future.

  I was his girl. I am his girl.

  And I need to let him know it.

  8

  Epilogue – Bree

  6 Months Later

  “It’s not as big as I thought it would be,” I say, looking up at the metal structure above us.

  Travis wraps his arm around my waist. “Disappointed?”

  “Not a bit.” I couldn’t be. Not with him by my side. “It’s beautiful. Actually, it’s the perfect size.”

  “Huh. Just like you.”

  I playfully jab him with my elbow.

  “Hey. Watch it.” Travis turns me around and kisses me. Immediately, butterflies burst into flight in my stomach. I swear, we’re going to be ninety years old and he’s still going to make me feel this way with every kiss.

  “Mmm.” I smile up at him as we pull out of the kiss. “You going to write about that on your website?”

  “An innocent kiss beneath the Eiffel Tower? Sure. Gonna leave out the stuff we did at
the hotel this morning, though, or the site’s going to be X-rated.”

  Travis might have lost his previous job thanks to the love letter he tricked them into publishing, but since then, he’s broken out on his own. He now runs his own travel site, and it gains more and more followers every day.

  I still work at my magazine, but life is a whole lot different than it was six months ago. I get to pick my own assignments now, and Travis and I do a lot of our traveling together.

  “Come on,” Travis says, nodding his chin up at the tower. “Let’s go up.”

  It’s a bit of a trek to get to the top, but it’s so worth the journey. There are several other people around, but it doesn’t feel too crowded. We walk around the observation deck for a while before settling on one spot to admire the view from.

  “I think I can see it from here,” says Travis, looking out into the distance.

  “See what?” I ask.

  “The restaurant we’re having dinner at tonight.”

  I grin. “I didn’t know we had reservations anywhere.”

  “I made them while you were in the shower,” Travis says. His eyes move down to mine. “They said they were completely booked, but I told ’em it was our anniversary and they found us a table.”

  “Travis!” I gape at him. “What if someone recognizes us? Your website is getting so popular. Promise me this is the last time you do that.”

  “All right. I promise.” He digs his hand into his pocket. “Anyway, it won’t be a lie for that much longer.”

  I’m speechless as Travis drops down to one knee and holds out the ring he’d been hiding in his pocket.

  “I love you, Bree. You’re my whole world. My whole universe. I want to have that first wedding anniversary with you for real. And our tenth. And our fiftieth. And however more we can squeeze into this life. Will you marry me, Bree?”

  I know I’m supposed to say yes and let him put the ring on my finger, but I’m so overwhelmed with love that I can’t think straight. I fall to my knees and push my mouth against his, answering him with a deep kiss.

  As we pull out of our kiss, I hear the clapping. The cheering. I look around and everyone else up here on the observation deck is watching us, huge smiles on their faces.

  “Yes,” I finally say, turning back to Travis. “A hundred, thousand, million times yes!”

  He takes my hand and slips the ring on my finger. It fits perfectly. Of course it does.

  “Stay with me forever, Bree.”

  “I will. Of course I will.”

  And as we kiss again—everyone around us still clapping and cheering—I know this somehow has always been our fate.

  It was always going to be the two of us.

  Travis and Bree.

  Forever.

  Want to know what Bree and Travis are up to 10 years later?

  Get the free bonus epilogue!

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  About the Author

  Kate Hunt writes short, sexy, feel-good romances about delicious men and the feisty heroines they can’t live without. Kate is married to her high school sweetheart, unapologetically spoils her pets, and always has a song stuck in her head.

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