Brady picked up the vest, going over its features again. It was an addition to the normal wetsuit but slim enough to make paddling out easy. It inflated with a pull tab and deflated quickly with a similar tab. It was designed with big wave surfers in mind and was changing the way the game was played. You could get pushed to the bottom, have your leash ripped off, and still have hope of finding the surface.
He tossed the vest onto the bed and went back to the computer.
If she didn't answer this time, he would leave a message.
***
Lo
“I made tacos.”
Lo looked up from her task to see Steve leaning one shoulder against the door.
“Tacos in France. Now I've had it all.”
He smirked. “They're French tacos, very fancy.” He nodded at her project. “What are you making?”
Lo sighed out loud and held up the scarf she was painting. She had bought some fabric paint yesterday when it had become clear the rain wasn't letting up anytime soon. A small vendor next to their flat sold cheap scarves, so she'd bought several.
“That's neat,” he said with a nod.
“Yep. Something to keep me busy.” She set the scarf down and examined the bright swirls she'd added to it. It wasn't quite a mandala, but her own creation. How she saw the water and sun interact in art.
“Have you read his blog?”
Her head jerked up and she frowned. “I... uh, I haven't.” She almost said she hadn't had time, but that was clearly a lie.
Steve sniffed and looked around her small quarters. “You should eat.” Then he left.
Hmm. Maybe she should read Brady's blog.
But she didn't want to. She was afraid of all the things it might say. But she was more afraid of what it might not say.
She was just plain afraid.
Groaning under her breath, she set the scarf aside and opened the browser on her phone.
Open Heart Surf
The Blog of Brady Samson
Oahu, Hawaii
I held her as long as I could. I counted her eyelashes in the moonlight as she slept. Watching her sleep, my heart felt anchored to her peace.
You don't know her like I know her. You don't see all the colors she comes in. She's a flash of light on the horizon. The distant star that warms me. The call to adventure I hear in my soul.
I love her. But I can't love her correctly.
It was a realization I came to this week. I don't know how to love someone like her. Not the way she needs to be loved. It's not her fault and entirely my own. She deserves to be loved with freedom.
Which is why I've petitioned the powers-that-be at Soaring Bird to allow me to pursue my first love—big wave surfing. I fell in love with the power and majesty of big waves at a time in my life when love looked bleak. My parents had begun divorce proceedings. I wasn't supposed to know. I accidentally found the paperwork in my dad's office at home when I had been looking for something with his signature so I could forge his name on a permission slip.
Up until that point in my life, my dreams were simple. I wanted to get done with school, live on the beach, find a girl, ride off into the sunset with only adventure on the horizon. It never occurred to me that love could end. Worse than that, that love could end so quietly.
I had thought my parents were happy. They never fought, they didn't argue, they had scheduled date nights. Finding the divorce papers took everything I thought was real and turned it on its head.
I lost my mind. I wrote a letter to my parents explaining that I was taking Bo on vacation and they needed to figure out their marriage. If they decided to go through with the divorce, I was going to require they explain to us in detail exactly why.
I was 15. I had no idea what I was doing, but I was pretty sure of myself.
My frustration fueled every decision from there on out. I felt it was my responsibility to protect Bo from the dissolution of our home. So I didn't tell him why we went to Hawaii. We spent three weeks on an adventure.
Waimae was my first love. She was the biggest wave I had ever seen. I didn't know a feeling like that existed. I remember standing on the beach, board under my arm, heart beating like thunder in my chest and knowing I was in love. Love at first sight. It's a thing and it really happens.
I became addicted to the drop in, the moment when the board leaves the crest and you fall to the wall below. It's a thrill like no other. I couldn't get enough.
Eventually we went home. My parents didn't get divorced, and I was expected to return to life as usual. Which I mostly did. The urge to protect those I love? That came from an emotional upheaval, and never went away. I'm struggling with it even now.
Which is why my next stop on this tour is Mavericks. I know it's not the season. A storm in the north has made it possible and I'm not going to waste this opportunity to get the drop in of a lifetime.
I need to.
See... I've lived years in restriction. I took what I felt for Waimae and buried it. Told myself it was the romanticism of teenage rebellion and needed to be forgotten.
But then I met Lo.
Thunder in my chest, adrenaline spike in my blood, the thrill of falling, the promise of adventure.
I can't love her correctly until I correct my view of how I love. If I bury what I feel for big wave riding, I'll never love her with the freedom she deserves.
Lo blinked back the tears that had surfaced as she'd read. Her eyes scanned back up the screen and re-read certain sections. She tossed her phone in the bed and ran out into the main living space. The laptop sat closed on the coffee table. She ignored Steve and dropped to her knees in front of the computer.
“Please be online,” she whispered as she opened Skype.
She's been so stupid. He'd told her to read it. He'd always said more in his blogs than she was ready to hear and he knew that. She should have listened to him.
A video message popped up and she hit play.
Brady's tired but handsome face filled her screen.
“Hey, beautiful. I was hoping I'd catch you before I had to head out.” He glanced over his shoulder. “I don't want you to think I'm being cocky and stupid. I'm prepared. I'm strong.” Lopsided grin. “I can hold my breath for a really long time.” He rubbed a hand down his face. “I just wanted you to know I love you and I'm thinking about you.”
That was it. She replayed it. Then sat there in silence, trying to figure out what to do now.
“You read it?” Steve asked, sitting down on the couch.
“Yeah.” She touched her lips with her fingertips as an idea took shape. He knew she'd fight. She had warned him she wouldn't be pushed around. “Steve?” She pivoted around to face him, the carpet burning her bare knees. “We should go to Fiji.”
His eyebrows twitched while the rest of his face went carefully blank. “Fiji.”
“It's too late to make it Half Moon Bay. But I know what Brady did. I know he had us sent here to keep me out of the storm system in the South Pacific.”
His eyebrows dipped sharply. “You think he'd do that?”
Lo rolled her eyes. Of course he'd do that. And he wasn't close enough for her to tackle him in order to make her irritation with him known. “I think we have enough time to get some awesome people together to make Cloudbreak an event.”
“Cloudbreak is mostly hype.”
“Yeah? Have you been there?” she challenged.
“Well, no.”
“At the very least, it would be an excellent party and easy place for Soaring Bird to get positive exposure.”
“Yeah, if Miller and Brady don't drown each other.”
Lo nodded, tapping her chin with a finger. “That would be bad.”
“If you think he set us up to be here, we can blow this place and go anywhere you want.” Steve sounded disgruntled. He looked it too. “If he has clout like that, there's no point in following the rules.”
Lo chuckled. “Yeah, that's easy to say. But I don't have money like that.”
“I have money,” Steve said. “In fact, I have money earmarked for occasions just like this.” He leaned forward, grabbed the laptop off the table, and settled back in his seat.
Lo pushed off the floor and sat beside him on the couch. “Where would you go?”
“For starters,” Steve said, clicking rapidly in the browser. “If you want to get to the South Pacific, we should make a tour out of it. How about Sidney, a little Tasmania, Brisbane, Solomon Islands, with the grand finale being Tavarue.”
Lo rested a hand on his arm, his agitation startling her. “What's up, Steve?”
He glanced at her from the corner of his eye. “It pisses me off, that's what's up.”
“What pisses you off?”
“They don't get to play God with people's lives. Just because they think they know better doesn't mean they actually do. You wanna surf some of the best waves in the world, or do you wanna be stuck in a leaky flat in the rain, babe?”
“I wanna surf,” she answered softly.
“Damn right you do.” He nodded curtly. “I'm gonna take you surfing. To hell with playing games. Clarke will send the equipment, she owes me.”
“Isn't that technically playing the game?” Lo asked, trying not to laugh.
He faced her seriously. “Fine. I'm playing. But we're a team and we're going to win. Brady can join us on Tavarue, but he is not allowed to keep you from riding. And Miller Boden can come too but he better behave himself.”
Lo smiled and rested her head on Steve's shoulder. She watched him book their flights and send messages to Cal and several other well-known surfers. She sure hoped she hadn't been wrong about the possible swell coming into Fiji. It would be humiliating if she was mistaken.
“Do you think Brady will show up?” she asked.
Steve grunted. “You bet your ass he will.”
“I love him.”
He pressed a hurried kiss to the top of her head. “I know you do. Because you're a dummy.”
28
Brady
Mavericks was half legend, half suicide.
The water was cold, unforgiving. It wasn't the peaceful turquoisey blue-green that you see in magazines and teen beach movies. It was a dark gray, except for the tops which were an angry, frothy white.
Two miles off shore from Pillar Point and north of the small town, Half Moon Bay, Mavericks was the result of northern storms sending their energy to the south. As the ocean converged on Pillar Point, it encountered a unique rock formation below the surface, a reef that had been built and formed over thousands of years into layers of jagged shelves, peaks, and valleys. The wave didn't just break over the reef, it was lifted, and lifted, and lifted, and lifted—making waves with an average of twenty-five feet on the face, but often reached seventy feet or more.
The reef curved from the northwest towards the west, capturing the waves that entered and funneling the energy into massively high peaks. The lip, heavy with the weight of the deep sea being pushed upwards, keeled and collapsed back onto its own barrel—which wasn't a barrel at all. Not a round one. It was more of a square, with hard edges and lines. The sea constantly and relentlessly pushed you forward while it also tried to suck you back inside.
Surfers who wiped out before clearing the face (which happened often), were pushed under the wave. A large trench wound its way through the reef, and surfers were often pushed further into it as wave after wave came down on top of them.
The current then crashed through onshore rocks. Sending surfers through it like branches through a wood chipper.
To surf Mavericks was to understand what little control you had. You weren't a guest. You were an intruder and the sea would dispose of you as it saw fit. Physical strength, experience, healthy fear. Those things would keep you alive.
“It's big,” Brady observed. “Faster than I expected.”
“Why are you doing this?”
Brady watched the water roll in from the lineup outside. He'd hitched a ride with Nadia on the back of her wave runner instead of paddling out so he could conserve some of his energy.
“Because I'm scared,” he said honestly.
Nadia licked her lips and looked towards shore where Julia was ready and waiting with her long lens. She shook her head. “Stupid,” she muttered.
“Why are you out here?” Brady asked, tugging his surf cap up from around his neck to cover his head.
“To save your ass if you're wrong,” she replied.
“No, I mean why do you do this? Scotch is the pick-up man. He's happy to do it. You could be on the shore with Jules, being an actual assistant.”
Nadia's grin disarmed him. She spent so much of her time being sardonic, he forgot how gorgeous her smile was. Scotch Bishop was a moron.
“I like having handsome men indebted to me. Saving their lives tends to do that.” She ran a hand through her thick glossy hair and tossed it over a shoulder as she looked back at him. “Do you just want me to tow you in?”
She was offering the easier alternative. Being towed by the wave runner into the drop in meant he'd already be up to speed with the wave when he hit it. Paddling was more difficult.
“Nah,” Brady declined, getting off the back of the wave runner and into the water. He pulled his board off of the raft. “I like to feel it. I'm old school.”
At least he wasn't the only idiot out there. While it wasn't the typical time of the year, the storm from the north had brought out those who were familiar with Mavericks and the crazy few like Brady, who had been listening to the weather reports.
“Hey,” Nadia called before he'd paddled too far. “Watch out for sharks.”
Right. Sharks.
***
Julia
Julia Bishop knew three things.
One. If her brother Scotch wasn't such an alpha-macho-bossy asshole, she'd be on the wave runner with Nadia getting some of the best footage of her life.
Two. Meeting Brady Samson was going to either make her a very rich woman or cause her so much regret she'd quit the industry altogether.
Three. She had never met anyone like him in her entire life. And that scared her.
Julia's life had been anything but simple. Her parents died when she was twelve and her big brother had finished raising her. Scotch had been only eighteen at the time. Instead of going to college, he joined the military. Marines to be exact. And once a Marine, always a Marine. Which explained his bossy bullshit he kept pulling on her.
Still, she loved him and recognized that he needed a mission. It was in his blood. When he'd been discharged from the Marines due to an injury, she'd offered him a position in her fast growing business. It involved travel, a little danger, helping her out. It was a new mission and he accepted.
Though sometimes she wondered if it was enough.
Other times, she was more than irritated with him barking orders at her and secretly fired him in her head.
She focused her lens on Brady in the distance as he bobbed along the rough line up. It was kind of amazing how many people had turned out. Though it was like having a bonus season at Mavericks, so it was understandable. The waves weren't expected to reach seventy plus feet, but that didn't mean it was going to be easy. Thirty footers were still insane.
And Brady... what was he trying to prove?
She'd read his blog. With not a small amount of jealousy, which surprised her. The way he spilled his guts for this girl. The unexpected poetic quality to his words, the earnest conviction he held to. He had convinced himself that he needed to ride Mavericks to prove himself worthy of Lo's... heart? Her love? Her respect?
Julia found herself poring through Lo's blogs, both past and present, trying to get a read on her. And she just couldn't. So much was cloaked in humor and humility and was not even half as transparent as Brady's. In the space of just a week, Julia found herself attached to a man she barely knew in a similar fashion to her attachment to Scotch—with a great amount of respect and a side of personal responsibility.
She was captivated by the way he talked about Lo. The look on his face when he scrolled through her photos.
Now she was watching him risk his life like all big wave riders she'd met before. They had a particular quality that rang true among them: they wanted to push the limits.
And yet, he didn't want his girl to push those same limits.
It was a paradox.
A scary one.
Because if he kept pushing it, he was going to push her away.
***
Brady
The swell rushed up on him and he wasn't ready. Brady tried to get on his feet but the board was ripped out from underneath him and he plunged headfirst into the wall of water. The impact knocked the wind out of him. The sea churned and roiled. Tumbling, tumbling, tumbling, tumbling. Like a pebble in a gutter. The leash around his ankle ripped free and he knew he was at the mercy of the wave. The wave that had no mercy to give.
He pulled the tabs on his vest and it inflated, pushing him to the surface. His head broke free of the water and he sucked in a single breath. Another wave reared above him, prepared to finish what the first could not. He was pulled up from behind. Scotch Bishop used one arm to swing Brady onto the raft behind him. He had barely grabbed hold of the handle before Scotch was ripping away from the oncoming crush.
“Good thing you wore that vest,” Nadia observed when Scotch pulled up alongside her at the lineup. She had managed to snag his board.
“Yeah,” Brady agreed. “Shane will happy to hear it worked.” He pulled the tab to deflate it and swung out of the raft.
“You're going again?” Nadia asked in disbelief.
Brady crawled onto his board. “Have I ridden Mavericks yet?”
Nadia shook her head and said something unladylike under her breath.
“A man's gotta be a man, Nadia,” Scotch said quietly.
Nadia glared at Scotch, revved her wave runner, and took off.
Like the Back of My Halo Page 22
