“That’s awesome I think. Sounds like you’ve already decided to do it. But how do you feel about it?”
“You sound like a shrink.” I felt my brows pull together.
“And that I do surprises you, why?”
It didn’t. She had spent a lot of time over the years with different ones trying to get the nightmares to go away so she could move on and let go of the past. Our circumstances were certainly entirely different but we both carried our share of pain.
“Is that all he wants…” She let her question hang meaningfully.
“Um, no.” My cheeks warmed. Remembering what had almost happened with Lincoln and me in the middle of the day at the shop where anyone could have seen us…Shit. I needed to clear the video on the security cameras. “He definitely wants a lot more.” And beyond the physical too if I could believe him. Which I wouldn’t. That would be crazy. Given our history, I needed to be solidly determined to avoid his advances.
“He still as good looking?” Oh yeah. More so. More confident. More cocky. More mature. Dangerously irresistible.
“Yeah,” I understated. Majorly.
“Then I say go for it.”
“What?” It was my turn to screech. “Are you insane! You’re supposed to be my bestie. You’re supposed to look out for me. Tell me to guard my heart and that kind of stuff.”
“You two had something incredible,” she stated softly, nostalgically in a way that made me think she wasn’t just remembering Lincoln and me.
“Yeah something that went incredibly wrong. You of all people know how badly he hurt me and how long it’s taken me to move on.”
“I do. You’re absolutely right.” I was a little surprised she pivoted to agree with me so quickly. “Though you really haven’t gone on have you, Simone?” That sounded like an admonition. “Listen,” she exhaled heavily, “if I could have one more day with Patch, even just one more hour, don’t you think I would take it?”
Shit. Shit. Shit.
“Yeah, Karen of course you would. I’m sorry.” My heart twisted for her. It always did and I was only a bystander to her pain. She had lived it and survived it. Just barely. “But you know it’s not the same. Patch didn’t fool around on you after letting you believe he was committed to you.” And after marking me so indelibly that now every time another man touched me, I thought of Linc instead and felt unfaithful to him.
“No. But what if he’s changed? What if he has regrets? Wouldn’t you want to hear about them? It was a crazy time. You were so young and had so much going against you. If your mother hadn’t interfered. If you hadn’t left. Mistakes were made on both sides. You said so yourself. Don’t you think you owe it to yourself to see if there’s still something there, if maybe the love you once shared could be rekindled?”
Standing on her porch early the next morning after I had kissed her before she kicked me out of her shop, I was as nervous about how she would receive me now as I had been fifteen years ago when I had entered Napoli’s after our chance meeting on the beach.
I waited a beat and knocked again hearing the sound of scrabbling nails on hardwood. Then the sound of snuffling leaked through the crack below the door followed by a squeaky bark. And then her beautiful voice.
“Who is it, Chulo?” she asked flipping on the outside light. The gauzy curtain on the window beside the door fluttered and went back in place. “Go away, Lincoln,” she ordered through the door.
“Not happening, Simone,” I said firmly dropping my forehead to the wood wishing it was her instead. I used to press my forehead to hers when I had something important to say and wanted her to listen closely. I had been up all night thinking about her and remembering important details like that. Details I had never forgotten.
The dog barked again and scratched the door from their side. At least someone seemed eager to see me. “Open the door, gorgeous.” There was no answer for a long protracted moment so I threw down my trump card. “I’ve got churros in the jeep.”
The lock popped instantly, a flood of brighter light from inside blinding me for a minute. No that was a lie. It was she who blinded me standing there in an oversized surf shirt that gave an enticing hint of those luscious tits that I longed to rediscover and capri sweats that sat low on her shapely hips exposing a compelling swath of tanned midriff. My mouth went ‘I’ve been out surfing until midday in the sun without drinking anything but salt water’ dry.
A beach ball covered in white and black fur bounced nearly three feet in the air beside me, tongue hanging out, demanding to be noticed.
“Down, Chulo, baby,” she scolded her voice sounding husky. Things came together in a rush. That phone call that made me jealous. Had she been talking to the dog the other night and not a boyfriend? I tried to peer beyond her to see if there was any trace of a man in the house.
She scooped the dog up and put him under her arm like an accessory. He relaxed into her as if boneless. She giggled when he licked her and snuggled into her chest.
Lucky damn dog and apparently serious competition for her affection.
“You said something about churros,” she reminded me, eyes narrowing as she looked at my empty hands.
“Yeah in the car. Coffee, too. I thought we might go to Sunset Cliffs. Have a picnic breakfast together. Watch the sunrise. Talk before you go to work.”
Several emotions passed through her eyes. Hurt. Longing. Desire. Hunger. For me or the damn churros I wasn’t entirely sure but I’d take whatever I could get at this point. I just wanted to spend time with her again.
“Alright,” she agreed. “But I need to get a jacket and put Chulo up. He does fine at the beach by the pier but Sunset has too many crumbly cliffs and he has a tendency to wander off.”
“Ok.” Elation spiked within my heart that she was agreeing to come. I tried not to read too much into it but I failed abominably.
“Stay here,” she ordered her expression stern before she shifted and pointed to the pale blue couch in the living room just behind her. “Don’t wander.” She hurried off, dog in tow his plume like tail wagging. I watched her cute ass sway until she disappeared into what appeared to be a kitchen on the other side of the room.
Before I had time to scoot back and get comfortable she reappeared sans Chulo. She glanced at me nervously before moving past. Her bare feet padded on the hardwood surface of the stairs as she flew up them.
Needing to distract myself from thoughts about Simone disrobing without me, I looked around for something to read. The coffee table was empty except for one thick photo album. Curious I picked it up.
My sudden intake of air did nothing to relieve the tight pressure inside my chest. With shaking hands and burning eyes I flipped rapidly through the pages that contained images of her, of us and the band on our SoCal mini tour back when she had still been mine. The sweetest of sorrows pierced my heart.
I didn’t hear her return at first. I had frozen on a picture of her. The one at San Clemente the morning after we had made love on the beach, the same day Ash had given her the camera. Her eyes sparkled, her face was lit from within. Pure captivating beautiful Mona fire. I remembered it had been Ash and not me who had taken the picture.
“So beautiful.” I ran my fingers reverentially over the image knowing she was watching silently, caressing the one dimensional image before I looked up to acknowledge the real beauty. I knew my eyes were burning with an emotion she wasn’t ready to receive from me yet but I didn’t care.
“I loved you so much,” she whispered emphasis on the past tense. The sweet sorrow began to blaze painfully within my chest. I closed the book carefully and set it back on the table.
“Interesting reading you were doing last night,” I guessed. I hoped. How could she look at those pictures and only remember the bad? “I thought you told me yesterday that you had put them all away.”
She opened her mouth maybe to deny it but she snapped it shut. A wry ‘I’ve been caught and I might as well own up to it’ look filled her gaze instead.<
br />
“Busted,” I said.
She nodded.
Seemed she was still quick to let things go that were minor. Could we get beyond the major?
“C’mon, gorgeous.” I stood and slipped my arm around her. “You look cute as hell in that hoodie and it would be a shame not to get your churro before it gets cold.”
After I helped her into the passenger side of the jeep, rounded the hood, fired up the engine and maneuvered onto Sunset Cliffs Boulevard, she proceeded to rock my world some more by giving me an opening I’d never in my wildest dreams imagined receiving.
Maybe it was the Broadway music flooding the interior. The same music we had made love to that unforgettable first time.
Or maybe she noticed how hard I had to grip the steering wheel to keep from touching her after inhaling her familiar sweet gardenia scent.
Or maybe it was just the churros.
“You were the best thing that ever happened to me, Lincoln Savage. And the worst.” I turned my head to look at her. The surface of her eyes was glassy. I would be lying if her confession didn’t make mine sting just as sharply. She turned away after detonating that bomb, dropping her chin to her chest and twisting her hands together.
The center of my chest was raw as if her words had been shrapnel but I managed to get the jeep down the road and through the couple of stop signs necessary to get us to the cliffs. I slid the jeep into a parallel parking space, flipped the ignition off and rolled the power windows down. I needed to hear the thunderous roar of the waves below us and I needed to feel the soothing ocean breeze on my skin. Formulating my thoughts I stared at the blue water of the Pacific and watched an arc of spray blast into the air when a stubborn wave smashed into the craggy rocks below. I felt like those damn rocks, ravaged by the years apart from her.
“You were my shield, Mona. My buffer from the hell my life was before you. The hell it turned into after you left.”
“Do you really expect me to believe that? You’re a rock star now, Linc. You have tons of money. You can have anything you want, any woman you want whenever you want, however you want.”
“The rock star part is debatable. For a while we were maybe. But you were there in the beginning. You know it’s all marketing, logistics and a lot of fuckin’ luck. I have some money now, sure. I can buy things. And there were other women. But none of them were you. They didn’t care about me. They just wanted to sleep with someone famous. That’s not a life. That’s purgatory. But the real reason my life has been hell is because I’ve had to live it without you.”
She inhaled sharply but I didn’t turn to look into her eyes. Gaze straight ahead I laid it bare.
“Ash told me everything.”
“Meaning what exactly?” she asked slowly and carefully.
Yeah she, Ash and I were a minefield that needed to be carefully negotiated.
“Everything,” I said turning my head to finally look at her. She had her seatbelt off and her legs folded to her chest. Her eyes widened.
“But only just recently, Mona. I don’t think he ever would have told me if not for…” I pressed my lips together. That part wasn’t for me to share. I returned my gaze to the ocean, fingers tightening around the steering wheel. I worried about Ash. “We have an outdoor concert Friday night at Humphrey’s by the Bay. Ash wants me to bring you so he can talk to you himself. I told him I didn’t know if you would come.”
“I’ll come.” She covered one of my hands with one of her own. The elation that surged through me from just that one meaningful touch, a sign that she still cared was crazy, but that was her. Still the tenderhearted girl I had fallen in love with back then and that I had never gotten over. She was still there behind the beauty of the grown woman who sat beside me. The turbulence that had raged within me since I set out to win her back settled like a wave coming home to a welcoming shore.
Keeping my gaze forward, I plunged into deeper, potentially more treacherous water.
“When you left me at Huntington Beach I didn’t believe you’d ever come back. Why would you after we fought and I said such horrible things to you?” I blew out a ragged breath remembering how quickly I had unraveled without her to hold the seams of my life together. “Your love, Mona and the kind of loyalty you showed me all along, defying your father, leaving your home and your dreams behind for me…” My heart swelled and my throat closed. There weren’t words to do her justice. I still had difficulty fathoming the depths of her. “You were too perfect for the boy I was. Too unbelievable a gift for someone so broken and confused.”
“I’m not perfect, Linc. I wasn’t. I told you so. I should have stayed with you. I should have tried harder to find a compromise.”
I shook my head. “It was all on me, babe.” I turned to look deep into her beautiful golden eyes and saw that the light wasn’t completely out, just dimmed. There were embers that I could stoke to a flame if she would let me. “You were right about everything you told me back then. I was holding back. I was afraid. I was so busy trying to find myself that I lost track of you in the process. You were like the perfect wave but instead of turning around and swimming toward you with all I had in me I went the opposite way, the wrong way.”
Any direction that took me away from her was the wrong way.
I took her hand that still covered mine and brought it to my face brushing my nose to her wrist inhaling deeply, filling my lungs with her sweet fragrance and pressing my lips to the pulse point that was as close as I could get to her precious heart…for now.
“I’m sorry, so sorry that I didn’t believe in you or in us enough. When your mother told me you had re-enrolled it was confirmation that one of my biggest fears had come true. I went completely insane after that. Full on self-destruct mode. Booze and drugs. I tried everything to drown the memories. None of it worked, though. Nothing was right after you left. Not a fucking thing.” I looked into her eyes and saw the corresponding darkness and desperation that had burdened us both since San Francisco.
“I should have called you at the very least no matter what your mother said, no matter what Ash believed, but I wasn’t capable of rational thinking at that time. And then it was too late for us. I’m sorry I hurt you. You were my hope. The light that made every bit of misery I had before you burn away. You are a fire in my blood that can’t be put out. My life has been empty since I lost you. I’ve just been treading water ever since. On the outside of my own life watching it pass me by.” I brought her hand to my cheek and peered deeply into her eyes vowing. “But now I’ve found you again, Mona and this time I’m here to stay.”
I pondered Linc’s words munching a sweet cinnamon churro as he drove us downtown and parked in front of my shop.
On the way he had mostly talked about inconsequential things telling me about some of the places he had been on tour and how he wanted to go back to his favorites with me. He also told me more about Diesel the guy who had replaced Patch on bass. He was an old buddy of Linc’s from the qualifying circuit. He had quit competitive surfing over some kind of domestic dispute. And apparently he hated women. All women. I found that intriguing and wondered what had happened to make him so bitter.
But Linc’s words were what I thought about most, his apology and the declaration that had followed, affirming that our love had been true and meaningful to him, too. Those words seeped through the cracks that time and doubt had left behind and went a long way toward initiating the process of healing.
“Let me stay with you today.” Linc turned off the ignition and turned to face me.
“Pfft. Lincoln Savage stocking shelves and ringing up sales? Don’t be ridiculous.”
“I’m not Lincoln Savage when I’m with you. Just Linc. I had an identity crisis back then. I thought what was important was what I did or what I accomplished. It’s not. It’s more simple and yet much more profound. What’s important is who I am when I’m with you. The man who makes you light up. That’s the real me. The man I always want to be. You saw it in me back then. It
took me a lot longer to see it myself, but that guy is still here, Mona. I’m sitting right beside you. I never went away. I just went into hibernation for far too fucking long.”
I was captured by his gorgeous eyes, the blue sparkling with sincerity. I knew he was telling the truth. I felt it. I saw it. And deep down I responded to it just the same as I had before. He was still the man I had loved and yet he was also more. I wanted to learn about that more. I wanted him to share that with me along with everything else he had done since we had parted. And even deeper down I realized that it wouldn’t be hard for me to fall for him again. It would be easy. Frighteningly effortlessly easy.
“Ok, Linc.” His eyes widened. He was obviously surprised I had agreed. “Come with me. You can help me reach the tall shelves. I’m sure you’ll charm the customers and heaven knows you certainly know more about surfing than I do.”
He got out of the jeep and came around to open my door his loose limbed stride confident and sexy. My gaze slowly meandered upward over the dark denim that encased his long legs, the worn belt around his trim waist and the heather grey Hurley t-shirt that clung to his chiseled chest in all the right places. I licked my lips and stepped out onto the pavement forcing myself to look away from all of that masculine perfection. My shoulder brushed into his side as he shut the door. Just the light touch was enough to make my legs shaky with desire.
I hurried to the shop hearing the beep of the locks acutely aware of his enticing heat the minute he moved in behind me. Heat that had recently felt so good pressed against me just skin to skin. He and I together had always been so incredibly good. No other man compared ever since that first gentle kiss at the Deck Bar when he had rearranged my world.
A fine tremor shook my hand as I popped on the lights. He scanned the interior much like he had the first time then his gaze returned to me. “What should I do first, boss lady?”
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