It’s a total replication of the west coast party in Crescent Cove. The threat of blue lights mixed with loneliness. At least last time I had Dexter. I wait around for Reed to return, but after five minutes, then ten minutes, I feel like I did waiting for Colby Taylor at Bristow Park.
The band slows down, announcing a special guest performing with them, and my curiosity perks up from my self-pity long enough to see the old guy Vin was talking to earlier walk onstage with an acoustic guitar.
Jace leans into the microphone. “You guys, please give a huge Horn Island welcome to our own Joe McAllister!”
I bite my quivering lips. Shark’s dad is probably the only thing that could break the already fragile shell I’m hiding within. No wonder Vin ditched me to talk to him. I’d have ditched me too.
Joe asks that everyone find their “special someone” and starts strumming some kind of music that I swear is probably a Beach Boys song. I bolt for the steps. I’m not playing the role of Virgin Mary wallflower while Drenaline Surf’s Kristin clings to Miles and Enchanted Emily laughs at Kale’s attempts to hook up with her. Alston and Linzi are for sure making out on the dance floor, although I can’t see them.
But a familiar face stops me on the third step.
“Be my special someone!” Topher yells over the music.
The clear Christmas lights from the palm trees reflect in his blue eyes like stars dancing on the surface of his energy drink. There’s no way I can say no to him.
He hauls me back onto the dance floor with him, telling me how he’s known Joe since he was born, and that Joe was in a band when he was in high school a thousand years ago. He twirls me around, laughing and bouncing, and for a moment, I forget all the drama and have one last tiny bit of fun just like Vin told me to.
“I think she likes everyone but me,” Kale says, approaching Topher and me after the music dies out. “Seriously, Brooks? Big brother’s got you watching her now?”
I don’t hear another word of the conversation. Everything in my mind swirls around like a sandstorm, and it slaps me in the face. Topher called Vin the day of the storm. He was with Vin the day that Miles helped me sell tickets. How did I not realize he has Vin’s eyes, just more full of Ocean Blast Energy than icebergs and worry?
“Vin’s your brother?” It’s a miracle I even get the words out of my mouth. I think I’m paralyzed.
Topher laughs. “You didn’t know that?”
I can’t answer. I’m realizing there’s a hell of a lot I don’t know. And demanding answers from Vin is the only way I’ll ever know.
“Where’d he go? Where’s Vin?” I spit the words out as fast as I can.
Kale has that look, the same one I’ve been getting all night, so I spare him from having to ask any questions.
“I know! What the fuck, right? Yes, I’m fucking serious! Where is Vin?” Certainty number five – I’ve been around A.J. Gonzalez too long.
“Beer run,” Kale says. “We’re all underage.”
I turn and run, as fast as I can, tripping over couples making out and drunken idiots who are screaming at me for knocking them into walls.
But I don’t care.
I just run.
CHAPTER 17
My breath catches in my throat, and I’m overcome with relief when I find Vin talking to A.J. I’d have never heard the roar of his motorcycle over the music of Sapphires and Sunsets.
“Why didn’t you tell me Topher was your brother?” I ask before I can talk myself out of unearthing the skeletons that Vin has worked so hard to keep hidden.
He folds his arms over his chest, looks at me like I’m an absolute idiot, and says, “You never asked.”
Right. Because any normal person would’ve thought to ask if Topher was his brother. Of course. That makes total sense.
I shrink into my surroundings, like in the movies when the camera zooms out and the main character looks so tiny and helpless in a world of drama and chaos.
“What else haven’t you told me?” I do all I can to keep my voice steady, but I feel that intimidation from day one on The Strip all over again. And he’s not even armed with lame hair dye spray tonight.
He throws his arms into the air. “What do you care?”
He pushes off of the car behind him and heads toward his bike. A.J. stumbles behind him, and I trail along, racking my brain for any good reason as to why I care that doesn’t sound totally invasive and obsessive.
“You really need to leave some things where they are, Haley,” Vin says, turning back around to face us. “You don’t want these answers.”
Oh but I do. Beginning to end. The good, the bad, the drowning, and the surfer. And anything else you want to shed light on. I don’t just want them. I need them.
The silence continues to grow more awkward and uncomfortable, at least for me because I think Vin likes staring at me and freaking me out. The street lights flicker and stars pop out of the sky. Music pours over the roof of the beach house and floods the sand. I don’t even know how long we’ve been standing here.
“I’m going with you,” I finally say.
“No,” Vin counters. “You’re not.”
“My car,” A.J. says, dangling his keys.
Vin snatches them out of A.J.’s hand. “You’re too drunk to drive anywhere.”
A.J. latches onto my arm to balance himself. “But you…can drive,” he says, pointing his finger at Vin for extra emphasis.
A.J. must’ve been sitting out here since the fight, drinking beer to his heart’s content, or until he forgot why he was kicked out to begin with.
Vin doesn’t verbally surrender. But when he helps A.J. into the backseat of that tin can of a car and motions for me to get in, I want to squee like an excited fangirl. I climb into the passenger seat and lose all focus upon seeing the Enchanter hanging from A.J.’s rearview mirror with what looks like a yarn noose. The doll is small with black fabric for its body. But it’s not wearing clothes. Instead, the entire body is covered in white stitches, like Enchanted Emily cut him apart and sewed him back together and left his battle scars out there for the world to see. Its lime green eyes stare back at me.
“That’s Logan,” A.J. says, leaning in between the seats. Vin pushes him back and tells him to put his seatbelt on.
A.J. does as he’s told but keeps talking. “Like Logan Riley,” he says. “That motherfucker got fucked up bad…black market organs…and that’s what we’re going to do to the east coast.”
So A.J. is a little more drunk than I thought. I glance over at Vin, and he tells A.J. to go to sleep, but A.J. keeps talking and slurring his words more each time he tries to tell me the story behind his Enchanter. I still don’t know the story even after we pull into the gas station parking lot. Vin goes inside for the beer, being the legal twenty-two year old that he is, and A.J. goes into a comparison of Logan Riley and our dear friend Dominic.
Vin comes back as A.J. says Dominic should have been arrested and charged with assault, but it sounds more like asphalt. Vin shoves two cases of beer into the floorboard behind the driver’s seat and tells A.J. that he has learn to control his temper, especially around idiots like Dominic.
“But he took Haley’s shirt off,” A.J. says, more clearly than he’s said anything since we left the party.
“He did what?” Vin yells, looking over at me. He doesn’t give me time to answer. He looks at A.J. in the rearview mirror. “We’re slashing his tires.”
“Hell yeah!” A.J. shouts. He slams against the backseat once Vin cranks the car, and it chokes itself to life in the same way Miles’ truck did.
“Hold up. He didn’t take my shirt off,” I say more to Vin than A.J. “He tried, and A.J. stopped him. Then he pushed A.J. and A.J. hit him, and it was insanity until Topher rescued me.”
A.J. laughs. “Topher’s a good kid. He’s learned from the best.”
Vin cracks a smile, but it fades just as quickly as it came. “Except for the fact that he volunteered the information that I was hi
s brother.”
“No, he didn’t,” I say. “Kale told me.”
Strips of sand and ocean rush past my window, bleeding together into such a blur that I’m not sure if it’s a Crescent Cove beach or a Horn Island beach. The longer I’m here, the more the two places seem to belong together in a twisted way, like Topher and Vin. So vast and different, yet unique and kind of beautiful in their own ways. And they balance each other so perfectly.
“Kale has the biggest mouth in Horn Island,” Vin says. When I glance over, he’s shaking his head. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he rips into Dominic next. Miles better not blow it this weekend. I’ll be damned if Dominic gets that sponsorship.”
The stitched up Enchanter swings on the rearview mirror. I’d bet Vin would rather an east coaster have Drenaline Surf’s name plastered on him than Dominic.
“He doesn’t deserve it,” I state the obvious.
“No, he doesn’t,” Vin says. “He wasn’t such an arrogant jackass when he went up for sponsorship. He thinks he has it in the bag because his parents have money. They’d put a lot into Drenaline, but he’s the last thing Drenaline needs. But if Miles gets nervous and chokes, I really won’t have a choice.”
I rewind those last few words in my head, trying to make sense of them, but I’ve learned by now that not much makes sense with Vin because he tries to be as vague and mysterious as possible. Right now, he looks exhausted. Either he forgot to be a man of mystery tonight or he just doesn’t care anymore.
“Wait. What? What do you mean you won’t have a choice?” I ask.
Something loud under the hood swallows my question. The car coughs and squeals and echoes like a gunshot. Vin pulls it off the side of the deserted highway before it officially kills over.
“A.J., when’s the last time you had your oil changed? Or anything else changed, for that matter?” Vin asks, looking back at A.J. in the rearview mirror.
A.J. fights a yawn. “You were the last one to change it.”
Vin slams both fists into the steering wheel and buries his face against it. “That was last summer, you idiot,” he mumbles. “Damn it, A.J.”
He gets out of the car, lifts the hood, and mutters quite a few four-letter words. A.J. grabs a case of beer and heads down to the shoreline, but I stay behind. I won’t be much help to either of them, but at least Vin is sober and can carry on a conversation better than A.J. can tonight.
I walk around to the lifted hood. Vin wipes sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. “It’s too hot under here to work on it right now. We’re going to have to wait for it to cool off,” he says.
“You’re really a mechanic?” I ask. I always assumed, to a certain extent, that it was a cover up.
He laughs. “Yeah, believe it or not, I do have a few talents. It paid the bills for a few years.” He looks down to the shoreline, where A.J. has set up his own little beach party with a case of Milwaukee Best. “Might as well join him. We’re going to be here a while.”
Vin slips the car keys into his pocket, and we trek through the sand. I debate returning to the sponsorship, but I don’t have much else to lose at this point. It’s not like he can leave or abandon me here. We’re stranded, at least until A.J.’s car cools off and Vin can attempt to get it running again.
“What did you mean by not having a choice? About Dominic?” I ask as we close in on A.J.’s solo party spot.
Vin stops in the sand and looks at me with that same defeated look he had the morning of the storm, the morning when we thought Colby might be dead out there in the ocean. He looks vulnerable and almost scared. He kind of looks like Topher – or maybe Topher looks like him – and I feel like an idiot for never putting the two together.
“Get comfortable,” Vin says before stretching out in the sand. I sit next to him, but I’m too tense to get comfortable just yet.
He stares out across the ocean, and I wish I could capture those brainwaves and whatever thought or memory they’re reflecting on. I feel like there’s more going through this guy’s head than anyone could ever imagine. I want to know those thoughts even more than I want to know Colby’s secrets about chasing forever down.
“When Jake died, everything changed,” Vin says.
It’s the first time I haven’t heard someone refer to him as Shark. And for once, he feels like a real person and not a local celebrity-turned-tragedy.
“Drenaline Surf was in its prime, he’d just signed Colby on, and everything just soared straight to the top for him. I was working for Strick’s dad, and I wasn’t thrilled with the whole not-dead kid, but I went with it because Jake believed in him,” he says.
He doesn’t take his eyes off the ocean, like maybe his best friend will emerge from the black waves and tell him everything’s going to be okay, that he just pulled a Colby Taylor and has been living as someone else for the last year and a half.
“He used to tell me that I’d make a good businessman if I’d just get out of the business of screwing people over. He said if I had a real business, I’d be even better than he was,” Vin says. He turns to face me this time. “That’s why he left Drenaline to me.”
A.J. sits up in the sand and stops drawing pictures in the sky. “Thank God! The secret is out,” he says. He stands up, stumbles toward the shoreline, raises his beer bottle into the air, and screams out, “The secret’s out, Shark! The secret’s out!”
Then he hurls the bottle into the ocean, possibly for Shark’s ashes to share in a victory toast. If I knew A.J. wouldn’t turn into some crazy psycho and swim in after it, I’d pour all of that beer into the ocean to keep him from drinking any more of it.
“Get over here,” I yell out to him. Even when he’s drunk, he obeys well.
“Go to sleep, A.J.,” Vin says again.
“So you own Drenaline Surf now.” It’s more of a statement than a question. I’m not exactly sure how this changes everything, but it does – it totally changes everything.
“He left half of his money to his dad, part to me and Topher, and some for his mom, but she lives out of state and didn’t really support the idea of a surf shop,” Vin explains.
He continues, “So he left me the store. Joe invested most of what Jake left him back into the store too. He’s more involved than people think. That place was his son’s dream. We’re just keeping the legacy going.”
I can’t even imagine. Losing your best friend. Inheriting all of his dreams and feeling obligated to fulfill them. Not having a clue in hell what you’re doing but knowing you have to do it, no matter what it takes.
“I wasn’t even legal to buy alcohol,” he says. “Haley, you don’t know what it’s like. Hell, I’m twenty-two, trying to raise my kid brother because he’s an idiot who got kicked out just like I did, trying to keep Drenaline above water, and dealing with all this Colby Taylor bullshit.”
Of course, then I showed up, digging into the secrets that no one should ever reveal. Colby Taylor is Drenaline Surf’s poster boy, their sales pitch, and without him, Vin would lose Shark’s store. He’d go back to working on cars, and then he and Topher both would be next to A.J. with “will work for food” signs. If Colby had been outted, everything would’ve sunk to the bottom of the ocean with his best friend’s ashes.
I take a deep breath and verbalize my next realization. “And if Miles chokes on nerves this weekend, everyone will see it, and they’ll blast you for picking him over Dominic,” I say. “And they don’t know the side of Dominic that we know. You really wouldn’t have a choice.”
Vin sits up and dusts the sand off the back of his shirt. “Miles is Topher’s best friend. I’ll catch hell regardless. If he wins, everyone will say it was rigged. If he chokes, then I’ll be stuck with Colby and Dominic, and I can’t take that much arrogance. Do you know how fast that store would go under? I need Drenaline to put Topher through college. I can go back to fixing cars, but Topher’s better than that. He can do more. He deserves more.”
I want to tell Vin that he’s better t
han that, that he deserves everything he’s ever wanted too. But every line I think of sounds even cornier than the last, and I doubt he’d believe me anyway.
Vin slides over closer to me. “I have a plan though,” he says. “You can’t tell anyone, or I swear, I really will have to kill you. Topher knows, but he’s the only one.” He glances over at A.J., who seems to be passed out in the sand.
“I don’t have anyone to tell,” I remind him. Linzi is so far out of the question. And her replacement in the best friend slot is passed out behind me.
“Okay, so, this energy drink company contacted me a while back about doing a sponsorship through Drenaline Surf, and in return, we’d sell their drinks, put their logo on a lot of our stuff, and Colby would wear it during competitions. We’d basically market them, right?” he says.
He talks with his hands, like Topher does. I’ve never seen Vin this excited about anything, but his movements are dead on with enthusiasm. It makes me smile bigger than I ever thought I would for Vin Brooks.
“It’s this energy drink slash rehydrating drink, like Gatorade with some kind of extra zing to it,” he explains.
And it totally clicks. “Ocean Blast Energy!” I practically scream it. “Topher is always drinking it, not that he needs it. He’s kind of hyper anyway.”
“All those damn sugar cubes,” Vin says, nodding along. “He’s been my test subject – I know, he’s the worst candidate – but I figured if it wasn’t too much for him, everyone else would be okay. I can’t just endorse a product that I don’t know about. It’s bad for business.”
“What’s the trade off?” I ask. “What does Drenaline get in return?”
“The sponsorship,” Vin says. “The money, the perks, their logo, the whole works. I’m just praying Miles doesn’t choke. He has before. If he wipes out, I’m fucked.”
I’m still confused, though. How does Ocean Blast Energy help him if all they’re doing is backing Colby and possibly Dominic? How does anyone win in that situation? That would be just stroking their egos and dragging Shark’s legacy through the mud.
Chasing Forever Down (Drenaline Surf Series) Page 15
