by Jamie Howard
Whatever happened, Sloane ditched the towel and was out the front door without even a good-bye before I could get a handle on the situation. I haven’t seen her since. Not that I’ve gone out of my way to run into her.
Cash skids across the floor, coming to a stop in front of me. “Ready,” he says, pausing to catch his breath.
“You have everything?”
“Yup.”
“Towel?”
He holds it up in my direction.
“Flip-flops?”
He wiggles his feet at me, one at a time.
“Sunscreen?”
His eyes shift from side to side, and he scrunches his mouth to the side. A loud honk pierces through the air from the front of the house.
“I’ll get the sunscreen. Go get in the car and tell Archer I’ll be right there.”
“Okay!” Cash runs for the door, stopping as he swings it open. “Do you think Sloane’ll be at the beach?”
I shrug. “I don’t know buddy. Maybe.”
He grins at me and lets the door swing shut behind him. Tucking my towel underneath my arm, I make a quick detour into the bathroom for the sunscreen.
“You’re stupider than I thought if you think that girl will even look at you twice.” Evelyn takes a drag of her cigarette and blows the smoke in my direction, blocking the doorway of the bathroom as she leans against the frame.
Shutting the door to the medicine cabinet, I pluck the cigarette from her fingers and toss it in the toilet. It goes out with a hiss as it hits the water. “We don’t smoke in the house.”
She ignores me; selecting another one from the pack of Marlboro Reds and lighting it right back up.
Time to go. I brush by her, my elbow knocking into her shoulder on my way past.
Pinching the cigarette between her lips, she inhales and blows out another cloud of smoke, leaving traces of her red lipstick on the end. “I heard her here.” She dips her head toward the kitchen. “Making herself at home. Don’t make the mistake of thinking you’re anything more than her charity case.”
Normally Evelyn’s words are nothing more than static in the air, white noise that my ears have trained themselves to block out. But this time they hit too close to home to be ignored. It may not be the exact thing I’ve been thinking to myself, but it’s damn close. Did Sloane feel bad for me? Did she pity me? Is that why she’d given me a second, third, fourth chance?
I fight my natural instinct to tense up. Turning toward Evelyn, I force my face to maintain its mask of bored indifference.
She sneers at me, dragging her eyes over me with blatant disgust. “Look at you. I should’ve taken the money your daddy gave me and gotten rid of you like I was supposed to.”
These words I’ve heard before, too many times to count. Her lips thin into nearly invisible lines when her effort to rile me fails. That declaration ripped me apart when I was seven, it hurt like hell at eleven, and even drew a few silent tears at thirteen. At nineteen, it causes almost no pain at all.
I smirk at her, enjoying the way her face turns a deep, mottled red when she still doesn’t get a rise out of me. Turning my back on her, I walk out. I close the door calmly behind me, though I’d really love to give it a good slam.
Archer gives another honk when he sees me, and Cash tries to hurry me along with a wave of his hand. I take a deep breath in, hold it, and blow it out, trying to slow my pounding heart. I try to block out her words, but they’re like poison, spreading through my system at an alarming rate.
I hop in the front seat and slam the door shut behind me.
Archer takes one look at my face and narrows his eyes in my direction. “Dude, you good?”
“Fine. Just drive.”
Chapter 10
Sloane
The sand burns my feet in the spots where it overflows the edges of my flip-flops. My eyes scan the beach for the one person I’ve been simultaneously looking forward to seeing and avoiding at the same time.
I’ve imagined the scene that would take place when we ran into each other again so many times I’ve lost count. In scenario one, he suggests I check into an insane asylum because I’m clearly mentally unstable. In scenario two, he tells me to get lost, he’s not interested in dealing with my flavor of crazy if he’s not going to get laid out of the deal. Or there’s my favorite, scenario three, in which he does the gentlemanly thing and pretends that I didn’t sprint out of his house for absolutely no reason at all.
The worst possible thing he could do would be to ask for an explanation. I’d have to lie to him, because there is no way I’d be telling him the mortifyingly embarrassing truth—that in the midst of our completely platonic encounter, when he’d been doing me the favor of not letting me walk out of the house with egg stuck in my hair, I’d nearly thrown my arms around his neck and devoured his mouth with mine.
Attraction is one thing, but acting on it? No. Not ever. No way in hell.
Rummaging through my bag, my hand latches onto the strap of my camera, and I tug it up from the bottom. My mind has been so consumed with Luke that I’ve been slacking on my picture taking. It’s time to rectify that situation. “Blaire! Say cheese.”
I grin behind the lens as she pivots on one heel and strikes a pose. The camera loves her almost as much as she loves it. After the shutter clicks, she drops her things and leaps toward me.
“Now both of us,” she demands.
I oblige, holding the camera out at arm’s length while she sandwiches her cheek up against mine. The first one is straight-up smiles, but it devolves from there¸ morphing into funny faces and crazy expressions. I’m just snapping a picture of us using long chunks of our hair to create fake mustaches when someone calls my name.
“Sloane!” A small sandy body collides with my legs, nearly taking me out with him. Blaire grabs me by the shoulder to keep me from toppling over.
I smile down at the tousled mop of brown hair. “Hi, Cash.”
Blaire tilts her head in question, and I mouth back to her, “Luke’s brother.”
She raises her eyebrows at me. Somehow the idea of Luke having a little brother must seem unexpected to her too.
Releasing his death grip from around my legs, he shields his eyes to look up at me. They’re the same pale blue as his brother’s. “You wanna come sit with us?”
I glance over his head to where Luke is sprawled out in a beach chair. His feet are buried in the sand, and I think he might be asleep from the way his head is rolled off to the side.
I look at Blaire and she shrugs, leaving it up to me. Having the two of them around might be the perfect distraction to any type of awkward conversation with Luke. “I’ll tell you what. I’ll come sit with you two if you’ll smile for a picture.”
“Okay!” He bounces up and down like a kangaroo on drugs.
Lifting up my camera, he scrunches his face up in a silly smile. As soon as the shutter clicks, he’s grabbing my hand and dragging me in the direction of their stuff. Blaire picks up my discarded bag and brings it along with her.
I fluff my towel out to the right of Luke, and Blaire does the same next to me. He’s definitely out and he’s snoring too. I strip off my cover-up and readjust the bottom of my chevron-print bikini. Cash takes off after another boy down the beach, ducking as he gets a Super Soaker leveled at his head.
Blaire’s standing next to me, staring. She just grins. “What? There’s no law against looking.”
Since he’s asleep, I allow myself to peek at him. There’s no harm in looking, right? His hair is mussed as always, in a perpetual state of bed head, and there’s a hint of stubble along his strong jaw. Those baby blues are hidden for the moment, but his long, almost feminine eyelashes rest against his cheeks. His bathing suit rides low across his hips, showing off a set of fairly impressive abs that is more lean than overly defined. I especially appreciate the V indentation that trails around his hips and then disappears into the waistband of his bathing suit.
Blaire’s waiting for my reaction, an
d I give her a playful shove. “I never said he wasn’t gorgeous.”
“Just wanted to hear you say it.”
Lying down on my towel, I pop in my earbuds, which may be one of the most uncomfortable things on the planet. They’re like little torture devices for my ear canals. The sun is blazing today, but I love the way it seems to heat my skin from the inside out. As the rays caress my skin, I drift off into a heat-induced coma.
When a rogue cloud covers me up, it’s like the temperature drops ten degrees and I’m instantly awake. This particular cloud seems to be lingering. A lone drop of water splashes against my thigh, and I pry open one eye and squint upward. Everything around me has a slight blue hue to it from having my eyeballs baked, but even with the color issues, I can still make out Luke towering above me.
His lips move, but the only thing I can hear is Jimmy Eat World. I tug the earbuds out by the wires. “What?”
“Don’t take this the wrong way,” he says, wrapping his long fingers around his hips. “But what are you doing here?”
“It’s the beach.” In the periphery of my vision, I catch Blaire peering at us through partially closed eyelids, and I spy one of her earbuds laying on her towel. Snoop.
“Not here,” he waves around him. “Here. Next to me.”
Ah, so we’re going with scenario number two, the one where he’s done with whatever weird friendship we’ve got going on since it doesn’t come with any obvious perks. Although, as I glance around, I see more than one girl tossing curious and even some jealous looks in our direction. Maybe it’s not so much that he’s angry at me for bailing, as that he’s annoyed at me for cramping his style. I shove myself up to my feet, bending over to pick up my towel. “It’s fine; I’ll go. I’m sorry my presence here has prevented you from getting laid in the last hour.”
By this time Blaire’s given up all pretenses of being asleep and is watching us openly as she leans back on her elbows. She shakes her head slowly back and forth at me.
Okay, I did it again, but he started it. So much for a truce.
When I turn back around, his eyes are throwing daggers at me. Drops of water from his sopping wet hair careen down his neck, taking a bumpy ride down his stomach before disappearing from view.
Out of nowhere, another wet but much smaller body tucks itself into Luke’s side.
“Hey, bud,” Luke says, dropping a hand on his shoulder.
Cash’s eyes zero in on the towel I’m clenching in my hands and then leap up to my face. “Are you leaving? I thought you were going to sit with us for a while.”
In my mind I picture banging my head repeatedly against a wall. How can I say no to him when he’s looking up at me with those sad, hopeful eyes?
Luke trades a look between the two of us, but I dismiss it as I turn around and start arranging my towel on the ground—again.
A gritty hand tugs at my arm. “You wanna come in with us, Sloane?”
I’d rather get eaten alive by rats than step one toe in that ocean. God knows why, but I’ve always been terrified of it. I think it may be because it’s so big and open, vast and unpredictable. That, and the sharks, of course.
Blaire finally deigns to join the conversation. “There’s no way you’re going to get Sloane in that water. She’s a big fat chicken.”
She tucks her hands in her armpits and makes clucking noises in Cash’s direction, which makes him giggle. I dare to glance at Luke and am not surprised to see him smirking.
“You’re afraid of the ocean?” Luke asks.
I open my mouth to say something, anything, but the only thing that manages to squeak its way through is “Yes.”
My face is burning and it’s not from the sun.
Cash grins at me, his cheeks bunching up like a chipmunk’s. “When I was really little, I used to be scared of the ocean, too.” He’s giving me this serious expression that has no place on his innocent face. “But Luke told me that it’s always important to face my fears. He let me hang on his back until I wasn’t afraid anymore.”
I now know three things for certain about Luke Evans, only one of which I expected. He’s a manwhore, he has a seriously complicated relationship with his mother, and he flat out loves his little brother.
My stomach drops out at Cash’s next comment. “Luke, will you let Sloane hang on your back so she won’t be afraid of the ocean anymore?”
I look at Blaire and I think she might explode from trying to contain her laughter. If nothing else, she’s going to bite clean through her lip from the way she’s clenching it between her teeth.
He folds his arms across his chest, making his muscles bunch. “I don’t know, little man. I think Sloane might be too big of a chicken even with my help.”
He throws down the gauntlet, and I have no choice but to pick it back up.
I fling my earbuds onto my towel with more force than is absolutely necessary, and they thwap against the cloth surface. “Fine, let’s go.”
Shock is written all over Blaire’s face, and her mouth hangs unbecomingly open. In my entire eighteen years of life, I have not once come within three feet of the ocean, and she knows it.
Cash squeals with glee and dashes off toward the water, but when Blaire goes to say something, I cut her off. “Don’t you say a word. Not one word, Blaire.”
She throws up her hands and backs away in surrender before jogging her way into the water and skipping over the waves.
Luke’s waiting for me at the point where the tiniest waves finally peter out and retreat backward. The sand is saturated and gives way beneath my feet, my footprints appearing and disappearing almost instantly. I want to curl my toes into the solid earth and never leave.
He looks at me. “Well, are we doing this, or what?”
I choke down my anger. There’s just something about him that draws it straight out of me. But at least if I’m angry, there isn’t room for me to be feeling anything else. “You’re going to have to bend down a little. Unlike you, I’m not a Sasquatch.”
He chuckles but complies and bends down. Wrapping my arms around his neck, he hugs my legs underneath my thighs and shifts me into a comfortable position. I fold my legs across his middle, locking them at the ankles.
As he takes one step toward the water, I lean forward and whisper in his ear. “I swear to God, Evans, if you drop me in this water, I will kill you.”
Chapter 11
Luke
If it’s not bad enough that I’ve got a half-naked Sloane wrapped around me, her hot breath on my ear as she whispers to me sends jolts straight southward. I haven’t decided yet whether I want to kill her or strip her naked, lay her on the sand, and make her scream my name.
Who am I kidding? That’s not even a choice.
I’m still kicking myself for practically telling her to get lost. It was such a surprise to see her there after I’d been half-heartedly avoiding her for the past few weeks. It wasn’t bad enough that she saw my crummy house and made breakfast in my shitty kitchen. No, in the space of an hour she’d whipped out her shovel and unearthed nearly all my dirty secrets. She’d even gotten me to admit that I use sex as a Band-Aid, as my twisted way to hide from my problems. Embarrassed doesn’t even begin to cover it. Add onto that my recent run-in with Evelyn, and my mood is all over the place.
I take another few steps forward, and the waves surge around my hips. She tightens her grip on my neck. If she squeezes any harder she’s going to strangle me to death.
“Sloane, ease up a little would you?” I can just make out her arms as they form a noose around my neck. They’re covered in goose bumps. And now that I’m really paying attention, I can feel her breathing, her stomach moving in and out against my back like she’s hyperventilating.
She’s freaking out. Silently, maybe, but I can feel her unraveling.
We’re out past the break now, but I’m tall enough that I can still stand. “Hey, relax; loosen your legs a little.”
She does the exact opposite, and it takes more strengt
h than I’m willing to admit to pry them off. With a struggle, I’m able to rotate her so that we’re face-to-face, and her legs immediately clamp back around me like a vice.
Sloane’s having a nervous breakdown, but with the way she’s wrapped around me, I’m still turned on. I squeeze my eyes shut and do some long division in my head.
She’s trembling, but I can’t tell if it’s because she’s afraid or if she’s cold. Probably both. Her breathing is still fairly even, but fast. I’ve got my fingers splayed on either side of her rib cage, keeping her close.
“Sloane.”
Nothing.
“Sloane,” I say a little more forcefully.
Her eyes blink open and they’re mere inches from mine. The sense of drowning comes back to me when I look into them. There’s barely restrained panic in her eyes.
“I’ve got you. I’m not going to let you go.”
A deep shuddering breath works its way through her.
“Promise?”
“I promise.”
She takes me off guard when she lets her head slump forward until her forehead is resting flush with mine. For the first time in I-can’t-remember-when, I’m not thinking about kissing her, even though our breaths mingle together. There isn’t lust surging through my body, and she’s not groping me like a madwoman. For this brief moment in time, it feels like she needs me. Me, Luke Evans. And it feels … nice.
That scares the ever-loving shit out of me.
I give it a few more minutes, just long enough for her to prove a point, before I make my way back to shore. As I step out of the water, I can feel the tension drain from her body. She slides down me, slick skin against slick skin, and I’d probably have to call up another math problem were it not for the look she’s leveling at me. There’s so much raw vulnerability there it’s like she’s showing me a piece of her soul. I’m not sure I’m worthy of it, but something about her makes me want to be.
“Thanks,” she says, swallowing hard.
