by Ember Casey
“What are you doing?” I say. “I’m fine! Put me down!”
“No, you haven’t changed at all,” he murmurs again, more to himself than to me.
“Neither have you,” I throw right back at him. I’m tempted to wiggle out of his arms, but I know that any stubbornness right now will only make me look more foolish. My ankle is throbbing, and limping my way back to the party won’t save me any pride.
Dante’s chest feels so hot against my damp skin—too hot. His grip is firm, but I feel anything but secure in his arms—I’m all too aware of his hand against my waist, and of the other against the bare skin of my leg. I wish I’d worn a longer dress. Or that my dress weren’t sopping wet and clinging to my skin, making my nerves that much more aware of his heat. A quiver runs through me.
“Are you cold?” he asks, his voice rough, intimate. I don’t care about the pain in my ankle—it’s far more dangerous to stay in his arms.
“I’m okay,” I say. “You can put me down.” We’re halfway up the beach now, and I can only imagine how the scene will play out if we go back into his party like this, with me wet in his arms.
“I’m not letting you hurt yourself,” he says, clearly amused. “What, are you afraid your boyfriend’s going to be upset?” There’s a dark edge to his voice.
Annoyance flares through me, sharp and bright. “Won’t Emilia be upset?”
“Emilia isn’t here. And if she were, it wouldn’t matter. I’ve already told you that what happened between us meant nothing.”
“Would she say the same thing?”
“Yes, actually. She would.”
I don’t believe him—though a small, traitorous part of me wishes I could.
“Just put me down,” I say, pushing at his chest, suddenly desperate to be away from him. “I just need to sit for a while and my ankle will be fine. I’m not ready to go back.”
He slows, then stops. “Well, I certainly won’t force you to return.” But I can sense his displeasure as he sets me gingerly on my feet.
“Thank you,” I say, trying to hide a wince as I accidentally put a little too much weight on my ankle. “Goodnight.” I don’t wait for him to leave before settling down on the sand—the pain shooting up my leg leaves me little choice. On another night, I might have worried about the sand ruining my dress, but it’s too late for such concerns now.
A moment later, Dante settles himself down beside me.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“I’m not ready to go back to the party either,” he says.
“It’s your party,” I remind him again.
“And most of the people in there are used to my parties by now. They know not to expect to see much of me.”
I stare out at the dark surface of the sea as I consider this, tightening my arms around myself. And then I feel a weight coming down on my shoulders—his suit jacket.
“Don’t argue,” he says when I start to do just that. “You need it more than I do.”
He’s right, and I’m too cold and wet and miserable to argue. I pull the jacket closer, covering myself. I dig my toes into the sand and wait for him to speak. He’s the one who insisted on staying with me—let him come up with something to say. I’m too busy trying to figure out how to extricate myself from this interaction gracefully.
“It’s been a long time since we sat out here together,” he muses finally.
The comment is casual enough on the surface, but I know better. He’s thinking of the first night he brought me down here. The first night anything happened between us. We were two weeks into our project. We still hardly knew each other, and I was only just starting to realize that he wasn’t the man I’d assumed him to be. But that day was the anniversary of my parents’ death—something I never speak about with anyone ever—and I was still dealing with the lingering threads of my grief. Combine that with the stress of going through the most intense film studies program in the country, and I was on the verge of falling apart.
Dante didn’t know much about me, not then. But he must have seen something in my expression that night, because halfway through our study session, he abruptly stood up and held out his hand.
“I think it’s time for a break,” he said. “Come with me.”
I didn’t hesitate. I hardly knew him, but something about the look in those dark eyes made me trust him. Made me want to open myself to him. I gripped his fingers without a second thought. Suddenly, he wasn’t just Dante Fontaine, the celebrity, or the privileged partner I had to endure for a project. He was my lifeline.
He led me down to the beach behind his house. It was just after sunset, and the sky was dark red over the waters of the Pacific. Twilight was coming on fast, and there were only a few lingering gulls in the sky overhead as we walked down toward the water. The tide was rolling in, but the waves weren’t particularly rough on that small stretch of beach.
My fingers were still caught in his. It should have felt strange and too intimate—after all, I hardly knew him—but instead it felt natural. Safe.
“I know people who pay hundreds of dollars to sit in a spa and listen to recordings of ocean sounds,” he said. “But the real thing is much better.”
His house was close enough to the ocean that you could hear the waves through the open windows, but he was right—it was different, better, to be standing there with the sand beneath my feet and the breeze tickling my face and the endless water stretching in front of me, reminding me of how great and wide the world was.
We didn’t say another word to each other as we walked down to the waves. I was wearing shorts, and he was wearing light-colored pants that he rolled up to his knees. We sat next to each other right where the surf met the sand, and every time a wave rolled in, the water would rush around our feet and calves.
My heart was heavy, my head and throat aching. As the tide came in and the water swept higher and higher up our legs, I knew I should say something. Knew I should explain to this near stranger why I was behaving so oddly, why we were sitting fully clothed in the waves. The twilight was stretching on, the sky getting darker, and I watched the lights of ships blink across the miles of water in front of us.
The next wave came in all the way to my hips, completely soaking my shorts. Dante’s pants were wet, too—and they probably cost ten times more than anything I was wearing. The guilt that came with that thought was the final straw—I couldn’t stay silent any longer.
“My parents died five years ago on this day,” I blurted. And though I’d managed to keep myself calm all afternoon, saying it out loud finally broke my restraint. The tears spilled down my cheeks—silent tears, but that didn’t make them any less embarrassing. And once the floodgates were open, I couldn’t keep the rest of my emotions from rushing out, either.
“I know I should be past this,” I said, “but I’m not. And the older I get, the more I’m afraid I’ll never be. They were all I had. I don’t have any extended family. They were it. And now I’m alone, and I’m not supposed to be alone this young. I’m not supposed to be alone.”
I knew I was saying too much, dumping my problems on a stranger who couldn’t understand—who probably didn’t even care—but I couldn’t help myself. Embarrassed, I fell back against the sand, not even caring that my shirt and hair would probably end up as wet as my shorts.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, closing my eyes. “I think I just needed to get that out.” The tears were still falling, but it was dark and I prayed that he couldn’t see.
I didn’t hear him move—the crash of the surf drowned out everything else. But suddenly his fingers touched my cheek, and I jumped at the contact.
“There’s nothing to apologize for,” he said. His thumb moved slightly, and the pads of his fingers brushed against my tears. “And you’re not alone. Not right now.”
My chest tightened. “We hardly know each other. We’re just project partners.” We’d never spoken a word to each other before we started working together.
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��We all have to start somewhere,” he replied—though his words were almost lost beneath the sound of the next wave rushing in. This one came up all the way to my ears, and I gasped as the foam tickled them.
Dante’s hand was still curled around my cheek, and it felt warm and unbearably tender.
“You’re going to drown if you stay like that,” he murmured, but there was a touch of amusement in his voice.
“It would be a very peaceful way to go,” I answered. “Or maybe I’ve just read The Awakening too many times.”
“I haven’t read that one,” he replied.
“You should. It’s by Kate Chopin.”
“I’ll give it a try.”
Another wave came in, but it only made it as far as my shoulders before rolling out again. I spread my hand against the sand beside me.
“Don’t worry,” I told him. “When the water comes in I’ll just float.”
“I’ll have to take your word for that.”
“You were right,” I said, matching the lightness of his tone. “The ocean is very calming.”
I could feel him smile in the darkness. Suddenly he lifted his hand away from my face—and the shock of losing that touch was almost too much. I’d scoffed when he’d suggested that I wasn’t alone—that his presence, the presence of a man who I’d only so recently met, could even remotely compare to what I’d lost—but the rush of loneliness I felt when we were no longer touching was startling..
But the loneliness didn’t last long. Dante stretched out in the sand next to me, lying down in the surf at my side. When the next wave came in, rushing in up to the base of my neck, he let out a laugh.
It was the first time I ever heard him laugh—one of the few times I’d ever hear him laugh—and though I didn’t realize then how rare that sound was, it still shook me to my very core. And then his hand found mine beneath the water, his fingers threading through mine as the foam ran back down our bodies. Dante had everything I didn’t—all the money he could ever need, a career full of potential, and a huge family—and yet somehow I felt like he might understand me, like he might know the anguish in my heart.
When the next wave came, cool and foamy around our bodies, I squeezed his fingers. The water swept up my legs, my sides. Kissed the back of my neck and the base of my scalp. We only had a few minutes before the water would be too high for us to stay, but I wasn’t willing to move. Not yet. I just closed my eyes and waited for the next rush.
Two more waves swept over us, and then the next one rose all the way to my ears. I knew we needed to move, needed to sit up before the tide really did drown us, but I was frozen in place, lost in the sensation of the sand and the water and Dante’s sure hand in mine.
When the next wave came, I felt Dante sit up beside me, and my belly sank when I realized that our little moment was ending. But he didn’t pull his hand out of mine. And before I could move, before I could even open my eyes again, I felt him lean over me, felt his breath on my cheek, and then, just when my own breath caught in my throat, I felt his lips come down on mine.
His mouth was warm, his lips slightly salty from the sea spray. And they felt right, so right, against mine.
I didn’t think. It didn’t matter that he was famous—from a completely different world than me—or that we hardly knew each other. Right then, he was exactly what I wanted. My lips parted beneath his, and my hand rose to catch the back of his neck.
My reaction seemed to break something in him, because suddenly his gentle kiss became more urgent, more demanding. His tongue slipped into my mouth, tasting me, drinking me, and heat coursed through my body. My nerves came alive with desire, with need.
Dante must have felt it, too. His body shifted over mine, pressing me down into the sand. His hand came up and held the side of my face, and his mouth was unrelenting, his lips shifting on mine until he was kissing me closer, deeper than before. My head was light. My body vibrated with longing. The world above me was heat—his heat—and the world below me was the coolness of sand and sea as the next wave came in.
I never wanted to stop kissing him. I would have given myself to him right there, right on the beach—and after clinging to my virginity for twenty-four years, that was saying something. But the ocean had other plans, for the next wave came up too high, splashing over the place where our mouths tangled. Dante tore his face back from mine, and as he sat up, he pulled me up, too—but it was too late. I was coughing, choking on seawater. My nose and throat burned and my eyes watered at the briny invasion.
“Are you all right?” he asked, his hands on either side of my face.
It took me a moment to stop sputtering and coughing, but I finally nodded. “Yes.”
“Good.” And he kissed me again. He tasted like the ocean, and I wanted to throw my arms around him and pick up right where we left off, to sink into that kiss and experience everything that would come after. But his lips only lingered for a moment before pulling back again.
“We really will drown if we stay here,” he said. Already the next wave was rushing around our waists. He was right, but we’d started something then—started something that would never leave me.
Even now, after all this time, that memory still affects me. I can still feel the frightening buzz of that connection we made.
“Why did you invite me here tonight?” I ask him, pulling his coat tighter around me.
He shifts next to me. Though I’m not looking at him, I’m oh-so-aware of every move he makes.
“Have I changed so much that you can’t guess?” he asks, his voice low. “I invited you here for the same reason I showed up at your bakery. Because I wanted to see you.”
And to meet my boyfriend, I think. I may not have a lot of ex-boyfriends—and certainly none who shared the same intimacies Dante and I did—but I recognize the game we’re playing here. Dante was never exactly what I would describe as possessive—he didn’t freak out if I talked to another guy or anything like that—but he’d never needed to be. Even when we were together, we never defined what we were to each other—and for most of our relationship, I never thought we needed to. There was an understanding between us, something neither of us spoke aloud but both seemed to know deep in our bones. We belonged to each other and no one else. I knew it when I looked into his eyes, when I felt his hands in my hair or his lips on my skin. I knew it when he groaned my name in the dark.
But now I have someone new in my life—in theory, anyway—and though Dante might not come out and say it, Jack’s presence is a challenge to the thing we shared, to the energy that still weighs heavy in the air between us. Dante’s invitation tonight is his way of poking at that intrusion, of testing what Jack and I supposedly have between us.
Coming here was a bad idea. Engaging Dante in any way was stupid. But I can’t help it, just like I can’t help the feelings that have come rushing back since being in his presence again.
I’ve stopped shivering. In fact, my body is too heated now, responding to memories I thought I’d buried. I’m suddenly too vividly aware of how long it’s been since the last time I had sex. My body is ravenous. I’ve starved it for too long.
I should get up. Go back to the party. But my ankle is still throbbing, and I tell myself that’s why I can’t seem to find the will to move. In fact, I want nothing more than to lie back and seek the comfort I found in the sand and the surf back then.
Dante seems to share my thoughts. He lies back on the beach beside me with a sigh—a low, deep exhale that makes my stomach twist.
And then I’m lying back too—I’m already wet, so why does it matter?—and we’re side by side on our backs in the sand, just as we were on that night long ago. Only this time the surf is far down the beach, much too far away to interrupt anything.
I can hear him breathing. He’s not touching me, but I can feel the heat of his body. My heart is pounding against my ribs, but the longer we lie here, the more my nerves seem to slip away. It’s cathartic. There’s something unspeakably intimate abou
t this moment, and at the same time, I don’t feel like he expects anything of me. We don’t need to talk. Don’t need to move. Don’t need to think. We’re just stealing a moment away.
Is this what Mama Pat meant about finding closure?
I don’t know how much time passes before I feel the brush of something against the back of my hand. His fingers. Without thinking, I turn my hand, opening it to him, and his fingers lace through mine.
This is wrong! a voice screams in my head. My anger for him is still there, a hard knot in my chest, but somehow it doesn’t matter right now. This feels just as natural as it did that first night, even though miles of hurt and pain and other complicated things stretch between us now.
But God, is it hard to remember why we threw this away. Right now, I feel like that lonely, emotional girl in the waves. If I close my eyes—and I do—it’s as if no time has passed at all.
This time, the touch of his fingers on my cheek isn’t a surprise. It’s hard not to turn my face toward that touch. I can sense him leaning over me, but I refuse to open my eyes. The moment I do, I have to think again, and I’m not ready for that.
One of his fingers drifts over my cheek, tracing the planes of my face from temple to jaw. He’s going to kiss me. I know it in every atom of my body, in every trembling nerve and every beat of my heart.
And I want it. I want to slip away to that moment long ago when nothing mattered but that little bubble of connection. His breath is warm on my skin, richer and softer than the breeze that comes off the ocean. My chin rises, my lips ready to meet his.
“Ash! Are you down here?”
Jack’s voice is like a knife through the energy surging between Dante and me. We both freeze, and my eyes fly open.
“Get off,” I say, suddenly realizing what I was about to do. I push him away from me and scramble to sit up.
“Ash?” Jack calls again. I see his dark silhouette descending the stairs to the beach.
“I’m here!” I call. I try to stand, but the pain in my ankle is still too intense. I bite back a moan as I nearly fall over, but as usual, Dante is there to catch me. Once again, he scoops me up in his arms.
