by Skye Jordan
“Well, shit.” The words roll out of me on a wave of laughter.
Once I start, I can’t stop, and I’m doubled over when her head pops above the surface again. “What the hell”—she sucks air—“is wrong with you?”
My gut muscles release, and it takes me a second to catch my breath. “Damn, that’s the funniest thing I’ve seen in a long time.” I straighten with a smile that just won’t quit. “I warned you, but, then, you never did listen.”
She treads water in a circle, looking for an exit, but I can see there’s no easy way for her to get out of the water short of swimming several hundred yards to a shallower section of the lake.
I toss out the ski rope. “Grab on. I’ll tow you to the beach.”
“You couldn’t even give me a hand?”
“Wouldn’t want to drop my beer.” I sit and stretch out my legs and prop them on the side of the boat, ankles crossed. I take a long pull from the bottle, watching the best entertainment I’ve had since my partner and best friend since kindergarten, Mitch Fielding, fell into a sink hole near one of our developments and was stuck there for hours. “You sure don’t need my help. You’ve always had mermaid in your DNA.”
Laiyla had won every swimming and breath-holding competition ever held at the lake in our younger years.
“Prick,” she mutters without any heat, reaching for the rope.
“Still sassy, I see. Thought the corporate ladder would numb you out.”
She doesn’t wait for me to reel her in, she does that herself, hand over hand until she drags her butt to the swim platform at the back of the boat, facing away from me. “I lost one of my boots, and they were freaking expensive. Goddammit.”
The water has turned her long hair, golden on top and darker underneath, almost black. It’s not as long as it used to be, but it still stretches past her toned, tanned shoulders and collects in a V between her shoulder blades. A rivulet of water trails from the bottom of the V and slides down her spine and beneath the edge of her blouse as she catches her breath.
It’s the same path my lips traveled once upon a time.
She drags off her other boot then her socks and pushes them into the lone boot.
“Are you going to sell this place?” I ask, studying the way her blouse—if you could call it that—had gone transparent, showing the rich tone of her olive-tinted skin through the fabric. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t looking forward to the flip side of this view. “Because I’d like to be first on the list to buy it.”
“You?” She glances over her shoulder, all attitude. “How could you possibly afford a place like this?
“I’ve been mowing a lot of lawns since you’ve been gone, and I guess I could cut back on beer.”
That gets a laugh, but she turns away, so I miss the smile. And I’m dying to see her smile.
“I’m not sure what I’m doing,” she says. “I’ll have to talk to my people.”
I snort a laugh. “Listen to you—your people.”
She doesn’t take the bait.
“Everyone in town wants to know what you’re gonna do with this place. And I, for one, have been wondering why it’s taken you so long to decide. Because in the meantime”—I use my bottle to gesture to the slowly disintegrating marina and its neglected houseboats—“it’s rotting away. I gotta tell you, this would cause Otto real heartache.”
“You think I don’t know that?” Her snap draws my gaze back to her face, on full display with her wet hair swept back.
I’ve seen a few pictures of her over the years. I sometimes went in search of them if I was feeling melancholy, usually when yet another relationship blew up in my face, or when nostalgia hit me.
She didn’t have much of a social media presence, and all I’d been able to find were a few professional headshots on the Saxon Hotels website sitting above a description of whatever position she held at the time. It was all so cold and sterile, so utterly unlike the woman I’d loved, that I finally stopped looking.
Last I read, which was about two years ago, she’d been the chief operating officer of the western hemisphere for Saxon Hotels.
But in person, she is even more gorgeous than I remember. Man, why couldn’t she pale in comparison to my fantasies? Now, her warm eyes flash with emotion, and her face shifts with micro expressions that pull me in and hold me captive. In person, she takes up space inside me. I can’t quite figure out where, but she’s in here. Only now, staring at her sitting on the end of my boat where she spent so many unforgettable summers, am I aware that she never really left.
“I have no idea what you know or don’t know,” I say, trying to keep my tone indifferent. “I know so little about who you are now, I wouldn’t begin to presume I could guess.”
“Presume?” she turns a little more, bending the leg closest to the boat and exposing the smooth, tan length of her inner thigh. I’ve kissed that path too. Something I sure as shit don’t need to see or remember. “Who the hell are you?”
“How long are you in town?”
“A week. I’m meeting some girlfriends for a getaway.” She glances toward the parking lot where her car, a silver BMW coupe, sits, so obviously out of place. “Can you take me back to the lot? Judging by the state of the marina, I’m going to have some cleanup to do at the house before my friends get here.”
I’m confused. “House? What house?”
She gives me a what-house-do-you-think look. “Grandpa’s house.”
My mouth opens, but nothing comes out.
“If you’re not going to drop me, I’ll swim. Just let me know so I can get going.”
I lower my feet and lean forward.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” she wants to know.
All the fun and games drain out of me, and my heart takes on weight. “Are you serious right now?”
She pushes to her feet and releases a frustrated exhale. When she turns to climb over the edge and into the boat, I get one long exquisite look at her, clothes clinging to her dripping-wet body, and all my brains fall to my feet.
Curves, curves, and more curves. Way more than I remember. Her breasts are full and heavy, her stomach flat and toned, her waist small and tight. And water is still streaming down those legs that always did go on for-fucking-ever.
“You look pretty good yourself, Asher.” She reaches out and shuts my mouth with a hand under my chin. “Now please take me back. I’ve got to get going.”
“I just want to get this straight,” I say. “You’re planning to stay at Otto’s house, the log cabin, the same one you used to stay in during the summer.”
“Is there another house that I don’t know about?”
She’s not being snide, she’s serious, and I’m getting a really uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach. “Didn’t you talk to Dan Artega about the house?”
Her eyes narrow, and she crosses her arms over her middle. “You’re freaking me out. Stop it.”
“Laiyla, the house is gone.”
“What do you mean gone?”
“Have you been living under a rock for the last three years? You own this land, how could you not know what happens on it?” Anger I didn’t realize I’d been harboring explodes, and I push to my feet. “That was two years ago. That log cabin you said you loved so much has been sitting at the bottom of a mudslide for two fucking years.” I swing my arm toward the marina. “This place has been rotting away. What was so fucking important in LA that you couldn’t tend to a place you always said brought you so much happiness?”
Only right then do I admit to myself that when Otto died and I learned he’d willed Laiyla the property, I’d hoped she would come home. Only right then do I realize that her abandoning this property echoed the abandonment I felt when she left for Paris instead of coming back to me.
Her expression takes on an edge I can’t quite read before she leans forward and gets right in my face. “Don’t you dare assume to know what my life is like. I didn’t come back because I knew Grandpa wouldn’
t be here. I haven’t gotten over losing him, and coming here was just too overwhelming for me to face, okay? Are you happy?”
I clench my teeth, caught between anger at her and anger at myself. And she’s so close, those bright whiskey-colored eyes snapping with pain and anger. I want to do things I shouldn’t, like feel her body against mine, sink into those lips, fall asleep with her head on my shoulder. Luckily, she turns her back on me before my stupidity can win.
She stands in the center of the boat, arms crossed, head down.
“Did you hire Dan Artega to watch over this place or not?” I ask.
It takes her a minute to answer, and when she does, her voice is raw. “My dad did.” She straightens and faces me, and the tears in her eyes make me feel like a royal ass. “Please take me to my car. I need to go see it.”
“The slide took out the road. You can’t get to it that way.”
She drops her face into her hands. “Fuck.”
I roll my eyes, drop into the seat, and crank the engine. “You can see it from the water.”
I steer the boat toward the cove where her grandfather’s home used to be. She stands behind me, and I can feel her there even though she’s probably not close enough to touch. When I near the shallow cove, I shut down the engine and let the boat drift around a corner until the devastated home comes into view.
Laiyla’s gasp is immediate. I don’t dare look back, not sure I could handle the pain I fear is on her face.
She lets her air out in a sharp exhale, and a wrenched sound fills the air behind me, one so deep and authentic, it makes my gut ache. There’s no way in hell I’m getting out of this unscathed, because I can’t just sit here and let her hurt, no matter how badly she let me hurt all those years ago.
Her hands hit the back of my chair, her nails skimming lightly against my back, and gooseflesh rises along my spine.
When I look over my shoulder, she’s got her arms straight, her head lowered between her biceps, like she can’t breathe.
“Oh my God,” she murmurs, barely audible. “Oh my God.”
And then she starts to cry. And fuck me to hell and back, the sight and sound rake my heart with knives. Even as I stand and turn, I’m telling myself what a fucking idiot I am. What a fucking idiot I’ve always been when it comes to Laiyla.
“Hey,” I say, taking her arm to turn her toward me. That’s all it takes for her to close the distance between us, slide her arms around my body, and lean against me.
Feeling her in my arms again: check.
And holy mother of God, this wasn’t just a stupid idea, it wasn’t just dangerous, it was fucking lethal. She’s soaking wet, her clothes clinging to her like Saran Wrap, and I’m shirtless. While her body is cold from the water, mine is burning hot, and I swear we sizzle when our bodies meet. Fuck me to hell and back, she fits perfectly against me, the way she always did.
And just like that, some lock pops open inside me, and all my old feelings for her flood back in. I’m suddenly and intensely aware of every pain in my body, mostly centered around my heart, the rest around my dick. In fact, now that my mind has gone there, I realize I’m getting hard, and that hasn’t happened this quick in, God, years.
I mentally fight old walls back into place, but her hot tears hit my skin, and she’s shivering in my arms. Fucking shivering.
“I’ll get you a towel—”
She releases me before I can and steps away, both hands wiping her cheeks. I immediately feel the loss, and I’m beating myself up for allowing this to happen. She’s in town less than a fucking day, and I’m already aching for her. This was nowhere in my carefully constructed plans to handle her if she ever returned.
“No, I’m fine. I’m sorry. That wasn’t… That was…” She shakes her head and finally meets my gaze. Her eyes are a subdued shade of amber now and shimmering with tears. “What happened?”
I clench my teeth, call myself twelve kinds of stupid, and drop to a seat on the bench. “You remember the wolf fire?”
She nods.
“And then all the rain after?”
She exhales and closes her eyes.
Honking comes from the direction of the parking lot.
“Sounds like your people are here.” I steer the boat back that direction, both disappointed our time together is over and thrilled to get the fuck away from her.
When we come into view of the parking lot, a red convertible Mazda Miata rolls to a stop beside Laiyla’s car. The woman behind the wheel is honking obnoxiously; another is sitting on the headrest of the passenger’s seat, waving with both arms.
I angle toward another dock in the marina that looks more stable than the one that collapsed under her feet.
“Laiyla!” they scream in unison.
A smile finally turns her mouth, but it’s sad and tired. She lifts her arm to wave back.
I draw the boat to a stop at the end of a worn deck.
“Hey,” she says, her voice and her gaze soft, exposing the girl I’d once loved more than life. “Thank you.”
I acknowledge with a chin lift. “I meant what I said about this place. Offer to me first, okay?”
She’s clearly skeptical, but she nods. By the time the other women run down the dock toward Laiyla, I’m a hundred yards off the pier and watch as the two women throw themselves at her, enveloping all three of them in a hug so strong, they stumble toward the lake, stopping just before they all end up in the water.
3
Laiyla
Joy floods me as I hug KT and Chloe back hard. “Oh my God, it’s so good to see you two.”
Over the last seven years, we’ve texted, emailed, spoken on the phone, and done a few video chats, but our schedules were all over the map—literally. We all seemed to be in different countries. My and KT’s schedules were the hardest to work around, but we all made sacrifices to make sure we were together for our thirtieth birthdays, anniversary number seven of the cyclone that brought us together.
And now all my plans for a relaxing country getaway have been ruined.
“Looks like you went overboard,” KT says, taking in my wet hair and clothes.
“I was on that pier, and it collapsed under me.”
“Fun times.” Her gaze strays to the lake and Levi’s boat, now headed the other direction. “Who was that hot hunk of man?”
“He’s just a local,” I lie. Levi could never be just anything. “He picked me up, so I didn’t have to swim so far.”
Chloe and KT look out at the lake, both wearing big smiles.
“This place is amazing,” Chloe says.
“Gorgeous,” KT agrees.
“Yeah, about that… I’ve got some bad news.” The words bring back the shock of losing Grandpa’s house, all the memories it held now buried under tons of dirt. It cuts deep, and I know it will take a long time to heal that wound. I’m also embarrassed as hell that I talked this place up only to have it turn out to be little more than a dive. “I just found out that my grandpa’s house, the one we were going to stay in, was demolished by a mud slide a couple of years ago.”
Their pretty faces go slack with shock, then tight with concern. “Oh, no.”
I laugh at the way we all still seem to say the same things at the same time, but the effort hurts. “I was really looking forward to being on the lake, but I guess we’ll have to get a hotel. Or we could do something totally different, like hit Santa Barbara and stay on the beach.”
KT hooks a thumb at the Marina behind us. “Are these your grandfather’s houseboats?”
“They are.”
“Can’t we just stay here?”
Chloe’s face lights up. “I love that idea.”
“Oh, wow, I don’t know,” I say. “This place has really gone downhill since my grandpa passed. It used to be so amazing.”
And I’m so disappointed I won’t be able to show them what it was really like, how magical this place could be when it was running at full capacity.
“I’ve seen worse.” KT
prowls the dock, peeking into the window of a houseboat. “And I’ve been sharing seventy square feet of living space for almost a decade. One of these would feel like a mansion.”
“I’ve been sleeping on a cot in a silent monastery for the last two months. So, this feels luxurious to me too.”
“A what?” KT and I say at the same time.
“Long story.” She claps and bounces on her flip-flop-clad toes. “Let’s pick. Are any big enough for all of us?”
I let out a long exhale. Squeezing into one of these boats wasn’t what I had in mind. “If you’re sure this is where you want to stay, I’ll call the guy who’s supposedly been taking care of this place—not—and see if he knows more about the boats.”
KT and Chloe insist, so I call Mr. Artega, who says he’ll be here in fifteen minutes. I’m tempted to call my parents and dig into them, too, but I save that for later, when I get a minute to myself. I’ve experienced enough humiliation for one day.
I join KT and Chloe in the car they rented after meeting at SFO. They’ve opened a pint of Ben and Jerry’s Chunky Monkey—they evidently stopped at a store in town before coming here—and KT hands me a plastic spoon from where she’s stretched out in the back seat.
I scoop up a spoonful from the offered pint, then relax into the passenger’s seat, suddenly exhausted from all the stress I’ve endured in such a short amount of time. My gaze scans the lake, and I tell myself I’m not looking for Levi. Another rush of mortification swims through my veins. Serves me right for trying to fake bravado instead of just being a normal person. I just…I wasn’t expecting to see him, wasn’t expecting him to be centerfold-worthy, wasn’t expecting to be hit with the news of Grandpa’s house.
“How were your flights?” I ask, eager to distract myself from the discomfort.
“Good,” they say at the same time.
“I’m tired, though.” KT licks her spoon and looks at Chloe. “You must be too. Where in the hell were you? I can’t keep track.”
“Tibet,” she says as if it weren’t somewhere exotic where most people have never been. “Where did you get off your ship?”
