Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Other books by Victoria Johns
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This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places or events are entirely coincidental. Many are products of the author’s imagination.
Cover design and formatting - Tammy Clarke, The graphics shed – [email protected]
Editing Services – Heather Ross – The Red Pen Editing Services
Proof Reading – Nikki Groom – Indie Hub
Reef ‘Wave’ Bryant
Aged sixteen years old
“Reef, get your butt down here!”
“In a minute, Mom.”
I stood in front of my closet mirror, despising the reflection. No one should have been wearing an all-black suit in California in August. I wasn’t sure how Dean and I were going to get Cody through today.
Dean, Cody and I had lived at the very top of a curved cul-de sac all our lives. Our three houses were slap bang next to each and with only a few months in age between us, we’d pretty much been in each other’s lives ever since. My dad always joked that he thought they’d all been subjected to some lab test or government program, because no kids who weren’t actually related should have been as close as we were. We attended the same kindergartens and schools, aced and flunked the same lessons, and all loved the same hobby.
Surfing.
Hobby was a lame-ass way of putting it; we were obsessed.
It was a way of life, a calling.
Dean, Cody and I ruled the small stretch of water behind our houses and were going to be kings of the ocean someday.
The only way we kept our crap together at school and in classes was the permanent threat that hung over our heads, the only one our dads enforced: poor grades meant no surf time.
That was what happened when you had the ocean on your doorstep and could be paddling your board out straight from your back yard.
The only thing we never agreed on was girls, and that worked well. Having that difference of opinion kept the crew together. We joked about bros before hoes, but each of us knew it was the way of the world. Your brothers were what mattered. Girls would come and go, but you and your brothers were bonded for life.
Cody’s dad had been ill for a while. I’d heard my mom talking with Dean’s mom one day. It had started when a few unexplained bruises appeared, then some other gross symptoms that I didn’t really understand, but then when he started chemo a month or so later, after having some surgery, Dean and I figured it out.
Cancer.
We never said the word in front of Cody; it became an unwritten agreement. His time with us was time away from the pain of his life at home. His dad was seriously ill, and the only thing Dean and I could do was take his mind off it, so we did that by surfing as much as possible.
“What are you doing?” Mom hissed as she opened my bedroom door sharply.
“I don’t know. Do we have to go?”
I tugged at my collar, but it was more than just the tie that strangled me.
“Reef…” My sadness was reflected in her eyes, too. “Cody’s going to need you by his side today. Poor boy.”
She was right; he was burying his dad.
“It’s going to be tough on everyone, but mostly Cody and his mom.” Mom came and stood beside me. At six feet, I was already taller than her and had been shaving for a while. When I stood next to my dad, people joked that we were more like brothers. Thanks to school soccer and surfing I had a physique that caught the attention of all the girls. “I’m so proud of you,” she said, her voice tapering off at the end.
I pulled her into my arms, a rare occasion that she took full advantage of. It wasn’t cool to hug your mom unless you wanted something, and even though she saw through it at those times, she still clung on and made the most of it. I took her weight and let her lean against me as I walked us out of my bedroom. This day was going to be horrible, not just for Cody and his mom, but our families, too. We made sure that every nook and cranny of our lives intertwined which forced our parents to do the same, and while we’d been Cody’s support, our moms looked after his mom, a job that must have been as awful as it was heartbreaking.
More people attended the funeral than I even knew, and as everyone dispersed back to town cars and limos, Cody stood by the side of his dad’s grave, finally letting his emotions free. He’d sucked it up and stood holding his mom’s hand, now the man of the family, a cruel job he’d had forced upon him way before his time.
“How’re you holding up?” Dean asked him from his left flank.
“Fucking numb.”
“Understandable,” I mumbled, stood on his other side, completely lost for the right words that would make it better.
“We’re going away for a while.” Cody unclenched his fists and shoved them in his pants pocket. “Mom needs some time, so we’re going to stay with family in Florida.”
“Fuck.”
“Yeah,” he agreed.
At the time when she needed familiarity and he needed his routine and especially us, his mom was taking him to the opposite side of the country. I didn’t have a good feeling about this, and I wasn’t sure he’d make it with her on his own.
“Any way we can talk her out of it?”
“Doubtful.” Cody sounded resigned to his fate.
“Worth us asking if you can stay here? Neither of our folks wouldn’t bat an eyelid if you came and stayed with us for a bit.”
Cody looked at me seriously. His eyes conveyed that he wanted nothing more than to stay where the world felt normal and usual, even without his dad, but he shook his head. “She needs me. She’s not been coping well.”
That was an understatement.
“We’re gonna stay with my aunt and gran for a bit until mom is back on her feet. Then we’ll come back and carry on.”
This all felt and sounded too final.
“What aren’t you telling us?”
“Gonna get on the road tonight—”
“Tonight?” De
an interrupted as I looked around to see if anyone had seen his outburst. The three of us, stood over an open plot of earth in a cemetery and looked like something from a poorly cast Tarantino film, when in reality, one third of our brotherhood was about to be torn away from us. I spotted our parents all stood waiting with Cody’s mom and it became obvious they knew.
“We’re driving across country. Gonna road trip it and stop off along the way. I don’t know how long we’ll be there. I guess when Mom feels better, we’ll come home.”
“Reef!” My dad shouted. “We need to make a move.”
I waited for Cody to make the first move. His dad was in the box beneath us and I knew if it had been mine, wild horses wouldn’t have been able to drag me away, but as with all things Cody since his dad had got sicker, he accepted it was over, turned and strode away from the grave without a second look.
I looked at Dean.
Dean looked back at me.
The fear and hurt passed between us, without us. Another thing we wouldn’t voice was that we both agreed Cody would struggle. And without him I wasn’t sure we’d be the same either.
He had to come home soon. We could all cope with temporary.
“Wanna go surfing?” Cody stopped and turned around to ask us both.
“What about the wake?”
“There’s enough pity sandwiches and cheese tarts in our kitchen. They’ll still be there later. Besides, it’s Mom they wanna see. I don’t know how long I’ll be away, and I won’t have room to take my board.”
“Surfing it is then.”
Nothing was going to keep us out of the ocean right then. If our friend needed us to grow gills and fins to make his last Cali surf for God knew how long memorable, then we’d do it.
Three hours of rolling on and off waves on the ocean and the sun had started to set as Cody’s mom called him back to the house.
Dean and I made the move to paddle back with him. “Nah, I won’t be long. Wait here for me.”
“Sure?”
“She probably just wants me to say goodbye to some people. You don’t need to see this. Hell, even I don’t wanna see it.”
Dean nodded and floated off to catch a wave that was building.
Cody looked at me, nodded his head sharply and clenched his jaw, before bodyboarding back to the beach.
I sat patiently and waited, while Dean made the most of the surf. “How long do you think it’s been?” he asked.
“Looking at the sun, a while.” My rash vest was bone dry and I could feel my neck starting to smart from the sun, even with sunscreen.
“Feels wrong to still be out here enjoying ourselves when he’s living through hell back there.” I didn’t often want to punch Dean, but this was one of those times. It took hours, but finally, it felt wrong that he was out here riding waves while one of his best friends was living through something unbearable.
I lay flat on my board, dove my hands into the water and cut the waves back to the shore in search of our friend with Dean hot on my heels. We propped the boards against the outdoor shower that Cody’s dad had built at the back of his house and grabbed a towel off a rail. The house was quiet, the party clearly over.
As we walked around the side of the house, both our parents were stood arm in arm on the edge of Cody’s house, waving at a black BMW disappearing out of the junction at the end of our cul-de-sac.
“What’s going on?”
All four of them turned to look at us, unable to hide the sadness of what they knew, but we didn’t.
Unable to face us for a real goodbye, Cody and his mom had already left.
Reef
“What the fuck is that on Cody’s place?”
“Language, son.” My dad peered over the top of his paper before going back to the sports section, and then blindly reached for a glass of orange juice that he nearly swiped over the whole of the breakfast table.
Cody hadn’t returned at the end of summer.
He didn’t come home for Halloween.
Dean and I weren’t holding out much hope for the Christmas holidays either.
Phone calls from him had become less and less frequent, and throughout it all, our parents had less and less information to share. As we felt Cody’s distance, that same space was also felt by our moms.
“Do you have to come to the breakfast table wet, Reef?”
“Is anyone gonna answer? What’s with the realtor sign on Cody’s place?”
Dad finally put his paper down as Mom threw a dish towel at me, and much to her annoyance I ran it across my long, sun-bleached blond hair.
“I think the sign speaks for itself. Cody’s mom just can’t face the memories.”
“This is bullshit!”
My chair toppled over as I stood up.
“Reef! Breakfast!”
I stormed out of the house and headed in the direction of Dean’s. I scowled at the sign as I saw it again, and as was normal with us, I walked straight through the door. “Deano, you seen it?”
“Good morning, Reef. He’s upstairs showering.”
She looked at me, still with half a wetsuit hanging from my middle, and scowled just like my mom. Normally, I’d pass pleasantries and hop about until she found me a towel, but not today. Today… I was pissed.
I burst into his bedroom. “Have you seen the fuckin’ sign?”
“What the fuck, dude?” Dean was draped casually across his bed with his well-thumbed copy of Busted Beauties in front of him. His towel, however, was not casually draped. It was tented in the middle.
“Seriously?” I ignored him. “You’re having a wank right now? It’s breakfast time.”
“Just got some texts from Charmayne, gaggin’ for it. Kinda got me in the mood and I don’t need those texts playing on my mind when I see her at school.”
This was normal for Dean.
Girls and his dick came before anything else.
He’d been dipping his toes in Charmayne Hunt’s waters for some time. She wasn’t head of the cheer squad, but she was a flyer and ever since he’d seen up her skirt when she was doing a pirouette or something in the air, he’d been hard for her.
“You know what happens, dude. I see her, I remember the texts, I then remember how she feels… intimately, and as soon as the teacher shouts ‘Charmayne Hunt’ in home room, I remember that hunt rhymes with—”
“I get it.”
“And I’ve got a boner before I get to biology.”
“There’s something wrong with your fuckin’ biology,” I threw back.
“Hunt rhymes with—” he needlessly continued.
“I said I get it. Have you said that out loud to her? Like you are to me now, which is all kinds of creepy, bro.”
He closed the magazine and shoved it back under his mattress. “Of course. She loves it when Deano goes on the hunt for his c—”
“Stop! No more. Cody’s not coming back.”
Dean stood up and with his back to me, dropped his towel as he hunted for boxers. This, too, was normal behavior for us. Since before we knew our dicks did more than piss, we’d been casual about our nakedness. Climbing in and out of wet suits did that for you. “Yeah, saw the sign go up last night.”
I looked at him and that feeling of violence poked at my senses.
“So, you knew like twelve hours ago and didn’t tell me? And then forgot to mention it when we were just in the water?”
“Yeah. Slipped my mind. Was busy.”
“With?” I snapped.
“Charmayne. Fuck, get over it,” he snapped back. “It’s not like we didn’t see this coming.”
I couldn’t believe this.
“Are you serious?”
Dean was half dressed now. “What do you want me to do? Drive to Florida and drag him back?” When he pulled a t shirt over his head, I knew I’d pissed him off, too. “Life goes on, or it would if you’d stop acting like we’re nine.”
“I thought you’d be a little more fucking bothered that our friend, who needs u
s, needs this place, isn’t coming back.”
Finally, he turned to look at me. “What do you want me to say? He’s there; we’re here. Get over it, Reef.”
I didn’t know whether I hated his attitude more than I hated the fact that he was right.
“End of an era,” I mumbled back.
“It is. See you in twenty.”
I left his room and went home.
By the time we met up to walk to school, whatever spat we’d had was done, although he was still pissed that I’d interrupted his ‘personal time’.
Reef
Nothing changed with Cody’s house for a couple of months. His already few and far between phone calls had become non-existent the minute the sign went up. The last time we’d spoken I got the feeling it was easier for him this way. He needed the separation to be able to rebuild his life without a father and to support his mother, who was definitely still deep in mourning.
Mom assured me he was okay, but she knew how I worried I was and probably wouldn’t have told me anything different anyway.
Dean and I carried on, even though what I’d once thought was a temporary hiatus for the three musketeers was now very permanent. The biggest change was that Dean spent more time with Charmayne, and without Cody I ended up being a third wheel or going things alone. The going it alone thing became appealing when Charmayne’s annoying, whiny friends expected to see me with them. Most guys loved to get hit on by pretty girls and I was no exception, but pretty girls with brains were my preference not the airheads she hung with.
Malia: A Black Sentinels MC Novel Page 1
