by Sami Lee
“I’m saying you’re overthinking it.” Ty met her irritation without a flinch. “Surfing’s more about instinct than thought. You’ve forgotten how to trust what you feel.”
He wasn’t only referring to her lack of success with surfing this afternoon. He was talking about them. His words back at her place echoed through her mind, making her heart seize with a painful mix of joy and hurt. I love you, Summer.
With every cell in her body, she loved him in return. Yet she hadn’t said the words back, afraid that if she let free the emotions they would carry her away. She’d forget to protect herself from the inevitable comedown when they both had to face the fact that love wasn’t enough to keep them together. It wasn’t her feelings she didn’t trust. It was life, and all it was bound to throw at them to tear them apart.
Dragging her gaze away from the intensity in Ty’s, Summer stared back at the ocean. “I need to go in to the smaller waves. These ones are too big.”
Ty scoffed, his benign demeanor slipping. “They’re barely three feet.”
“And I haven’t done this in a long time. I’m not at this level now. You need to treat me like a beginner.”
“You mean treat you like a china doll.” Ty added in a mutter Summer barely heard, “I’ve been doing that all bloody week.”
Summer whipped her head around to face him once more. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means you act like you can’t handle things, but it’s not true.” A wave rolled under them and lifted their boards—Ty’s first, then hers. Ty reached out and grabbed the end of the mini-mal he’d given her years ago, and that he’d kept in his parents’ garage ever since, steadying her with one powerful arm. He pinned her with his gaze. “You can handle these waves. And you can handle me.”
A breeze came off the water, passing over Summer’s wet body. Bikini pants and a rash shirt were not enough protection against the unexpected chill. She clenched her teeth so they wouldn’t chatter, looking back at the waves because the fervor in Ty’s whiskey eyes was too much to take. What had been light blue swell with perfect fluffy white caps a few hours ago was now a mass of dark navy water set against the backdrop of an orange sky. The sun was going to set soon, on the last day she was to spend with Ty—the man she loved but couldn’t keep.
Why had he brought her out here? They were wasting their final hours together bickering about her poor wave-handling skills instead of making love like they should be. Gripped by annoyance once again, Summer resolved, “I’m going back in. You can do whatever you want.”
Ty let out a growl of frustration and gave her board a little shove. “Shit, Summer. You are chicken. Is this how you plan to spend the rest of your life?”
“I’m not talking about the rest of my life. I just don’t want to surf now.”
“Bullshit! You want to stay safe and cozy in the little world you’ve created for yourself without doing anything to rearrange it.”
“Hey, my world might be little compared to yours, but it’s mine. It took me a long time to build it, I can’t just dismantle it because you think I should.”
“Fine, you stay in a cocoon, but I can’t. Good luck, babe.”
With those cruel parting words, Ty paddled off, heading into the next wave like he was going to attack it or something. Summer watched, her chest heaving painfully, as Ty moved in line with the wave. He chose the perfect moment to snap to his feet, moving into the crouching position that was familiar from so many pictures and news reports. The water sluiced off his bare torso, his wet hair slicked back from his face.
He surfed that wave like the pro he was, carving up the whitewater with ease and finesse. When there was nothing left to ride, he dove off his board into the ocean. No ungainly wipeouts for Ty Butler. When his head reappeared, Summer let out a breath she hadn’t been aware of holding. A piece of her heart seemed to fall away when Ty didn’t turn around to look for her, as he had been doing all afternoon.
Tears mingled with the salty spray coming off the ocean. Summer wiped them away in irritation. She was a chicken, a big ol’ wuss who was afraid of everything. She didn’t want to live the rest of her life this way. There had to be something more in her, for her, than this.
Fuelled by frustration and a need to do something, anything, other than sit still, Summer lay prone on the board and paddled toward the next wave. She lined up with it, increasing her pace as the wall of water began to curl. Using the moves Ty had taught her long ago and again this afternoon, Summer held the board in her hands and planted her feet on it.
Dead center, she thought with a burst of satisfaction. She could do this. She’d show Ty, and herself, that she could.
Summer moved into that crouching position, feeling her muscles lock into place as though they remembered the stance from years ago. Her heart thundered but it barely registered over the roar of the surf. Dimly she was aware she wasn’t breathing, but she didn’t care. She could worry about oxygen later. Right now adrenaline was pumping through her like a drug, bringing every nerve ending to life as she soared down the face of the wave.
She was surfing.
The water rushed beneath her feet, the board skimming over it. She moved with the ocean, became a part of it. I remember this. She’d first fallen in love with Ty out here, when he’d shown her how liberating this could be. Summer dared to stand a little straighter as her confidence blossomed. I’m doing it. I’m riding the waves.
She made the mistake of taking her eyes off the foamy water to look for Ty. When she saw him sitting astride his board applauding, her heart soared. She laughed, but in the next moment she felt herself falling. This time she didn’t fight it, though. She’d known the ride wouldn’t last forever. She leaned back and let the ocean enfold her in its arms.
Calm as can be, she floated to the surface, breaking it with a smile on her face. Her gaze sought out Ty, finding him right away. He was making a gesture with his hand, like a circle in the air. Turn around.
Summer turned, seeing the incoming wave only a second before it was upon her. The whitewater hit her in the face, stealing her smile and her oxygen. It plunged her down into the churning morass before she’d had enough opportunity to fill her lungs. There was no chance of fighting it. She was being swept along on a course she hadn’t set, unable to breathe.
Panic set in as her lungs began to burn. Summer struggled with the enveloping water, but finding a way out was an impossible task. The sea was queen and she was nothing but a minute speck, a slave to her power. Summer prayed there was enough breath in her lungs to get her into shore.
After what seemed like forever, she came up in the smaller breakers, finding the surface and the air she badly needed. Summer took several grateful gulps as she struggled to her feet. Her toe dipped into sand, but before she could gain purchase, she was being pulled upward by a strong arm.
“Shit, Sum. Are you okay?”
Summer was too busy drawing in air to answer. But she didn’t feel okay, not by a long shot. Ty hit her on the back as she bent over and coughed up seawater. Her legs trembled with the aftereffects of fear.
“I saw what happened out there,” Ty said, awe in his voice. “You did it. You caught a wave.”
From her bent-over position, Summer frowned up at him. Her throat hurt so much she could only rasp words. “I…got dumped.”
“I mean before that, sweetheart.” Ty smiled—smiled—and hauled her to her feet. He drew her against his wet chest and held her there. “You were awesome.”
He pressed his lips to her forehead, her temple, her cheek, making his way around her face in a series of ardent kisses. When his mouth covered hers, all Summer could think was I still can’t breathe.
With arms that felt weak as wet noodles, Summer pushed against Ty’s chest until he broke the kiss. “Ty, I feel like I almost drowned.”
“Nah, you’re fine. Except for this.” Ty pressed a thumb to the scrunched up lines between her eyebrows. “You’re not allowed to frown after surfing. It’
s the law.”
He was making jokes. She’d been dragged through Mother Nature’s wringer and he was laughing about it. “I’ve had enough,” she said, finally managing to extract herself from his arms. “I’m going home.”
Summer bent to unfasten the leg rope that attached her to the surfboard. When the task was complete Ty picked up her board for her, tucking it and his beneath one arm. On the beach a small crowd had gathered. Evidently the onlookers had worked out who was in the water, because as Ty passed a few people applauded. Others called out admiring comments about his performance.
Summer passed by unnoticed. She was the kind of person who faded into the background, not like Ty who appeared perfectly comfortable in the limelight.
Having slowed down to acknowledge the fans on the beach, Ty had to run to catch up to Summer again. “What’s with the mood, Sum? You did it.”
Summer trudged up through the wet sand, then the dry, Ty matching her step for step. “Okay, I did it. Does that make you happy?”
“It’s supposed to make you happy.”
“It did.” For a moment so brief she barely remembered how it felt now, mere minutes later. The seconds of terror afterward eclipsed everything. “Then I was reminded that nothing in life comes without a price.”
“You’re reading a lot into a little tumble with the breakers.”
Summer shot him a look. “I thought that was the idea. I can surf again, so therefore we’re perfect for each other. Isn’t that why you brought me out here?”
“I brought you here so you’d remember what it was like to live your life instead of merely exist in it.”
“You’re making a lot of comments about how I live, Ty. Just because we slept together a few times doesn’t give you the right to decide my future.”
“I’m not trying to run your life.” Cutting in front of her, Ty whirled to face her. “All I want is for you to make some space for me.”
He didn’t understand. Ty wouldn’t merely take up space, he’d take over. His life was too big, her feelings for him too strong. She’d spend every waking moment he was gone missing him, waiting to be with him again. Days and weeks and months would revolve around Ty’s schedule, not her own anymore. She would fade into the background of her own life.
The picture it painted was ugly. She’d handed her decisions over to men in the past—her father, her husband. And she’d been miserable. Finally she’d found a semblance of peace on her own, and Ty wanted her to pull it all to pieces.
Back at Ty’s car, Summer dried herself off while Ty hefted the boards onto the roof rack. In tense silence, they each yanked open a car door and got in. Summer stared out the side window, watching the color leech out of the sky as Ty drove over the headland, setting a course back to town. After a while she said, almost to herself, “Not everyone is like Ty Butler.”
Ty queried with deceptive casualness, “What exactly am I like?”
“You’re a risk taker. In your line of work it goes with the territory. But I’m not like that.”
“What you’re saying is you think I’m too big a risk. That we are,” he added in flat tones.
“What you suggested back at my place… You’re talking about trying to keep some kind of long-distance affair alive. What are the chances of something like that working?”
“About as good as we decide to make them,” he said, his voice suddenly becoming impassioned again. “I know other guys on the tour have wives and families. They find a way to make it work.”
Summer’s heart performed a breathtaking leap at his oblique reference to marriage and children. The idea of being Ty’s wife one day appealed to her on the deepest level, the level that had long yearned for a family that worked, a house filled with love and laughter. It spoke to the part of her that loved Ty and always would.
But he hadn’t proposed marriage. He wanted her to keep the home fires burning for when it suited him to warm his body beside them. “You expect me to stay here and live some kind of half life when you’re off conquering your dreams.”
“I’m not asking that.”
“It amounts to that. And I can’t do it.”
“Why the bloody hell not?”
“Because being without you hurts too much!” It had hurt enough last time, hurt so much that she’d sought solace in the arms of another man and ended up trapped there. Lord knows how she’d handle Ty’s leaving this time.
Not well, Summer imagined. This time she loved him so much more than she had at eighteen. She loved him as a woman does a man, not as a girl does her first crush. But she’d prepared for him to leave this weekend, steeled herself for it. Dragging it out for months or maybe a year while she missed him like the devil sounded a lot worse. At least this way it would be over when she said, not when Ty got sick of long-distance phone calls and nobody warming his bed.
At least she could keep some control of her own life.
“All the more reason for us to stick together.” Ty pulled into her driveway and came to an abrupt stop. “I’m not trying to hurt you, Summer.”
Maybe not, but he would, if she let this go on past its natural conclusion. If she gave him her life, he might accidentally demolish it, and it had taken her too long to build what she had after her divorce to be so cavalier with it. Her business, her financial stability and her sense of independence. Summer felt they were all hanging in the balance, somehow threatened by this conversation. “I’m not trying to hurt you either. But I have to take care of myself here, Ty. I have to be sensible.”
With a muttered curse, Ty opened his door and got out. Summer followed suit, dragging her wet towel and tote bag with her. Those two things felt like the weight of the world as she walked to her front door and opened it.
She wasn’t sure Ty would follow her inside. When he did, he stopped her in the hallway with a hand on her shoulder. He guided her back against him, wrapping an arm around her waist and enfolding her with his body. “Just tell me one thing,” he rasped. “Do you even love me?”
Summer closed her eyes against the burn of tears. “Yes,” she husked. “I’ll never love anyone else the way I love you.”
The arm around her tightened, almost cutting off her air supply. When he tilted her head back and sought her mouth, she couldn’t breathe at all. Unlike back at the beach, Summer didn’t fight against it. She wanted to breathe Ty’s air, to know only him and his kiss. For one last time.
Summer kissed him in return, sinking her fingers into his still-wet hair. She arched her back, pressing her butt into his burgeoning erection. Even as emotions turned black and stormy, his body still reached for hers, and hers for his.
The damp rash shirt came up and over her head. Summer lifted her arms as Ty disrobed her with frantic hands. He yanked at the ties of her bikini top until it fell away. Movements hurried, they got rid of her swimmer bottoms and his board shorts.
Ty turned her around and picked her up. They slammed together, panting and naked, against the wall. The lamp fell off her hall table with a crash. Summer barely noticed. She was locked in Ty’s embrace, in his gaze, as the tip of his cock nudged her opening.
“I can’t believe you can throw this away,” he said, his voice raw and frayed. “I can’t believe you’re doing this to us.”
His entry was swift, brutal. But Summer was wet and the sound that tore from her throat was one of ecstasy. Her head bumped against the wall as Ty pumped into her, using her body rather than cherishing it as he’d done so many times. His movements were relentless, the fiery hold of his gaze unwavering. Summer clung to him, obtaining a new kind of thrill from having him take her so selfishly. Despite very little effort on his part, the elemental urge to climax began to gather in her center, so fast it shocked her.
When Ty grabbed her breast and squeezed, hard, the orgasm hit her. Premature but as powerful as a sucker punch. She cried out and clutched Ty to her, within her, as he drove inside her a few more times and followed her into the greedy, blinding rapture.
His bod
y trembled where it braced hers against the wall. His breath was hot and fast on her neck, matching the pace of Summer’s own. Something inside her shattered when he tasted her skin, the caress of his tongue a heartbreakingly tender end to what had been a savage coupling. A tear slipped down her cheek. Summer hurriedly wiped it away as Ty pulled out of her and stepped away.
Turning his back to her, Ty dragged on his shorts. He was leaving now, because she’d refused to cling to something that she believed to be unstable. Now, already, she was on her own again, and Summer had never felt so shaky, so quickly cut adrift. For the first time she wondered if she wasn’t making the biggest mistake of her life.
He took a few steps toward the door, as though prepared to leave without a further word. Summer bit her lip to keep from calling him back, but he stopped anyway. He asked, his voice harsh, “Could you get pregnant from that?”
It had all happened so quickly, and Summer had been so desperate to take whatever was left of their crumbling relationship that she had pushed protection to the farthest reaches of her mind. Now she was forced to consider his question.
Her period was due in the next day or two, and while she knew the rhythm method wasn’t recommended as a contraceptive, she simply didn’t think it would happen. Whether that belief was due to stupidity or a numbness of emotion, Summer wasn’t sure. “It’s unlikely,” she answered.
He half-turned, sending her a sharp look. “You’d tell me?”
Summer knew she didn’t deserve to be hurt by the doubt inherent in his query, but she was. “Of course I would.” She drew in a tremulous breath. “But you don’t have to worry. It won’t happen, and I’d never make your life difficult if it did.”
“I bet you wouldn’t, not even if I wanted you to.” With taut strides he stalked back over to her, his eyes blazing in the dim hallway. “Don’t you get it, Summer? It was you.” Grasping her wrist, he drew her hand toward his chest and placed it over both his hearts—the ink one that decorated his taut pectoral and the real one that beat hard beneath it. In his passionate, angry gaze she read the truth, and it made her own heart tremor. “It’s always been you.”
