18. Chase
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Chase
Sharks don’t sleep so much as idle, and something inside her had the shark in me surging, keeping me from my proper human sleep.
I’d been idling for an hour with her back tucked against my chest, her breathing slow.
I wasn’t sure if she had fallen asleep or if the orgasm-magic combo had just put her into a small coma, but I spent the time observing her more than I should have.
I traced the freckle constellation on her shoulder, listened to her heart never fully slow, like even semi-unconscious she was keeping a foot on the gas, and watched the faint gold shimmer still coming off her skin in the dark.
“You can use the shower,” I offered, tracking her in the low light.
“I have my own shower.”
“Mine’s closer.”
“Yours probably has ridiculously branded RipTide shampoo in it. I’m not touching anything in this room that’s sponsored.”
“You touched me an awful lot.”
A pause that I enjoyed enormously.
She didn’t say anything and grabbed her hoodie, struggling to get it on in the dark.
At the door, her hand rested on the handle.
Whatever she was negotiating with herself, the other side won, because all I got was, “The dunes above the showers, be there tomorrow night. Wear something you can run in.”
“Is that a threat or an invitation?”
“Yes,” she said, and was gone.
No goodbye kiss. Second time. I lay there in the wreckage and considered how I felt about being a man whose presence a woman fled twice after using him like a beachside calisthenics park.
Great. I felt great. The chase had just begun.
One of the many unfortunate side effects of being the face of an energy drink was that you’re expected at things. The next morning’s was a “site walk,” which was what Derek called standing around the compound pointing while two production guys followed him with iPads.
“Chase!” Derek slapped me on the shoulder, as he always did. “Glad you’re here. We’ve got a situation, and I want your read on it as my guy.”
The situation was a pipe.
Specifically, the fresh-water line had surfaced overnight.
Not in one place—in a dozen places. Black plastic elbows breached out of the sand like a sea serpent, the entire run of it shrugged to the surface as if the beach had decided it didn’t care for the taste.
One of the production guys was photographing it for the insurance claim.
The other was just standing there, holding his iPad against his chest like it was going to protect him.
“Crew buried that line two feet down,” Derek said. “Two feet! And it’s just—up. The trench guys are saying erosion. Does that look like erosion to you?”
It looked like a woman with a vendetta. The surfacing got more aggressive the closer it ran to the north stretch. Up there, the pipe was kinked, folded like a used drinking straw.
“Sand moves.” I shrugged. “It’s kind of its whole thing.”
“Sand moves,” Derek repeated to the iPad guys, like I wasn’t just full of shit. “Okay. Okay. We rebury, we add sandbags, we move on. It’s a beach, right? Beaches are basically just big sandboxes.”
He waved his hand, and the iPads moved, his will be done.
By sunset the line was up again, and the sandbags had sunk. You could see the top corner of one protruding from the sand like a tombstone. The generators, which lived on platforms specifically to keep them clear of sand, had sand in them, which had no explanation except a magical one.
Derek was not happy.
I found her in the dunes above the showers at seven, exactly where she’d said. She was sitting cross-legged in the low evening light with her hands buried to the wrists, eyes closed, gold light leaking from under her lashes.
I sat down next to her without being invited. The sand under me was warm and buzzing.
“You destroyed the water line.”
“Allegedly.”
“Derek’s bringing in a geotechnical consultant on Thursday. Insurance wants to confirm the site is stable.”
Her eyes opened. The gold in them banked down to something warier. “That sounds like intel.”
“I’m making conversation.”
“You’re on their payroll.”
“I’m aware of my payroll, and well aware that it will continue if this event is deemed a liability. Unstable beaches have nothing to do with me.” I leaned back on my elbows and watched the compound below, where the night guard was investigating a generator that had just coughed politely and died.
“The consultant’s named Greg, apparently. He’s got ground-penetrating radar he’s going to scan the north stretch with, and I don’t know what turtle nests look like on radar, but I’m guessing ‘anomalies.’ I’m also guessing Derek doesn’t ask follow-up questions before he stakes over them.”
She went very still. The magic stopped moving through the sand as the whole of her attention came around to my face. “They know about the nests. They’ll know what they are. Maybe this will…”
I gave her a hard look. “Do you really think Derek and RipTide are going to take the permits seriously now that they’ve seen the nests?”
She scowled, because she knew the truth. They’d pulled up the flags that do-gooder local had planted in the sand. This was just the same. They weren’t looking to do good; they were covering their ass long enough to get this circus rolling.
“Why are you telling me this?”
I could’ve said because it’s funny. That was true. I could’ve said because Derek was an asshole. Also true. But the truth was more complex.
As long as my debt kept getting paid, what did I care about a comeback? There were always other competitions, and the truth was—if I cared to look at it—I knew I didn’t deserve a comeback anyway.
“I’ve always done everything they’ve said. Show up, smile, hold the bottle, pay the—” I shut that door. “Everything I’m supposed to do. But I’m El Tiburón, supposed to be surfing’s bad boy. Maybe I’d forgotten that, need to stir up a little trouble.”
She was quiet for a second, chewing on her lip. I didn’t care for the look she was giving me, like she didn’t quite believe me.
“El Tiburón. Not Chase Perez?”
“Same thing.”
“Mmm.” She didn’t believe me, and she let me see that she didn’t believe me, and then she let it go. Because, as she had said many times, this was just business, right? She turned back to the dune, pushed her hands into the sand, and asked, “Greg’s radar runs on what? A generator?”
“Battery more likely. Why?”
The gold came up under her lashes, and below us the entire north stretch of beach began, grain by grain, to swallow the sandbags that remained.
“Sit closer,” she murmured. “I’m going to need the power.”
“And what do I get?”
I scooted closer. Her shoulder against mine, the static jumping the last inch. My senses lit up like they always did around her, and I leaned in and bit her shoulder. Not hard, just enough for her to shiver, and then the structure holding the LED wall crashed down onto the sand.
She opened her eyes, grinning.
“Another free smoothie, Tibby?”
“Don’t call me that.”