CHAPTER 4
Katrina
Katrina drove with the windows down and the radio up, singing along to a song she didn’t know the words to.
Her voice cracked on the high notes and she laughed at herself, letting the wind whip through her auburn hair.
The Volkswagen rattled gently over the uneven pavement, a familiar sound Katrina had long since stopped noticing. Today, even that seemed cheerful.
She couldn’t stop smiling. Her cheeks hurt from it. She caught her reflection in the rearview mirror and made a face at herself. Pathetic. She looked like someone had told her she’d won the lottery.
What the hell had gotten into her?
The ocean stretched out beside her, blue and endless.
A perfect day. The kind of day that made you believe in good things.
She’d had plenty of those, but today felt different.
Her skin tingled. Her fingers tapped on the steering wheel in a rhythm that matched nothing on the radio.
She was light, like her bones had been hollowed out and filled with something fizzy.
She whistled through her teeth, a tuneless thing that matched the wind.
Her mind replayed the encounter in fragments.
Ryan watching her teach Alex. The way he'd taken her joke seriously and reached for his wallet.
The way he'd stood there in the borrowed wetsuit, broad-shouldered and undeniably handsome.
The way he'd kept practicing the pop-up until he got it.
And the look on his face after catching his first wave, even if he'd fallen a second later.
She’d acted like a teenager. A goddamn teenager. Offering free lessons to a stranger because he had nice eyes and a good jawline. What was she, sixteen?
The last time she’d felt this stupid-smart rush was sophomore year of high school.
Bobby Thompson. Quarterback. Shoulders that took up doorways.
He’d asked her to a movie at the tiny theater in town, the one with the sticky floors and the projector that occasionally went dark at crucial moments.
She’d said yes so fast her neck hurt from the nodding.
She’d worn her good jeans and a top that showed exactly the right amount of collarbone.
They’d sat in the back row. Ten minutes into the movie, his hand was on her thigh.
Twenty minutes in, his tongue was in her mouth.
By the time the credits rolled, she’d learned that Bobby Thompson’s idea of a date was basically an extended make-out session with a movie playing in the background for atmosphere.
She’d walked home alone, lip gloss smeared, feeling like an idiot.
Silly. But she’d learned her lesson. After that, she got wary. Cautious. She didn’t go out with another guy until college, and by then she’d figured out the game. She’d grown up in other ways, too. The hard way.
Her parents died when she was seventeen. Just like that, the world rearranged itself. The things that had seemed solid weren’t. The future, which had been this predictable stretch of days and years, became something wild and uncertain. A beast that could turn on you without warning.
So she stopped planning. Stopped caring what people thought. Started saying yes to things that scared her. Started taking risks because what was the point of playing it safe when safe wasn’t even real?
She lost her virginity to a guy whose name she could barely remember now, on their first date. Not because he was especially attractive or charming. Because she wanted to know what it felt like. Because life was short and she wasn’t going to wait around for the perfect moment that might never come.
College was a blur of passing encounters. Quick hookups with guys whose faces blurred together after a while. She didn’t get attached. Didn’t expect anything to last. She had fun. She laughed a lot. She kept moving.
She never got smitten. Not even with Eric Chang.
Eric was beautiful. Tall, with the kind of cheekbones that made other men look unfinished. His family owned half of something important in San Francisco, and he was working at a venture capital firm just to gain experience before taking over the family empire.
He took her to restaurants where the menus didn’t have prices. He drove her to Napa in a convertible that cost more than her entire education. They drank wine on hillsides overlooking vineyards and he talked about taking her to Paris, to Tokyo, to all the places he’d been a dozen times already.
He was very into her. Very persistent. Very sure that what they had was special.
It wasn’t. She ended it after two months, before he could get too serious.
There was no chemistry. No real connection.
Eric took everything for granted – the money, the opportunities, the fact that the world would open doors for him because of his name.
That easy certainty made her skin crawl. He’d never had to fight for anything.
They were simply too different. There was never going to be a future between them.
Besides, it was around the time Marina broke up with her tech-bro daddy. Katrina had been far more concerned about her sister than about a relationship she already knew wasn't going anywhere.
So why now? Why this feeling for a guy she’d talked to for twenty minutes on a beach?
Just because he had nice muscles? Just because they shared the same eye color, hazel shifting between green and brown depending on the light? That was shallow even for her.
But it wasn't just that. Ryan had been willing to take a risk. She'd acted like a lunatic, inviting him to a surf lesson just like that. She'd fully expected him to laugh, thank her politely, and walk away.
Instead, he'd paused for only a heartbeat before saying yes. That was rare. Most of the tech-bro tourists she met approached everything cautiously. They asked a dozen questions first. They worried about getting cold, getting hurt, looking ridiculous.
Ryan had simply gone with it. He was a little nerdy. But mostly, he was unpretentious. Genuine—that was it.
Or maybe she was losing her mind. Too much sun. Too much salt water. Too long without a proper date.
The road curved inland, and the ocean disappeared behind the trees. Katrina turned the radio up louder and sang along, badly, at the top of her lungs. Her voice disappeared into the wind rushing through the open windows. She was still smiling. She couldn’t help it.
The cottage came into view around the last bend in the dirt road. Small, weathered, the paint faded a little around the windows. Home. Katrina pulled the Volkswagen onto the patch of gravel beside the mailbox and killed the engine. The sudden silence rang in her ears.
She heard them before she saw them. Marina’s voice, bright and encouraging, and the thud of Skylla’s paws on hard-packed dirt. They were in the backyard.
Katrina walked around the side of the house instead of going through the front door. The path was narrow, overhung with the scrubby pines that grew too close to the property line. She pushed a low-hanging branch out of her way and stepped into the sunlight of the backyard.
Marina was throwing the Frisbee. She wore cutoff shorts and a tank top, her blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail.
Skylla launched herself after the disc, all seventy pounds of German Shepherd moving with the focused intensity of a missile.
She caught it mid-air, jaws snapping closed on the plastic with a sound that carried across the yard.
“Good girl!” Marina called.
Skylla trotted back, tail wagging, the Frisbee clutched proudly in her mouth.
Katrina leaned against the fence post and watched them.
There was something about the way Marina moved now, loose and easy, that still caught her off guard sometimes.
Eight years earlier, her sister had been a ghost.
She'd drifted through the house without making a sound. Sat for hours on the porch, staring into the trees with a blank expression. It was the kind of grief that hollowed a person out from the inside.
Then Skylla happened.
Marina had found the dog wandering near a logging road several miles outside town. A skinny black-and-tan shepherd with ribs showing, equal parts frightened and furious.
Almost overnight, something changed. Marina smiled again, laughed again, and started getting out of bed before noon.
Katrina had never been much of a dog person. Too much responsibility. Too much hair. But she loved Skylla with the particular fierceness reserved for someone who had saved the person she loved most.
Skylla saw her first. Or smelled her – the dog’s nose lifted, and her entire body went still for one alert second before she abandoned the Frisbee retrieval and charged across the yard.
She skidded to a stop at Katrina’s feet, front paws planting on her shins, and shoved her wet nose into Katrina’s palm.
“Hey, monster.” Katrina scratched behind the dog’s ears. Skylla’s tail whipped back and forth hard enough to knock dust from the ground.
The Frisbee was still in her mouth. Katrina reached for it. “Give it up, beast.”
Skylla backed up a step, growling playfully around the plastic.
“Come on. I thought you were happy to see me!” Katrina said in the high, ridiculous voice she reserved for Skylla.
The German Shepherd was at least eight years old, middle-aged by dog standards, and weighed as much as a small adult. None of that stopped Katrina from talking to her as though she were still a puppy.
Marina always found it funny. Katrina, of course, didn't care.
Marina walked over, brushing sand from her hands. “You’re late. I thought you’d be home before noon.”
“I thought so too.” Katrina finally wrestled the Frisbee free from Skylla’s jaws. The dog immediately sat, front paws together, waiting for it to be thrown.
“What happened? Your student wouldn’t let you go?”
“No.” Katrina tossed the Frisbee. Skylla exploded after it. “I met someone.”
Marina’s eyebrows went up. “A guy?”
“Yes.” Katrina watched Skylla catch the disc in a graceful arc. “But not what you think, really. I just convinced some random guy at the beach to take a lesson with me, and he agreed.”
“Interesting.” Marina folded her arms. A smile played at the corners of her mouth. “But then again, I’m not surprised. You’ve done it before, right?”
Katrina thought about it. Right. She had. Occasionally guys who were already surfing would come up to her, ask for tips, tricks, the secret to a better cutback. She’d give them five minutes of advice, maybe flirt a little, then move on. Standard beach interaction.
“It’s different this time,” she said.
She told Marina everything. The way she’d spotted him watching her teach Alex. The walk over. The conversation – how he’d taken her joke seriously, how she’d offered the free lesson without thinking about it, and how he’d agreed, looking surprised at himself.
Marina listened with her head tilted, amusement softening her features. Skylla, having abandoned the Frisbee, lay down at Marina’s feet and rested her chin on her paws, watching Katrina with what looked remarkably like attentiveness.
“So in the end, we exchanged numbers, and he told me he’d see me tomorrow.”
“That’s wonderful.” Marina’s voice had that warm, steady quality that made everything sound reasonable. “I wonder who this lucky guy is. Not every day my sister gives someone free lessons.”
Katrina laughed. She could feel her cheeks getting warm. “I know, right? Crazy. I don’t even know why I did that. It was like my mouth was speaking on its own.”
“Let me guess.” Marina’s eyes crinkled. “This guy must be tall, dark, and handsome?”
“Come on, Rina.” Katrina grinned. “You make me sound so superficial. But yes, he is quite tall and handsome. Light brown hair and hazel eyes. And he had such a nice body, lean muscles and all. The most incredible part is he said he wasn’t a gym rat.”
“Wow. Impressive. Maybe he’s a construction worker?”
“No, that’s the thing. He’s a tech bro. From Silicon Valley.”
Something shifted in Marina’s expression. A tiny stiffening, almost imperceptible. Her hand, which had been resting on Skylla’s head, went still. “No kidding. And you said he had light brown hair and hazel eyes?”
“Yes, just like me,” Katrina said. “What? Have you met him? He’s here on vacation.”
“I don’t think so.” Marina hesitated. “But then again, a lot of tourists here are from there, right? The tech bros like to buy vacation homes along the coast.”
“Yeah. He’s staying in his boss’s house.”
“Where’s he from originally?”
“I don’t know, I didn’t ask.” Katrina shrugged. “But he does have a southern lilt when he speaks.”
Katrina cleared her throat and did her best impression of Ryan's careful, slightly drawn-out way of speaking. “Waaall... as ready as Ah'll ever be.”
Marina laughed. “Nice,” she said, leaning down to pat Skylla’s flank, her face hidden for a moment. When she looked up, her expression was composed. “So this guy. You really like him?”
“I don’t know.” Katrina giggled, the sound escaping before she could catch it. “I just – I’ve never felt this way before, sis. I could hardly help myself when I told him I’d give him a lesson. It’s like my hormones got hold of my brain.”
“Wow.” Marina chuckled. “That’s serious, Kat. You’d better be careful. Don’t let a stranger steal your heart.”
“I know, Rina.” Katrina laughed louder. “I’ll try not to do anything stupid. He’s probably just doing me a favor, returning the free lesson, you know?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t be so sure.” Marina’s voice was playful. “You’ve probably bewitched the guy.”
“Probably.” Katrina threw her arms out wide. “That wouldn’t be so bad.”
“Not at all,” her sister agreed.
Marina stooped and stroked Skylla’s fur for a minute, her fingers working through the thick coat. The dog leaned into the touch, eyes half-closed in bliss.
“Let’s have lunch,” Marina said.
“Good idea.” Katrina started toward the house, then turned back. “By the way, his name is Ryan.”
Marina had that weird smile on her face again. The one that didn’t quite reach her eyes.
“Nice name,” she said.