Chapter 22
Wyatt
Giving her thirty seconds to walk away before I look over my shoulder, I find her walking across the street to her little red coupe.
It’s another half a minute before she’s opening the door, but before she gets in, her head twists in my direction, and even from this distance I can feel her eyes lock with mine.
Like there’s some kind of tether binding us together, but that string is so taut with tension it’s ready to fray and break.
I’m ready to break.
Emotion has my eyes feeling raw, my throat thick. I was well on my way to being in love with Bryn. The future was a beautiful one with her in it. My dream girl. Every piece of her lifted straight from my fantasies.
Even from here I see her deflate. A second later she gets into her car, and fuck if I didn’t wish that moment of hesitation had her running all the way back here.
There was no talking her out of it. It was plain as day when her tears mostly cleared after we sat down.
No wild eyebrow movements, no working of her jaw.
Flat, sullen, decided. She came here today on a mission to end things between us.
No amount of me begging or pleading would have changed that, so I didn’t try.
Not because I didn’t want to. I did.
She wants to spend all her time with Gran? Great, let’s take Gran on our dates. If Bryn loves her that much, the woman must be fun. It could be a blast, and I’d love to get to know a piece of Bryn that clearly loves her, especially when she has such questionable parents.
Besides, I know how to keep my hands to myself and behave in public. The older woman wouldn’t be invited to the after-hours activities, but up until we tucked her in, no problem.
I wanted to tell her that I would help take care of Gran.
Whatever she needed whenever I wasn’t on shift.
A ride to a doctor appointment? Old Betty would love to have her.
Bingo with her friends? I’ll grab an extra dabber and be the wildest one in the joint yelling Bingo.
If she needed to go shopping, I’d be the first one pointing out all the stores they should be going into at the mall.
It wouldn’t matter what we were doing, with Gran or without her. I would happily do it with Bryn by my side.
Staring at the spot Bryn’s car was long after she’s gone, I sigh and finally look away when another car takes the spot and turn back to the ocean.
I wish I could have said all of that to her, but she wouldn’t have heard it. Not today.
Scrubbing my hands over my face, I pull my hat off and turn it around so the brim shields my eyes from the sun beating down on me. I can understand why there aren’t more surfers at this spot as the waves break against the rocks. They’re intense. Definitely not a place for inexperienced surfers.
The one out there is good. I think. Considering I’m a small-town guy from landlocked Montana, I guess I wouldn’t really know, but he’s caught a couple of waves already and looked good doing it.
I watched him before Bryn got here. Now he just sits in the water, back to me, watching the horizon.
Lonely, surrounded by nothing but the vast ocean, and I feel the depth of that in this moment.
My phone vibrates in my pocket, and I yank it out, nearly dropping it in my haste. Hope seizes my heart thinking it might be Bryn changing her mind, but Boone’s name flashes on my screen with a text.
Boone: They’re gonna kill each other, man. I swear.
Me: No, they aren’t.
Boone: They are.
I sigh. Boone always worries harder than Beau and me when it comes to Gage and my dad. He always hated it the most when they’d fight growing up—and as adults, for that matter.
Boone: It’s gotten worse since you’ve been gone.
Me: Yeah, I’m no longer there to be a second punching bag. Gage should learn the same.
Boone: You know he won’t do that.
Me: Then he deserves what he gets.
He doesn’t. I know he doesn’t, and I regret the words immediately, but I don’t correct them.
None of us deserve my dad flying off the handle whenever he’s pissed off about something—usually something none of us can control.
Heaven forbid it’s something that’s actually our fault, because then we’re just a waste of space.
It wasn’t always like this. When I was younger, he was patient. He showed us how to do things. He had a temper, sure, but he didn’t immediately go from zero to sixty in the blink of an eye.
Boone doesn’t respond, which tells me I was as much of an asshole as I thought. Right now, I don’t care. Let them kill each other. I’m not there. I don’t need to deal with it. And if any one of them were smart, they’d get the hell out of dodge, too.
“What are you doing here?” a deep voice asks from my left, and I look up to find a towering figure walking towards me, his shadow moving across the rock, dirt, and grass.
Brody.
Water drips off him and the yellow surfboard under his arm. His wetsuit is half off, no longer covering his torso, but peeled away and slung around his hips. The thing looks way too difficult to get on and off for my liking.
Ignoring his question, I nod at the ocean. “Was that you out there?”
He glances in the direction like he doesn’t know what I’m talking about. “Yeah.”
“Where the fuck did you come from?” I ask, looking around for a way to get up here.
He points at a small path off the side of what I assumed was a cliff, but when I get up to investigate, it’s not so much cliff as it is a steep climb down a bunch of huge boulders.
I can see how it would be like a staircase for a giant like him.
Hell, even I could do it. Bryn would have a lot harder of a time, and now it clicks that she told me about this on our date.
Most people paddle from the beach we were at, but Brody goes down this way.
“So, you go up against these rocks and then you go up against the ocean, and you think that’s fun?” I ask, turning back to him.
He shrugs, setting the edge of his board on the dirt laced with wilting grass. “You ride horses. We all have a thing.”
What I wouldn’t give to jump on the back of Rosie to go flying through some fields right now to clear my head and let the wind whip at my face. It brings on a pang of homesickness. Not for my family, but for the beautiful mare I left behind.
Brody stares at me. I stare back. When his eyebrows lift, so do mine. I’ve learned that he won’t break ahead of anyone, being the strong, silent type, which is not in my DNA, so I cave first.
“What?”
“Where’s Bryn?” He nods at the bench. “This is her bench.”
“I don’t see her name on it.”
His eyes don’t roll, exactly, but they do look up and sideways, clearly done with me. It’s made more evident when he starts turning away, picking his board back up.
The words blurt out of my mouth before he walks away, “She ended things.”
He stops, swinging back in my direction, eyes narrowed. “What’d you do?”
“Nothing,” I defend because he looks ready to pummel my ass. Swiping the hat off my head, I run my forearm across my forehead. The breeze from the ocean is nice, but I’m starting to sweat under the sun. “She doesn’t have room for me right now.”
Brody huffs. “Idiot.”
“Watch your mouth.” I drop my hat back on my head.
“I meant you,” he says, leaning his board up against the back of the bench, then resting the top of his thigh against it. The guy makes the seat look small. “You let her go?”
I cross my arms over my chest. “She’d made up her mind.”
“So, change it.”
My eyes narrow. “I plan on it.”
“Good.”
“Good,” I repeat.
His eyebrows raise. Mine do the same.
The smallest hint of a smile tips the edges of his mouth up. If I didn’t spend so much time reading people, I’d have missed it, because it’s gone the next moment.
This time he speaks first, and I have to work to keep the surprise off my face.
“What are you going to do?”
Blowing out a breath, I scratch a spot on my chest, shaking my head.
I stare at the seat she occupied not that long ago.
Until he challenged me on it, I hadn’t fully resolved that I’d do anything, even if the thought was in the back of my mind the whole time she was talking to me.
The sting of it all was still burning a hole through my chest, into my heart, and I wanted to respect her wishes.
But she’s my future. I’ve been certain of that since she tagged me under the glow of black lights, even if I haven’t admitted it out loud.
“I don’t know yet,” I finally say, bringing my attention back to him.
“Well, take the night to be miserable and dumped.” He grabs his board. “Meet me at 10-42.”
Cocking my head to the side, I ask, “For what?”
He’s already on the street, headed to wherever he parked his truck, but he calls over his shoulder, “To drink and be miserable.”
I hear what he doesn’t say.
Together.
To drink and be miserable together.
“I’ve got it!”
Brody’s eyes slide to me, but he says nothing. Just ready for the newest plan I’ve come up with. That’s what drinking and being miserable has turned into. The world isn’t hazy from the beers I’ve drunk, but I’m definitely starting to feel them.
“I’ll dance for her,” I tell him, my shoulders starting to move to the country song playing over the speakers at 10-42.
“No.”
The word is permanent, Brody’s tone indicating there should be no argument.
Lucky for him, I’m full of arguments right now.
“Why not?” I scoff, my entire upper body now moving to the beat. My feet, back in my beloved cowboy boots, are starting to tap on the floor. “It’s how I wooed her in the first place.”
Brody snorts. “The hat persuaded her. Not you.”
My hand slams against my chest like I’ve just taken a blow. I have. “You wound me.”
He doesn’t deign to answer me. Just throws the rest of his beer back.
I don’t care. The music—like the beer—is starting to flow through me, and I push my chair back, getting to my feet.
The song is a quick, upbeat clip that would be fun to swing Bryn around to, but to convince Brody it’s a good idea, I’ll have to do it solo.