Chapter 21
“Come inside,” I say, more of a statement than a question. Kai’s lips are connected to my neck, goosebumps dotting my skin as I feel what this is doing to him. Pressed against my ass, my body flush with his, want and need and desire pools between us, and as much as I’d love to give in, I can’t.
We both need time to grow into this. It’s so new and fresh and real—raw honesty and starting over, or in Kai’s case, starting from scratch.
“You sure?” he asks, both of us breathing heavily, and it might be a terrible idea, or it might end up being the best day of our lives. A day without sex, a day where we get to know each other, and I’m looking forward to that.
Especially after listening to Daisy talk about him at breakfast. I’ve gotten glimpses of that guy, and I appreciate how loyal he is, how honest and how kind. To think that he’s still single feels absolutely crazy.
But he’s admitted that relationships were never something he was interested in.
Until me.
Wow.
That feels like a lot, but I love the weight of it and the choice he’s made.
“How about we do something else?” Kai suggests. “Date number three?” His arms are wrapped around my waist, his nose buried in my neck. As he talks, each breath peppers my skin, warm and soothing. Inhaling deeply, like he’s taking in my scent—something I do to him every time he’s close.
There’s a comfort in the way he smells, the heat of his skin, the feel of our bodies touching.
Everything about Kai feels natural, like I’ve known him far longer than just the few weeks I’ve been here.
A part of me wonders if this was meant to be.
That I was meant to meet him when I picked this lime green shack from a picture on the internet.
Renting it without giving it a second thought and packing up my entire life, moving across the world.
“Is it really another date if we just had one this morning?” I ask, cheekily pinching his side, and he lets out a hearty laugh.
“We can have ten dates today for all I care, and besides, it wasn’t a date this morning. My family was there.”
“So this will be date number two, then?”
Placing his hands on my hips, he lifts me off him, and I stand, waiting. He’s looking up at me from the old chair on the deck, weathered by the sea air, but it fits the house so perfectly.
And with him sitting in it, it’s even more perfect. With his tousled brown hair, messy and wavy from the water and salt of his morning surf. He’s wearing a T-shirt from the Pipe Dream, the logo in faded red and yellow, along with his signature boardshorts.
Everything fits him like it was made for him, hugging the muscles of his biceps, his shorts slung low on his hips, and when he shifts to stand, his shirt lifts, exposing the tanned skin of his stomach.
“Sure, let’s call it date number two. Go put a bikini on that hot little ass of yours, and let’s go,” he says, swatting my butt as I walk toward the door to the house.
“Where are we going?”
“Surprise.”
“You say that every time I ask you. You’re going to run out of surprises soon, you know that, right?” I tease as he follows me inside.
“Never. I’ve got surprises for the rest of your life, and only the good kind,” he adds, winking at me as I disappear into the bedroom to change.
I grab one of the many bathing suits I’ve bought since moving here, but before I put it on, I call out, “What kind of suit do I need? Full coverage, less coverage, string?”
“Whatever you want,” Kai replies, and I smile. I love his simplicity. The choice is mine, something I’m not used to, but I’m growing to love it.
“I don’t want my boobs falling out while we’re doing whatever it is we’re doing,” I joke, giggling when he lets out a snicker.
“I do.”
“Kai,” I playfully warn.
“Okay, I’d say go with a little more coverage. Hipsters, no strings, a top that covers your gorgeous tits a little. We won’t be sunbathing, so there’s a little hint for you.”
I have no idea why, but his words make me blush, loving how open he is with me, and even more so that he’s constantly complimenting my body. It’s such a confidence boost. He has no idea how much I need it.
A few minutes later, I’m ready to go with my suit on and a dress thrown over it. I grab a towel and a bag, tossing my phone and house keys in along with a water bottle.
But just as we’re walking out the door, my phone chimes, a text coming through that I don’t bother to look at until we’re sitting in the car.
Something I wish I hadn’t done.
Things have been quiet on the divorce and the offer front, but here they are again. Back to annoy the fuck out of me.
Nancy Melton: Sean’s legal counsel has sent through a final offer. Please call me when you get a chance.
I let out a perturbed sigh, my head falling back against the headrest as I flash my phone screen so Kai can see.
“Do you want to give her a call or let them squirm?” Kai asks me, simple and to the point. “Your choice. What you don’t realize, Quinn, is that you have all the power in this situation. All they have are threats and money.”
He’s right. That is all they have. I’ve done nothing wrong in this situation, yet I’m being made out to be the difficult one. It’s only a matter of time before this all goes public. The media loves a breakup, especially one that has a strongly guarded backstory.
I’ll be getting calls from websites, magazines, talk shows asking for interviews, and once again being thrown money to tell my side of the story—a story that won’t be able to be told if I sign that NDA.
“I’m going to let them squirm,” I say with a satisfied smile. “Maybe if I make them wait long enough, the offer will be fifty million.”
The amount is a bit of a joke, and even as I say it, it sounds ridiculous. He has a ton of money, but he’s not willing to part with that much.
Again, my phone chimes, and I roll my eyes.
Nancy really wants a cut of my settlement offer with Sean because that’s what was agreed upon when I hired her.
If I settled, she would get a percentage, if I don’t, Sean pays her retainer, legal fees and court costs.
Obviously, the latter would be much less money for her.
But when I grab my phone out of my bag, where I tossed it after seeing her text, it’s a text from my sister, and all it is are images.
A stack of three pictures that I stupidly open.
The first one is Sean’s profile on a dating app that says he’s been active for the last five years. While it’s no surprise, it still stings.
The next two are gossip site articles about Sean’s newfound single life. One of these “journalists” located his profile and has written an article full of speculation and lies.
I quickly text her back, sending exactly what I want to say: nothing more, nothing less.
Me: No thanks, Isla. I’ll call you later.
With that, I turn my phone off, shoving it into the bottom of my bag. Out of sight, out of mind. I’m tired of letting this bullshit ruin my happiness here.
Now that things have gone public, I’m going to turn my phone back on and be inundated with messages and calls—all things I want to ignore for at least the rest of today. Honestly, I’d like to act like it never happened, but that’s not how this is going to go down.
“You okay?” Kai asks, reaching over to rest his hand on my thigh.
“Yep, all good. Phone is off. Let’s get this surprise going.”
We arrive about ten minutes later at a marina, and Kai takes my hand as we exit the car, leading me to a boat that is parked next to a worn wooden dock. And while the marina is saltwater-weathered, the boat is a beautiful classic, all restored, but still shows its age.
“You know how to drive this?” I ask him as he steps aboard, holding out a hand for me. A stupid question because he was raised on the water.
“Of course I do. It’s my dad’s boat. Grew up on this thing,” he says, untying it and shoving away from the dock. “We’re going to do a little boating, a little snorkeling, and if you want, there’s a stateroom…” Trailing off, he hits me with a sexy smirk. “We could do a little making out.”
“All of that sounds like a pretty awesome second or third date,” I joke. “You’re really outdoing yourself when it comes to this dating thing, too. No one would ever guess you’re a first-timer.”
“I might be a first-time dater, but that doesn’t mean I don’t like to do cool shit like surf and sail, snorkel and have nice dinners. I’ve just never done these things with anyone but my friends. Now I get to share it with a girl I’m fucking head over heels for.”
“I think you’re pretty great too.”
Stepping over to where he’s steering the boat, I wrap my arms around his waist, pressing a kiss to his neck. “Thank you for this. I needed it.” My words come out softly, and Kai looks down at me before he kisses my forehead.
“Wanna talk about that second text?”
“Not really. It’s gone public. It was my sister letting me know.” Sighing hard, I don’t want to even think about what’s to come. “I just want to enjoy today with you.”
“Sounds good. We can definitely do that.”
Kai navigates the boat out onto the ocean. It picks up speed, and soon, the spray of the ocean dampens our warm skin, misting as the boat cuts through the water, the wind blowing the smell of the sea air.
“You ever been to the mainland?” I ask Kai, wanting to know more about him.
“Oh, yeah, tons. As a kid, my dad used to shut down the shop for three weeks after surfing season ended, and we’d travel.”
“There’s an end to the surfing season here?” I ask, somewhat serious and somewhat joking.
“Yeah, hard to believe, but usually around May things quiet down for a bit. Mostly that’s when there are fewer comps on the island, and the tourist season hasn’t picked back up.”
“Where’d you go?”
“All over. Bunch of national parks, lots of camping and hiking. Cities. We saw Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, Miami. Went to Disney World a few times,” Kai says, rattling off a pretty solid list. “My dad still brings up that all Miles wanted to do at the water park in Disney World was surf on the man-made surf machine. He was so pissed at him.”
I laugh, picturing Tanner yelling at Miles, a kid who just wanted to surf, and a dad who paid an extreme amount of money for a family vacation.
“That was also when Miles was in this phase of only eating crap, and we went to one of those expensive character dinners. If you ask my dad, it was like fifty bucks a kid, but that price changes with how much he’s had to drink when he tells the story, and Miles only ate Jell-O and mashed potatoes.”
“Sounds like a typical family vacation,” I reply, laughing along with him.
“How about you? Family vacations?”
“Oh yeah. I grew up in a town called West Milford in New Jersey, so the East Coast was our second home. My grandparents had this really old house on Montauk, and we’d spend the summers there.”
“Whoa, fancy, huh?” Kai teases.
“No, nothing like that. It was literally falling down. Wood paneling, no air conditioning, one bathroom. My sister and I slept on the screened-in porch because it would get too hot upstairs.” I pause, thinking back on it all and how happy I was during those summers there.
How Isla and I would lie awake chatting and laughing well into the night, our parents unaware that we were up so late.
Guess I was born to live near the water. Between the house on Montauk and the house I grew up in, water was always there. It’s part of the reason I was drawn to my rental here. Its proximity to the water felt like home already.
But also, it wasn’t just how happy I was when I was on Montauk. They’re memories that include my parents, and as I get older, I lose more and more of them. They almost feel like a dream sometimes.
“But they’re some of the best memories I have. The house had been in our family forever, and it really sucked when Isla and I had to sell it.”
I can’t stop the words before they leave my mouth. It’s a rare occurrence that I even mention the house or my parents, afraid of breaking down like I have so many times.
But with Kai, it’s different. I want him to know the good and the bad.
“Why’d you have to sell it?”
“Our parents died, and I had to put Isla and me through college,” I reply, the words coming out far more easily than I expect. “We sold the Montauk house that was left to my mom, and we sold the house we grew up in.”
“Holy shit, Quinn. I had no idea,” Kai says, his tone loaded with sympathy.
“Why would you? It’s not like it’s the first thing I tell people when I meet them. But yeah, they died in a car accident. Isla had just graduated high school, and I was two years into college. Things change really fast when shit like that happens.”
I let out a hard exhale, feeling a little lighter now that Kai knows and realizing he doesn’t see it as trauma, as Sean always did. He’d blame everything on my parents dying.
A few tears slip through, and I swipe at my cheeks. Kai pulls me close, an arm around my shoulders as he whispers, “Come here, babe.”
I lean into him, finding solace and comfort for the first time in as long as I can remember.