Chapter 23 Parker #2
“Which is why our scores here are weighted lower than in the rest of the series.”
“So you’ll just have to maximize every wave. Put yourself in as good a position as you can before the next event.” She bites her lip. Her irritation has dissolved into stress, and that’s the very last way she should enter the water tomorrow. “Talk to me, Sum. What’s going on with your barrels?”
She swallows hard, hesitating around something.
Then, with a shaky breath, she says, “I can’t stop thinking about how I used to come to these things with Dad.
It was half the fun of competing, you know?
Being around him. We always talked about me qualifying for the tour after I graduated, how he’d come traveling with me.
We’d have all these amazing adventures together, just me and him.
Made it hard to miss my mom when it was us against the world. ”
I’m not sure what this has to do with the way she’s surfing, but I nod anyway. “Did you tell him you were competing again?”
I watch as her eyes fill with tears. “He doesn’t answer the phone.”
“Love,” I whisper, because what the hell do you say to that—which words could I give her to repair this kind of wound?
“I keep thinking about his twins, and how he comes home to them at night. And makes it to their soccer games, and has dinner with them, and talks to them through more than just words sporadically typed on a screen. I used to have all that with him, and he was… he was a really great dad to me, before everything.”
She drags her fingers over her cheeks, smearing away her tears.
I’m suddenly wishing I was a few hundred miles south, laying into David Prescott for causing her these tears and the hundreds more she’s cried over him for years.
She might have it in her heart to welcome him back, to keep trying for more with him, giving him chance after squandered chance. But I’ll never forgive him for it.
“All I want is a phone call that he can’t find the time to give me. And I know he’s busy with work. He’s—he’s saving lives every day, and six-year-olds need their parents more than a thirty-year-old does—”
“Don’t do that, love. Stop making excuses for people who aren’t sorry. He fell short. You’re allowed to say it, and you’re allowed to be angry about it.”
She eyes me, cheek pressed into her pillow. “The last time I competed, he was supposed to be there but didn’t show. Our friends had their own things going on. It was you and me. Just like this.”
“You and me.” I squeeze her hip. “Minus your completely unsubtle attempt to get in my pants tonight.”
“You wish,” she says, chuckling wetly.
“I’m not complaining. It’s pretty hot that you’d go for what you want like this—”
She claps a hand over my mouth, shuddering with laughter now. “You should be studied. Your delusions truly know no bounds.”
I kiss her palm. She glares, but it’s half-hearted. “Parker, I hope you know how grateful I am. I don’t take it for granted that you’re here for me. I’ll never forget that, no matter where I go.”
“And where are you going?” I ask gently. She only sniffs, though. “Summer, I know you took it to heart, the things Denny said to you. But you have no idea how much you attract people to you. You’re the kind of light that draws people in, makes them thirst to be around you.”
“And yet, an entire town turned on me a few weeks ago. And then there’s Dad.”
“You’re surrounded by love, Sum. Don’t let a few bad eggs take that away from you.”
Summer closes her eyes, fresh tears leaking onto her cheeks. I reach for her face, wiping them away. I expect her to flinch, maybe make a dig at me. She doesn’t.
“I’ve always wanted to do that,” I admit.
She opens her eyes. “Have you?”
“It hurts when you cry. Makes it hard to breathe.”
“But you’ve never wanted me like that.”
“Summer, the things I want with you…” I stroke my thumb over her cheek, wishing I could do so much more than that. “If only you knew.”
A crinkle of disbelief appears between her eyebrows. I never could stand to see Summer like this—feeling small and insignificant. The very opposite of the gravitational anchor she’s always been for me.
“I’ve been embarrassing myself wearing Hawaiian shirts since I was sixteen,” I say.
She bursts into laughter. “The first step is admitting you have a problem. Well done.”
“You want to take a guess why I’ve been doing that?”
“Don’t tell me you’re suddenly renouncing the shirts. I don’t buy it.”
“Come on, Sum. Do you understand how thick and itchy they are? The colors don’t even match. I know I’m of questionable sanity, but to that degree?” The playful derision in her face morphs to confusion. “D’you remember the first time I wore one?”
“My first day back at school after my mom’s affair came out.” She rubs her lips together. “Are you saying you hate Hawaiian shirts?”
“I’m saying that, despite hating Hawaiian shirts, I’ve been wearing them since I was sixteen. And I’d wear one every day for the rest of my life if it still made you laugh.”
She blinks fast, warding away more tears but not taking her eyes off me. Deciding to push my luck, I slide across the sheets until we’re just inches apart.
Her entire body calls to me but it’s her lips I focus on, chest going painfully tight at the very thought of feeling them. I’m not sure I’ve ever needed—just needed—something so damn badly.
“What are you doing?” she whispers.
“Almost kissing you.”
“Why?” The word comes out like a plea.
“Because I really fucking want you. More than I thought it was possible to want someone.” I sweep her lower lip with my thumb. “Tell me you want me, too.”
She closes her eyes. If I know anything about Summer, it’s that she’s currently conducting an entire conversation in her own head. Playing tug-of-war with herself. Analyzing every possible outcome of every possible decision.
I think my entire sanity might rest with that decision.
My heart thunders in my ears, a frantic, unsteady beat, waiting to see on which side she lands, taking me with her. Reliable friendship. Or something entirely different.
It stops dead, mid-beat, when Summer takes a breath, wrenches away from me. Scrambles off the bed and runs for the door.