Rush
rush
. . .
I swear I can still taste her on my lips.
Sunlight glints off Eden’s hair, and she’s lying next to me on the blanket like she was made for this moment. For me. Her bare legs are tangled with mine, and her fingertips are tracing the edge of my hip under the hem of my boxers like she doesn’t even know she’s doing it.
I’m supposed to be the one who lives on adrenaline—flipping off icy halfpipes, flying forty feet in the air—but nothing has ever made my heart race like this girl.
Eden Davis.
Surfer girl.
Music royalty.
Mine.
She’s not just a firecracker—she’s the whole damn fireworks show.
And somehow, she’s just given me the best day of my life on a forgotten cliffside above the Pacific.
She shifts, her head on my chest now, her hair spilling over my shoulder. I feel her smile against my skin, and it does something to me. Something permanent.
“You’re quiet,” she says, her voice soft. “You good?”
I nod, swallowing the lump in my throat. “Yeah. I’m just… memorizing this.”
“This?”
I tilt my head to look down at her. “You. Here. The view. The way you look at me like I’m not completely in over my head.”
She grins, all cocky and sunshine. “You are completely in over your head.”
“Yeah,” I say with a chuckle, “but I think I like drowning in you.”
Her laugh is melodic. Real. Not the kind you hear in interviews or at photo ops. She’s completely Eden right now. Bare. Honest. Mine .
“I love you,” I say again, just to feel the words in the air.
She doesn’t hesitate. “I love you too.”
And damn if that doesn’t settle something in me I didn’t even know was loose.
I tuck a strand of her hair behind her ear, letting my thumb graze her cheek. “I don’t care what anyone says about this. About us. The headlines, the pictures, the trolls who’ll call it fake or fast or whatever.”
She nods slowly. “Me either.”
But I can feel her tensing slightly.
“You’ve been through this before, huh?” I ask, softer now. “With the press?”
Eden exhales, rolling onto her back and shielding her eyes from the sun with her hand. “Yeah. Since I was little. People used to ask my mum if she was ‘babysitting for Jimmy Davis.’ Like I was just this accessory. Then I got older, started winning surf comps, and suddenly I washis prodigy.Or worse—the hot one.”
My jaw tightens. “You’re not a headline.”
She glances at me. “I know that now. But it used to mess with my head. Like I couldn’t win a heat without someone in the stands asking if I was trying to be famous.”
I sit up, elbows on my knees, staring out at the ocean. “I get that. I mean, my dad’s not a rock star or anything, but after I won my first comp, people started treating me like I was a walking brand.”
“You kind of are,” she says, nudging my foot with hers.
“Yeah, but I didn’t realize that meant giving up my privacy. Last week someone tried to follow me into the men’s locker room in Vail. He had a press badge and everything.”
Eden makes a face. “That’s disgusting.”
I shrug. “He wanted photos. Said it was part of a winter sports feature for something local.”
“Did he get them?”
“Hell no. Boomer chased him out with a snow shovel.”
That makes her laugh again. “Boomer is my favorite already.”
“You haven’t seen him play poker. He’s a menace.”
She lays her head back in my lap, and I run my hand through her hair. “You know, I thought I had this all figured out,” I say. “Snowboarding. Training. Winning gold. Keeping my head down. But then you showed up in that ski lodge, and I couldn’t think straight for the rest of the trip.”
She tilts her chin up. “You couldn’t think? That’s not like you.”
“Tell me about it. I almost snowboarded into a tree the next morning.”
“You did not.”
“I swear. I was distracted, and Boomer was like, ‘You’ve got Surfer Girl brain.’”
She groans. “God, that nickname needs to die.”
“It’s cute.”
“It’snot.It makes me sound like a cartoon character.”
I grin. “A very hot, very dangerous cartoon character.”
Eden smirks. “Dangerous, huh?”
I lean over her, brushing my nose against hers. “You’re lethal. Do you know how hard it was to concentrate on training when all I wanted was to text you every hour?”
She lifts her hand, brushes my jaw with her thumb. “You do text me every hour.”
“Do you want me to stop?”
Eden bites her lower lip and shakes her head.
We stay like that for a while—laughing, kissing, watching the sky change colors. It’s quiet, peaceful, until Eden suddenly sits up, blinking like she’s just remembered something.
“Oh, crap.”
“What?”
“We’re supposed to be back for a late lunch, early dinner thing. My mum’s cooking and everyone is coming over.”
“Everyone?”
She nods as if it’s no big deal who her family is. I’ve met them before, and I still get nervous. They’re just so casual; it’s unnerving.
“What time?”
“Four.” She checks her phone. “It’s four now. Shit.”
I sigh but reach for my shirt. “You want to tell them what we’ve been up to?”
“Nope,” she says quickly, popping the “p.” “I’ll say we were stuck in traffic and got smoothies. No one needs to know we’ve been making out on a mountaintop.”
I laugh. “Your secret’s safe with me.”
We gather our things and make our way back down the trail, hand in hand, sunlight painting everything golden. I’ve never felt so full—of love, of something real, of a future I didn’t see coming.
We’re almost to the Jeep when I see it—a glint of metal through the trees.
Camera lens.
Someone’s been watching.
I squeeze Eden’s hand. She follows my gaze, her jaw tightening.
“Paparazzi?”
“Maybe.”
She breathes out slowly. “Too late to run.”
We keep walking, cool and casual, but I stay close. I want to shield her. Not because she needs protection—but because shedeservespeace.
Once we’re in the car, I glance at her.
“You okay?”
Eden pulls her sunglasses from the dash and puts them on. “Let them take their shots. They’ll never capture what this day really was.”
I smile. “What was it?”
She turns to me, all sunshine and salt and fire, pulls her sunglasses down, and winks. I suppose she doesn’t need to put into words what today was or even what this week will mean for us. If I had to say, it’s the first of forever, as cheesy as it sounds.
I laugh, shake my head, and grip the oh-shit handle as she speeds down the road, away from the prying eyes and the headline that’ll likely read: Surfer Girl Lands the Snow Boy.
How’s that for cheese?