Chapter 3 – Miles
THREE
MILES
We settle the girls’ tab quickly, after Grant convinces his sister to climb off the bar rather than fall like her friend, before ushering them out of the bar. June and Lainey, stumble along though Claire seems pretty steady on her feet despite falling off a bar top minutes earlier.
“What were you thinking?” I ask as we step into the night air. It’s a warmer night than usual for early May, but the breeze off the ocean is still cool. Without my conscious permission, my mind wonders if she’s cold in the tiny tank top and shorts she’s wearing.
Claire gives me a confused look, her cheeks still flushed from dancing in the warm bar. “What?”
“Dancing on top of a bar? You could’ve broken your neck.” The thoughts of her getting hurt makes my hand clench and my gut twist, and I have to remind myself the only reason I’m worried about her safety is because she’s Paul’s, and I’ve spent my entire life protecting Paul.
She’s just an extension of that.
“I wouldn’t have broken my neck . God. You’re so dramatic.”
“The only reason you didn’t is because I caught you,” I argue.
She rolls her eyes at that, crossing her arms on her chest and facing me. “I only fell because you startled me.”
She crosses her arms on her full chest and I try to focus on the irritation brewing in my bones and not the low cut of her top or my unsettling urge to move the hair that the ocean breeze is blowing around from her face so I could see her better.
It’s always been this way with Claire, ever since I first met her when she was far, far too young for me when she came to visit June that first summer. She was nineteen to my twenty-five and just as wild as she is now.
“You were in a busy nightclub. You were bound to be startled at some point.”
She shrugs and smiles. “Well, then, I guess I’m lucky you were there to catch me, right?”
I glare, and she smiles sweetly back before I shake my head, deciding it’s not worth the effort. “Where’s Paul?” I ask. From the corner of my eye, June’s shoulders shake as she lets out a snort, then whispers to Grant, but I can’t focus on them and Claire before me.
“Paul?” she asks, looking confused.
“Paul. My brother. Your boyfriend? Where is he?” She tips her head to the side and gives me a strange, quizzical look I don’t understand. Am I in a fucking twilight zone?
“Well, I’m assuming back in California, but who knows, maybe he already ran out of money and had to move somewhere else.”
My brows furrow, and then I watch as slowly a smile spreads across her lips, understanding hitting her.
“Oh, you don’t know, do you?” She tips her head a bit, hair tumbling to the side as she puts her hands on her full hips, looking at me in what seems to be a new light.
“Don’t know what?”
“We broke up. Six months ago or so?” She looks to June who nods, confirming the timeline.
“You broke up?” I ask, fervently ignoring the unsettling way my body and mind are reacting to this new information. “What happened?”
I shouldn’t ask because I shouldn’t care, but here I am.
Asking.
Caring .
“Let’s see, I gave him an ultimatum to treat me halfway decent or I would leave and, well, you know Paul. He seemed to think that was the most outlandish request, so I left.”
This is news to me, but suddenly, his new need for money makes sense.
Fuck.
This new reality tumbles over me.
Claire Donovan is single.
And in my hometown.
I need to get her home and myself away from her as soon as possible.
“Come on. Where are you staying? With June? Let’s get you home,” I say, looking to Grant, who is clearly saying the same to his sister and Lainey.
“I don’t want to go home yet,” Claire says defiantly.
I shake my head and put a hand to her elbow, feeling the jolt of electricity that shoots through me when I’m near her. “Too bad. You made enough of a scene for one night, and it’s getting late. Let’s go.”
She tips her head, looking at me curiously. “You’re not my dad, and you’re not my boyfriend. I don’t have to do what you say. You realize that, right?”
I close my eyes and sigh with exasperation.
“I don’t want to be doing this all night, Claire.”
She shrugs out of reach and takes a step backward, a twinkle in her eye I very much do not like before she speaks. “Then don’t.” Then she’s turning on her heel and walking down the boardwalk, away from me.
“Claire,” I call out as I watch her move toward the set of stairs leading to the beach. She turns and begins walking backward with her eyes on me, a playful smirk on her lips. “Claire, what are you doing?”
She has some plans I know I am not going to like.
“I want to go swimming,” Claire says suddenly, then looks at her friend.
“Claire, it’s going to be freezing,” June says with a drunken laugh. “It’s May.”
Everyone here knows the ocean doesn’t really warm up until late July at the earliest, but Claire shrugs as if hypothermia only impacts the weak before slipping her shoes off on the boards.
“So?”
“It’s dark.” I add to the list of reasons this is a terrible idea, crossing my arms on my chest and watching her take the first stair. “You could get hurt.” Clearly, that was the wrong fucking thing to say because she turns back to me with a wide smile, her face gleaming in one of the overhead lights that flicker on at dusk, and steps into the sand.
“Claire,” I say in a warning. What exactly I’m warning her of, I have no idea, and she knows it when she glances at me over her shoulder, thoroughly entertained.
“Who’s coming with me?!” she yells, then starts moving toward the shoreline.
“Literally no one,” I shout, as I jump over the railing. I don’t move toward the water yet, but I start slipping off my sneakers, somehow already knowing I’ll have to go in after her.
That’s confirmed when she gets within five feet of the waves and tosses her wallet into the sand. “Claire!” She looks over her shoulder at me once again, the dim moonlight glinting off her wide smile as she shrugs off her shorts, revealing a tiny thong and her perfectly shaped ass.
Fuck me.
I force my gaze to move to the sand and my feet to start moving in her direction. While I keep my eyes averted, I hear the splash of Claire running into the water, and my eyes shift back to her figure, finding her already waist-deep in the ocean.
“Claire, get out of there,” I say, moving toward the water as she dives under. She takes off her top and throws it onto the shore, the wet fabric landing next to me with a loud thwack. I’m not sure if she has a bra on underneath, but I hope to all that is good in the world she does. I’m not sure I could handle a topless Claire right now.
“Make me!” she shouts, and Grant lets out a loud laugh from the boardwalk behind me. I look over at my best friend, standing there with his arms crossed over his chest, a wide, entertained smile on his lips, and know I am completely fucked.
No one is going to help me.
“Claire, get out of the ocean before you drown.” If June and Lainey are anything to go by, Claire is hammered, and everyone knows drunk people and large bodies of water are a terrible combination.
“Come get me!”
“What?”
“Come and get me,” she repeats, then goes under the water, coming up with her blonde hair slicked back. “You know you want to.”
Something about her invitation hits somewhere it very much should not. I can’t feasibly deny that Claire Donovan is fucking gorgeous. Everyone who encounters her knows it, and worst of all, so does she.
But she’s also Paul’s. Or at least she used to be.
There was a small moment in time when I thought maybe she could be mine, but as always, my brother gets what he wants, or, more accurately, what he knew I wanted, and Claire was no different.
Except now she’s apparently single and drunk and she’s swimming in the ocean, begging me to come in with her. A siren, promising to ruin me.
“Isn’t it freezing?” I ask as I step closer to the water, already coming to terms with the fact that I’m going into the water to get her and drag her to dry land. I reach behind me, grabbing my T-shirt and tugging it off before throwing it on the sand, my wallet, phone, and keys following.
“It’s not warm,” she says with a smile, leaning back and flipping her legs up into the air as if she has not a care in the world.
“So why are you in there?” I take a step closer, and the tide comes up, lapping at my feet, making me shiver. The water is fucking freezing .
“You ever do anything just…to feel alive?”
I shake my head and watch her swimming as if she’s in a heated pool.
“No.”
“No?” she asks with a laugh.
I feel idiotic, yelling back and forth over the ocean like this.
“No, I just live, and then I feel alive. Like a normal person.”
“You’re a bucket of fun, aren’t you?”
“At least I’m warm. You’re going to freeze to death out there.”
“Warm and boring,” she taunts.
I let out a deep sigh and cross my arms on my chest. My toes have started to get used to the cold, though I very much do not want to test it on my entire body.
“Come on, Claire, Get out of the water.”
She shakes her head. “You’re going to have to come in and get me if you want me to come out.”
“Claire, get out of there so I don’t have to tell your family you drowned on my watch.”
“I’m not going to drown, Miles. I’m a strong swimmer.”
I groan aloud, looking to the night sky. “That’s what everyone says in the movies right before they drown.”
“Then come save me, oh, knight in shining armor,” she says with a tease in her voice, then dips under the water again.
Once she’s out of sight completely, I wait.
And I wait.
And I wait for what feels like an eternity, though it’s probably just a few moments before panic starts to sink in. Without even looking at our friends on the boardwalk, I move on a mission, making my way into the water toward where Claire disappeared. The water isn’t too deep, but I know where she was standing. The sand drops off a bit, making it so she probably can’t touch the sand. Freezing cold water sloshes around me as I move to where I think she could be, panic blocking out the cold as I frantically search for her, a dozen worst-case scenarios running through my mind.
I’m into my ribs when blonde hair pops up, a bright smile greeting me.
“What the hell, Claire?” I ask, staring at the woman in front of me. Relief tinged with irritation rushes through me as my eyes move over her, assessing to make sure she’s okay.
“Were you scared?” she asks, beaming at me as she drifts to her back, staring at the stars as she floats in the water.
The sea is relatively calm tonight, and we’re past where the waves break, so she bobs up and down as gentle waves pass us. She has a bra on, thank fuck, because I already got a good look at her ass: I don’t need to remember what her tits look like, too, every time I see her wandering around with June.
“I don’t want to watch you die in front of me. You were underwater and drunk. That’s a terrible combo.”
She turns her head to me with a smile, her hair fanning out around her in the water before she shifts her body until she’s upright again.
“I’m not drunk.”
“Claire,” I say, giving her a don’t bullshit me look, and she lets out a small laugh in response.
“I had one drink and two shots over a two-hour span. June? June is hammered, Lainey is pretty sloshed, but I’m not drunk. Buzzed, yeah. But not drunk.”
“You were dancing on a bar.”
She shrugs. “It sounded like fun and our song came on.” I bypass that explanation, moving to my next example.
“You ran into the ocean.” This time, she splashes cold water at me with a giggle. I wipe it out of my eyes as I tread water.
“It also sounded like fun.”
“You disappeared under the water, Claire,” I say through gritted teeth, partially from the frigid water and part from irritation that she isn’t taking her safety—or the concern of others—into consideration.
Just like Paul, she refuses to care about how her choices impact those around her.
I shift back toward the shore until my feet are on sand, done with this game of hers.
“I was on the swim team. I can hold my breath for a while.” Her smile widens, and she elegantly swims over to me as if we’re not in freezing cold water before putting an arm around my neck. Her body is warm against mine, a relief in the frigid cold of the water, but I force my mind not to focus on that. Not even when her hand is moving up to my cheek, her eyes zeroed in on my face as her thumb brushes a drop of water from my mustache. “Were you worried about me, Miles?”
She says it so softly and so sweetly, it takes me aback.
A beat passes before I answer. “I wouldn’t want something to happen to you,” I tell her honestly, but the words come out like a deep growl.
Suddenly, this moment feels so much more intimate than it should be. I don’t know if it’s in my head, but if we’re being honest, sometimes that’s the most dangerous type of intimacy.
“You’re cute, you know,” she says after a moment.
I sigh and shake my head, taking a step backward, closer to the shore, and taking her with me. “Claire, come on. Clearly you’re starting to lose it. Let’s get you out of this water before you freeze to death.” I soften my words, trying to take the irritation out of them that’s simmering in my veins.
“I’m serious, I always thought so. Ask June.” She lets go of me as I attempt to take another step toward the shore, swimming a few feet away.
My pulse skips a beat at her words, but I shake my head again. I don’t care what she says, I’m convinced Claire is drunk off her ass, or else she would not be acting like this.
“Well, I always thought you were a pain in my ass, so,” I say, hoping I sound the least bit convincing, considering it is a huge fucking lie.
I reach for her again, fully prepared to drag her to shore if I have to, but she shifts out of reach once more before I can.
“Claire, you’re going to put the man into cardiac arrest!” June says with a laugh. Her words and Grant’s following laughter snap me out of whatever trance Claire had me in.
“Come on. We really have to get you out of this water,” I say in earnest now. “I’m fucking freezing.” I tip my head toward the sand where Grant, June, and Lainey are now standing.
She rolls her eyes, but finally her soft hand slides into mine, and she follows as I start to trudge toward the shore, the cool night air making me shiver as more skin breaches the water.
“You’re insane, you know,” June says to her friend, and Claire shrugs.
“Life’s short.”
“Shorter when you’ve got a death wish,” I grumble, and she lets out a small laugh.
“You’re a fun one, Claire,” Grant says, and I glare at him for encouraging her. “What? She is!”
“She’s gonna freeze,” I say, looking at the woman as she bends in her fucking underwear, ass aimed at me, twisting her long blonde hair and wringing the water from it before she reaches for the shorts June is holding out for her. She grabs a clip from the belt loops I didn’t see before, pinning the wet locks up with it.
“I’m not going to freeze,” she says with another roll of her eyes, but shivers a bit despite herself. When she reaches for her top, she finds it soaking and covered in sand before she cringes at it.
“Your lips are blue,” I say, looking at her, and a bolt of unwanted alarm rushes through me.
“I’ll be fine,” she says as she slides her dry jean shorts on. “Nice to know you’re looking at my lips, though.”
How does she do that? Turn everything into some kind of taunt or flirt, some proof that I’m looking at her, thinking about her.
I am, but I don’t need her to know about it.
I sigh, grabbing my T-shirt and shaking the sand out of it before offering it to her. “Here.”
She puts a hand to her chest, and I force my eyes not to follow it to her full breasts cupped in a soaking wet bra.
“For me? A true gentleman.”
“You’re cold, that’s all.”
I expect her to argue, but she just shrugs before sliding the shirt on. It’s huge on her petite frame, the hem covering her shorts.
Thankfully, before my mind can settle on how much I like seeing Miller Automotive cross her chest, I’m distracted when she pulls her arms inside the shirt and starts fumbling under the worn fabric. Before I know it, her bra slides out the bottom.
I close my eyes and pray for patience, realizing she doesn’t have anything under my shirt now.
Lainey drunkenly looks from me to Claire, a smile spreading along her lips before she speaks. “All right, well, that’s enough fun for one night. Thanks for saving her, Miles!”
“He didn’t save me!” Claire argues, but Lainey ignores her.
“Come on, June. We should get you guys home,” Lainey says.
Claire sighs, putting an arm around her friend and moving her up the sand toward the boardwalk. June stumbles a few times in the stand, and her brother moves next to her, always wanting to help but knowing she’s too stubborn to accept it.
But all I can do is watch Claire Donovan move up toward the dunes in my shirt.
And fuck, does it look good on her.
“See you around, Miles,” she says over her shoulder.
For my sanity, I sure as fuck hope not.