Chapter 20 Bellamy
BELLAMY
I taste salt before I even hit the water.
The air hangs thick with it—that strange, heavy warmth that blurs the horizon into something dreamlike and deceptive.
Light fractures across the waves in gold ribbons, slicing through memories I can't outrun.
This beach used to mean freedom. No messed-up mom bleeding mascara onto the kitchen floor.
No teachers with their concerned eyes following me down hallways.
No responsibilities crushing my chest for a few precious hours.
Just sunshine burning my shoulders, salt water stinging my cuts, and borrowed boards that felt more like home than home ever did.
Back when life still felt like it might open for us, instead of folding shut.
I wiggle my toes deeper into the sand, feeling the cool grit slide between them.
The top layer crumbles away dry, but underneath hides that dawn-damp coolness that makes my skin tighten.
By noon, this same sand will sear footprints into my soles, force beach-goers into that familiar hop-skip dance to the water's edge.
My body is exhausted from the past two weeks. Eight night runs with Cruz that stretched into the early hours of morning. It’s enough to tire anyone out, but adding in our history put an entirely different spin on it. I crawled into bed every morning feeling like someone coiled my veins too tight.
I’m wide awake mentally, every nerve ending lit up like a Christmas tree, thoughts racing with that familiar electric current that always floods my system before a job.
Only in the ocean does my mind finally stop screaming at me.
“Bells,” Lola calls, voice too bright for the hour. “Stop staring at the water like you’re about to break up with it.”
I huff out a sound that’s halfway to a laugh. “I’m not staring.”
“You so are,” she says, bouncing down the dune trail with her board tucked under one arm. “And you’re doing the broody thing again. It’s scaring the tourists.”
I drag my gaze away from the waves and force a smile. “I don’t brood,” I huff, rolling my eyes. “This is my tired face. Besides, there are no tourists here.”
She gives me a look—the I know you’re lying but I’ll let you finish look—then drops her board with a soft thud that sends a small explosion of sand spraying across my ankles.
“Yeah, well. Good news. I brought caffeine.” She holds up two canned cold brews triumphantly. “Bad news: they’re not super cold.”
“My favorite,” I say, grabbing a can and popping the tab. It hisses like a warning shot.
Lola grins. Her hair’s up in a messy knot, and she’s wearing a dark gray wetsuit. She looks so much like the little sister who used to run barefoot through the neighbor’s sprinklers that my chest aches for a second. Then she punches my arm, hard enough to sting, and the nostalgia shatters.
“You’re gonna smoke me, aren’t you?” She grins, and for a moment, the knot under my sternum loosens. This—sun on our shoulders, sand clinging to our ankles, Lola chirping like she’s never been afraid of anything—is as close to normal as we get anymore.
“Come on,” she says, nudging me toward the water. “The ocean waits for no man.”
I laugh and let her drag me down the shelf of sand and follow her into the surf, the caffeine burning cold and bitter on my tongue.
The water’s freezing at this hour, but that’s half the point.
The first wave slaps against my legs, numbing them to the knee, and one last deep breath and I’m under.
Lola paddles out ahead of me, arms slicing the surface with competitive fury. In the water, she’s a shark—no hesitation, no fear, just pure animal muscle memory. I let her get a head start. I need to feel the cold close around me, need it to burn the ghosts out of my head.
It’s not even a real swell yet, just a scattered windchop that leaves my arms burning after every duck dive. I force myself to keep moving, keep paddling, keep my gaze on the horizon and not on the black shape of last week’s stress curling behind my sternum.
Lola catches the first wave. She rides it standing, arms pinwheeling for balance, cuts left at the last second and wipes out in a spectacular spray. Her laughter echoes over the water, wild and bright, and for a second I want to bottle it just to remind myself what happiness sounds like.
My own wave comes a minute later, a glassy shoulder that rears up just enough to make my arms ache.
I drop in, carving low, the board catching under my toes.
For one perfect stretch of seconds, the world shrinks to my body and the water and the thundering rush in my ears.
No jobs, no calls, no ghosts. Just movement.
I ride it until the wave fizzles out beneath me, then collapse back, floating on my back with lungs burning and salt stinging my lips. The sky overhead is washed peach and blue, the kind of color that makes you believe in happily-ever-afters.
For the first time in weeks, my brain goes quiet—like someone flipped a switch, silencing the constant static of worry that's been crackling between my ears.
The noise fades to nothing but the hollow rush of water against my eardrums and the distant thump of my slowing heartbeat. Almost perfect silence. Almost peace.
Almost.
Because even out here, with the world cracked wide open and shimmering, a flicker of memory nips at me—Cruz’s profile lit by headlights, the soft hum of the truck engine beneath us, the clean efficiency of how he moved, how he watched me.
Lola surfaces beside me, spitting water and shouts, “You’re slow!” before she’s even upright on her board.
“Bite me,” I call, but there’s no heat in it. We float, catching our breath, drifting a little farther out with each lazy kick.
Lola props her chin on the nose of her board and watches me, the way she used to when she was little—open, earnest, full of questions she was just waiting for the perfect time to ask.
“You’re thinking about them, aren’t you?”
I bob on the surface, letting the words soak through the wetsuit and into my skin. “I’m thinking about everyone.” I let my fingers trail the surface, tiny disruptions in the skin of the ocean. “Past. Present. Who we’re supposed to be, and who we actually are.”
She hums. “That’s a lot for seven in the morning.”
“You’re not wrong,” I admit.
Lola spins her board with a powerful kick, drifting around to face me head-on. “Want to tell me what’s actually going on? You’ve been wound tighter than Beck’s budget spreadsheet since the model home meeting. And don’t say it’s just job nerves, because I know you.”
She’s right. The anxiety isn’t about the job.
Not really. That part is clean—brutal, but clean.
It’s the in-between that’s messing with me.
The hours after recon, when my brain won’t let go of the memory of Cruz’s shoulder pressed to mine, or the way Gage looks at me like he’s reading my future off my face, or the cold, unreadable patience in Rafe’s eyes.
It’s the way Bishop’s voice keeps echoing in my head, the way he said my name like it was a dare.
But mostly, it' s the guilt eating at me like salt on a wound. I keep wondering if I doomed us by saying yes to this job with the Calloways. There are a thousand different ways this can go sideways, and each one plays on repeat in my mind like some warped background music.
“Earth to Bells.” Lola splashes water at me. “Stay with me. You keep drifting off.”
“I’m right here.” I flick water back at her.
She squints at me, her lips curling up at one corner. “No, you're off in lala land thinking about—”
“Don't.”
Her eyes widen. She slaps the surface of the water, sending droplets across my face as she rocks forward on her board. “Your ears are turning red! I knew it! You’re totally thinking about dick.”
“Jesus, Lola.” I groan, shaking my head and dragging my palm down my face.
“The only question is: who?” she continues like I didn’t say anything.
I blow out a breath, my cheeks puffing out. “Oh my god. You’re ridiculous, you know that, right?”
She grins. “Maybe. But I’m not wrong though.”
I laugh. “You are actually. I’m actually thinking about how I’m going to keep you and Beck from murdering each other when you both get hangry on the job.”
Lola rolls her eyes and flops back to float on her board, arms out, fingers trailing through the water.
“Coward. Deflection is a classic Bellamy move, but it’s not gonna work on me.
” She glances over, her gaze serious for a second.
“You know you can talk to me, right? Even if it’s about the Calloways. ”
Something in her voice makes me go soft around the edges. I tread water, watching the way the morning light plays off her cheekbones and her nose crinkle in a way that makes me want to hug her until she shuts up or punches me, whichever comes first.
The thought makes me smile, and the smile feels like it might split me in half.
I don’t know how to say any of it out loud—how much I missed her, how much I want to keep her safe, how I wish I could carve out a world that doesn’t hurt the people I love.
Every time I try to form the words, they stick and turn bitter.
So instead I duck my head and let the water close over my ears for a heartbeat, let the noise and the pressure drown the need for language.
When I come up, Lola is still there, watching, her face unreadable in the white sunlight.
We float a while, not speaking, the boards bobbing and rocking, letting the ebb and flow do the heavy lifting. The silence is different now—gentler. Like maybe she gets it. Or maybe she knows I’m a second away from unraveling and is just giving me time to catch my own thread.
After a long minute, Lola says, “You think we’re gonna pull this off?”
The question is quiet, careful, almost reverent. Not like her usual bravado, not the kind of thing she’d normally ask. It’s a small, spiky thing, and it slips between my ribs before I can brace for impact.
I want to tell her the truth: that I have no fucking clue.
That I can see the math and the logic and the odds, but still—there’s this feeling in the pit of my gut, some animal instinct that says the world is about to slide out from under us.
That the Calloways are a swirling, beautiful disaster that might save us or drown us, and I’m stupid enough to think I can ride the wave all the way to shore.
But Lola’s looking at me like she needs something sturdy to hold.
So I give it to her. “Yeah,” I say, and the word comes out stronger than I expect. “Yeah, I do. Between us and the Calloways, I think we’ve got it handled.”
She lets out a long, slow exhale. “That’s all I wanted to hear,” she says, voice light but eyes serious. “Because, Bells? If anyone else on earth tried to drag me into a job with the Calloways, I’d tell them to eat shit. And you know it.”
I do know it. The thought cracks something open in my chest, brief and bright. “If it goes south, I’ll get you and Beck out. No matter what.”
Lola paddles closer, her knuckles knocking mine under the water. “I know.” She says it like it’s already a forgone conclusion. “And I’ll get you out.”
I don’t bother arguing with her. It’s the same conversation we’ve had dozens of times.
I love you too, I think, too thick with emotion to say it out loud. I let the ocean do the talking for me, salt and light and the deep, endless hush you only get underwater. I dive again, pushing down through the cold, chasing the sun-spun patterns shivering along the sandy bottom.
When I surface, the world is loud—the smacks of waves, cackling gulls, Lola’s laughter riding the wind.
For a moment, I let myself pretend that’s all there is.
That the world is only ocean and sky, and there’s nothing waiting for us on the shore except more sunlight and maybe a breakfast burrito if we hustle.
I float on my back, blinking up at the endless blue, and I almost believe it’s possible.
We paddle in when our arms are jelly and the sun has burned away the last of the morning fog. Lola sprints up the sand, feet barely touching the ground, and I follow, dragging my board and shaking water from my hair.
My limbs feel heavy in a good way, wrung out and alive. There’s a moment after a long surf when your body is so tired that you’ve been emptied out, a bucket with nothing left to give, but it’s all right because you’re clean inside and the universe is quiet.
For the briefest moment, it makes me think maybe I can live like this—always a little sore, always a little sunburned, always a little empty in a way that feels almost holy.
Lola’s already halfway to the car, calling over her shoulder. “If you don’t hurry, I’m gonna order food without you!”
I’m jogging to catch up when the hairs on my arms lift. A prickle of awareness, a shift in the air I can’t explain.
My gaze sweeps the parking lot—the salt-crusted Jeep that belongs to the old guy who surfs every morning, a cluster of motorcycles gleaming in the sun, and a black SUV cutting diagonally across two spaces like whoever parked it was in a hurry or didn't care.
It’s familiar in a way that snaps my pulse like a rubber band. Maybe I’m just overtired, but it kind of looks like one of the Calloway’s trucks.
The sun glints off the windshield, blinding me for a beat. When the light clears, my stomach drops. There’s someone in the driver’s seat.
Lola follows my line of sight. “What’re you looking at?”
“Nothing,” I say quickly.
She shoots me a look. “Okay, well, hurry up then, because I’m starving.”
We load our boards on the rack, and I feel that zip of nerves again. The SUV looks like it’s a Calloway vehicle, and for a split second I think it’s Gage—because it’s always Gage in my brain, even when it shouldn’t be. But when I risk a glance, it’s definitely not his profile in the driver’s seat.
And I have no idea why that disappoints me.