7. Chase
CHAPTER SEVEN
Chase
A horrible knocking woke me from a fantastic dream about warm, strong thighs wrapped around my head that I didn’t want to leave.
Not just because of the sex—although that had been amazing—but because of where we had been.
Somewhere calm and warm, the sound of the ocean close and steady, and the feeling of a place that didn’t need anything from me.
I hadn’t wanted to wake up from that part.
I lay there for a moment, trying to hold on to the edges of it, and it dissolved like dreams always do.
I was left with an industrial-detergent pillowcase, the smell of the Atlantic in my hair, and the ache of a man who had been sleeping in motels for three years.
But her soft smile lingered in my mind.
Selena Torres.
Most people thought the best part of being a professional athlete was the women who practically threw themselves at you.
It was.
But ever since Marcus’ accident…
Women came with the territory—competitions, appearances, the whole celebrity machine—and for a long time they’d been a reliable way to spend an evening without having to be Chase Perez.
I could be El Tiburón. El Tiburón was easy.
El Tiburón was charming and uncomplicated and woke up alone without it meaning anything, and then he got on the next flight.
That was the system. The system worked.
I hadn’t even fucked this girl, and she was haunting my dreams, somehow underneath the system, and I didn’t know what to do with that. So I lay there and told myself I was just horny, even as the taste of her blood and the spark between our fingers lingered.
I rolled onto my back. The ceiling had a popcorn texture, so I knew my agent had cheaped out on my motel. Outside, gulls were going at it. Inside, my body felt like I’d run it through a wood chipper and asked it to come out the other side ready for cardio.
Tiger shark muscles did not love being asked to remember how to be human muscles directly after swimming nearly four hundred miles.
I’d known that going in. I’d done it anyway. Because Chase Perez always did things the hard way.
Chase Perez was an idiot.
The door blew open.
“WAKE UP, EL TIBURóN.”
I groaned. “Out.”
“Diego brought breakfast.”
“Out.”
A weight landed on the bed, then another one, and then an elbow was in my ribs, and a knee was somewhere it had no business being.
I cracked an eye.
Tanner was shirtless, because Tanner was always shirtless, his hair wet from the ocean. They’d been out. Of course they’d been out. Dolphin shifters never seemed to sleep.
You know, it was honestly bullshit what a bad reputation sharks had, because there was no bigger asshole than a dolphin. But they had a much better PR person than we sharks did. I’d known these two since we were all groms surfing Lower Trestles.
Diego was at the foot of the bed eating my food.
“That’s mine.”
“Was yours.”
I groaned again. “Don’t you guys have your pod to bother?”
“They’re asleep.”
“I was asleep!”
Tanner shifted, his knee digging in.
“What’s got you in such a mood, Tibby?” he asked.
“I told you not to call me that.”
Tanner bounced on the mattress twice, just enough to communicate that he could keep doing it forever if he wanted to.
“Get up. The ocean doesn’t wait for anyone. You want to check out what all the RipTide guys are going on about with these ‘killer’ waves, or you want to keep being whatever this is?”
“What’s this?”
“Depressed,” Diego supplied. “He’s depressed.”
“I’m not depressed.”
“Then get up.”
I dragged myself up against the headboard. My hair was stiff and sticking up awkwardly.
Tanner leaned in and sniffed me, because that was a thing dolphins did that I had given up trying to stop, and then he made a noise like air coming out of a balloon.
“Oh no.”
“What now?”
“Oh no, no, no.”
“Tanner, I fucking swear—”
“You smell like magic, Tibby.”
Diego stopped chewing.
“Are you trying to flirt with me at nine in the morning—”
“You smell like salt and that scent that comes after lightning. That’s magic. You run into a witch last night?”
“I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”
But this was a magical town, wasn’t it? I’d spent so long in the human world that I’d just assumed Selena was one of those Etsy witches, cursing someone’s ex for a buck—maybe her own.
But here, she could have been the real deal.
That would explain why I couldn’t seem to get her out of my head, the spark I’d felt.
Apparently my silence was confirmation enough.
“Oh, it was a witch,” Diego said around my pizza.
“That is not witch. That is the Atlantic Ocean. I swam here.”
“The Atlantic does not smell like that, Tibby. The Atlantic smells like the Atlantic. What you smell like is a woman who is also a magical battery.”
“I don’t—”
“You let a witch touch you.”
“She didn’t touch me.”
Diego’s eyebrows climbed. “She didn’t touch him.”
“SHE DIDN’T TOUCH HIM!” Tanner shouted, so I’m sure the whole damn motel could hear.
“Will you both get out of my room?”
“I see what you’re doing.” Tanner stretched, taking up the majority of my bed. “Trying to get a little edge on us, huh? Wanna get a little magic on your side?”
“Dude, what in Amphitrite’s tits are you talking about?”
Diego and Tanner both sat up.
“He doesn’t know?”
“He doesn’t know.”
“I swear I am one more word away from eating you both.”
Diego sat on the edge of the bed next to Tanner.
Great. Just great.
“Witches are magical conduits, compa. Get her juiced up right, and you can even get a little magical boost. You know what I’m saying?”
Before I could answer, Tanner shouted again.
“You gotta make her come is what he means!”
“Dude, would you quiet the fuck down?”
I rubbed my forehead. I wasn’t going to admit to these assholes that I’d been clinging to the dissolving edges of a dream about her, and her smile and the laugh I knew didn’t get much use—
I shook my head.
Stop it, Perez. You know what happens when you get like this. People get hurt.
“That is, if you think you can.” Tanner grinned, jumping on the bed again.
I caught him at the peak of his jump and shoved him to the floor with a satisfying smack.
I needed to stop this conversation before one of these assholes brought up something stupid, like those…
what was Tanner always talking about? Sated mates?
That was some mammal-shifter shit. Sharks didn’t work like that, although my partners were always sated, and I did enjoy leaving my mark.
“Unlike you selfish bastards, I know a lady always comes first. But I also don’t need any magical steroids or whatever the fuck this is. I’ll win this competition just fine without it.”
“Good to see you so confident, Tibby. I mean, can you imagine not winning your own comeback comp?” Tanner said from the floor.
“Get out of my room.”
“Chase.”
“I’m calling security.”
“Be my guest. They love us already.”
Of course they fucking did—goddamn dolphins.
“Well.” Diego pushed to his feet. “Confident or not, we gotta go get a read on these waves either way.”
I groaned, knowing he was right, when my phone buzzed on the nightstand. I saw the name on the screen, and my whole body went stiff.
Diego, the brains of their operation, noticed and left the room. Tanner followed, pouting and taking my pillow with him for no reason at all.
“Thirty minutes,” I said. “Outside.”
“Yes, sir, Captain, sir,” Tanner replied, walking backward. “Tell her I say hi,” he added with a wink.
No way in the Mariana Trench was I doing that.
The door clicked shut. I answered before it could go to voicemail.
“Hey, Mai.”
“You sound like you just woke up.”
“I just woke up.”
“Typical Chase. Don’t you have a competition in a few days?”
“Yes, but we aren’t talking about that. What’s up? Why the call?”
“Nothing! I’m allowed to call my big brother just because I want to talk to him. Don’t make it weird.”
“I’m not making it weird.”
“You’re making it weird. Bet you did that thing where you swam for five hours straight and acted surprised your human body was sore the next day.”
“It was six hours, actually.”
She laughed softly, as she always did. She was always one step ahead of me.
“I’ll give you the medical part on Sunday. That’s the deal.”
I didn’t like it, but I wasn’t going to fight her. “Fine, then why the call?”
A pause filled with the sound of a machine beeping on her end that I didn’t ask about.
“I saw Marcus this morning.”
The room got smaller.
“Yeah?”
“He’s doing the pool work now, the resistance stuff. His shoulder’s better than they thought. Way better.”
“That’s good.”
“He says hi.”
I didn’t have anything to say to that.
“He said hi.”
“I heard you.”
“Chase…”
“He didn’t say hi.”
“He’s been saying hi for a while, Chase. He says it to me, and I don’t pass it on because you do this.”
She breathed out, the gentle way she did when she was choosing her next words carefully.
“He’s not—he isn’t holding it. I think he stopped holding it a long time ago, honestly, and he’s been waiting on you.”
“He told you that?”
“He didn’t have to.”
“Mai—”
“He had coffee with me yesterday. He asked me how you were, and I told him sometimes you call and sometimes you don’t, and he said, ‘Tell him I said hi.’ So I’m telling you. That’s all.”
I didn’t say anything. There was warmth in her voice when she’d said we had coffee that I had heard exactly once before, when she was sixteen and a boy had brought her flowers and asked her to the spring dance.
“Mai.”
“Don’t.”
“Mai.”
“Don’t, or I am hanging up. I will hang up, and I will not pick up on Sunday—”
“Fine.”
She paused and I let her.
“Are you okay?” she hedged.
“I’m fine.”
“You don’t sound fine.”
“I’m functionally fine.”
“That is not a thing.”
“It is. I’m making it a thing. It’ll be trending on TikTok in a week.”
She laughed, the small one, the one that was mostly breath.
I lived for that laugh.
I would have signed away anything for that laugh, and in a sense, I had, every month, when the hospital billed me for her experimental treatment. A treatment for a human disease in a shifter body, and my accountant moved numbers around so my sister could keep being someone who laughed.
“Have you talked to Mom or Dad lately?” she asked.
“No.” I wasn’t bringing this up again.
“Chase…”
“Just tell me how treatment is going, please.”
She sighed but didn’t fight me. She knew that one was a losing battle. “It’s going good. They send you updates, you know that.”
“I want to hear it from you.”
“I think it hurts less than it used to, but…it’s hard to tell sometimes. The physical rehab seems to help a lot too. It’s nice having Marcus as a buddy.”
“Mai…”
“Love you! Don’t fuck up your competition, okay? Someone has to pay for this shit.”
I laughed, maybe the first real laugh in a while.
“You know I’ve always got you.”
Her voice softened. “I know. I love you. Take care of yourself too, okay?”
“Bye, Mai.”
“Bye, Chase.”
She hung up.
I sat there with the phone in my hand for a while. Outside, the seagulls were still screaming.
Marcus said hi.
Marcus, who I hadn’t spoken to in three years and four months. Who had thirteen pins in his shoulder and a dead career as a pro surfer.
Marcus, who was at the same facility in Maimi where my sister was being kept alive, because my accountant paid for both of them out of the same line item, and the line item was, in spreadsheets I was not supposed to have seen, Perez Obligations.
Marcus, who had stopped being mad. Who was having coffee with my sister in a courtyard. Who was waiting on me.
I got up.
I went into the bathroom, ran the cold tap, dunked my head under it, and held it there for a count of fifteen until all the spreadsheets and debts drifted away and there was only the rush of ice-cold water.
You shake it off. You go out there. You grin at the cameras and you spike a RipTide bottle into the sand like you mean it and you get paid. Knock another number off the ledger.
I straightened and glared at the guy in the mirror.
He looked tan and tired, and like he had earned every single bit of what was coming for him.
I shook it off, then stepped out into the hallway.
Tanner was sitting on the floor eating a banana. Diego was nowhere.
“You good?”
“I’m great.”
“Cool. Diego found a girl in the lobby. We’re not gonna see him for two hours minimum. You wanna go check out the waves?”
“Yeah.” I closed the door behind me. “Let’s go.”