11. Selena
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Selena
How dare he. How dare this stranger—whose name I was very sure wasn’t Tibby—look even better in the daylight than I remembered.
I’d half convinced myself I’d hallucinated the thick biceps and neck tattoos as some part of approaching-ovulation madness, but no—here he was, looking like some Instagram fuckboy with his cut-off sleeves, his goddamn lip piercing glinting in the morning sun, and his cap turned backward.
That was practically like walking around in lingerie for hulking guys with cute smiles.
He caught my gaze, smiling like he knew exactly what I was thinking about. Did his face ever get tired, smiling like that?
I was thinking about the plan. The plan. That was all I was thinking about.
“Ladies first,” I said again, because he was still smiling and I needed to be doing something.
I rolled my shoulders back, shook out my hands, and jumped up to the bar.
My grip found it automatically, the worn smooth wood familiar under my palms. I did these every morning.
I did them before the tourists arrived and after they left and sometimes in between if a customer made me want to climb the walls. This bar and me went way back.
I felt him watching and started my count.
The first ten pull-ups were easy, chin clean over the bar each time, controlled on the way down. I heard Tanner say something behind me, but my focus had narrowed to the bar and my breath and the burn starting in my lats, the good kind, the kind that meant I was pushing myself.
Fifteen.
Eighteen.
My palms were sweating, and my grip was going. My back screamed, but I managed two more.
Twenty.
I dropped, landing clean, and turned around.
“Tibby” had his arms crossed and his head tilted, but his expression had shifted. The easy grin was still there, but underneath it was something more focused, unsettling even, like he was zeroed in on me and I had nowhere to go.
“Twenty,” Tanner announced helpfully from the bartop. “That’s—yeah, very impressive.”
“Your turn.” I arched a brow at “Tibby.”
He unfolded from where he was leaning, took off the shark tooth necklace he was wearing, and put it in his pocket before jumping up to the bar in one effortless motion.
He did the first ten like I’d done mine, clean and effortless.
Then he did ten more.
His gaze never left mine as he pulled up again, then again. Then five more. They weren’t as easy by the end. His jaw was set, and I watched his shoulders and the veins in his forearms and the flex of the tattoo across his biceps with an attention that had nothing to do with the contest.
He dropped at twenty-eight.
Neither of us said anything for a second.
“Best of three.”
“That wasn’t in the terms,” he drawled, though his voice held no annoyance.
“The terms have been amended.”
“Don’t like to lose, do you?”
He had no idea.
He studied me with that same focused look beneath the cocky performance.
“All right. Best of three.”
Tanner made a sound from the bar. We both looked at him.
“I’m not here,” he said. “I’m a plant. Proceed.”
Round two I pushed to twenty-three. The burn had moved past good and into humbling, my grip starting to argue with me around rep fifteen this time, but I held form, hit twenty-three, and dropped, breathing harder than I wanted him to see.
He did twenty-three and a half.
Hung there at the top of the last one, chin barely over the bar, holding it for a beat longer than necessary before dropping.
“Half reps don’t count.”
He grinned up at me from the sand. “Half reps absolutely count.”
“In what competition—”
“In this one, Selena.” He flashed me a devastating wink.
It landed somewhere in my sternum and shot straight downward.
Focus, Torres. This is just for your magic. The plan. Remember the plan.
But the plan had gone out the door when I’d challenged him, the part of me that couldn’t bear to fail at the one thing I could do lashing out, refusing to go down against this stranger.
“One more round. I’ll do more.”
“You’ve already done forty-three. Your grip is going.”
“My grip is fine.”
“Your left hand is bleeding.”
I glanced down. A small tear at the base of my ring finger, the kind you got when you pushed past where you should have. I closed my hand into a fist. How had he noticed that?
“I’m fine.”
He stepped closer. Not dramatically—just enough that I had to choose between holding my ground or stepping back.
And I was not stepping back.
He leaned in, his voice low against my ear.
“You don’t have to prove anything to me. Unless, of course”—his thumb grazed my hip—“this isn’t really about pull-ups.”
“That’s not—”
“Third round.” He pulled back. “Show me what you’ve got.”
I hopped back onto the bar.
Four reps in, he jumped up facing me.
I almost lost my grip entirely.
He caught the bar just outside my hands, close enough that when we both pulled up the first time, my stomach brushed his.
He watched me with the cocky act stripped away, no more pretense to hide his intensity, and I decided not to look at his mouth and focused on his collarbone instead, which was not a significant improvement.
“What are you doing?”
“Keeping you honest. No kips.”
He lowered himself down.
I lowered myself down.
And no matter how hard I tried, my body slid along his.
“You’re cheating.”
“Oh, so you’re the only one who gets to make up rules?” He pulled up again, and when he came back down, his thigh slid right between mine.
Six…seven…
His shirt had ridden up on one side, and our bare, sweaty skin kept touching as we moved. The rhythm of our motions was undeniably…suggestive, at the very least. I adjusted my grip and kept going, and every rep brought us close again at the top, his lips barely an inch from mine.
Ten…eleven…twelve…
My left hand was making its opinion known. I adjusted and kept going.
Seventeen…eighteen.
Nineteen came up hard. I hung at the bottom, elbows just short of locked, and felt the shake starting in my shoulders.
He was still going.
Of course he was still going.
I could feel the bar moving with him, every rise and fall bringing him against me. He rose again, his leg dragging even more slowly between mine, before lowering himself back down.
“One more, Selena.”
His voice was quiet, but he might as well have been shouting.
As we hung there, he leaned in again, the warmth of his breath ghosting over my ear.
“I know you can give me one more, baby.”
Fuck me.
I gave him one more.
Twenty.
I held it at the top for a full second, chin over the bar, jaw set, close enough to him that I could see the small scar through his eyebrow, my legs shaking.
Then my grip gave.
I dropped and he dropped with me.
We landed at the same time, and neither of us moved away. His hands found my waist, sliding around to the small of my back. The beach had become very quiet as his lip ring caught the afternoon light, and I was thinking about…the plan.
Of course.
The plan.
I became aware, distantly, that Tanner had made himself scarce.
“How many did you get?”
What the fuck was I even asking?
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It absolutely—”
“Twenty-five.” His hands didn’t drop. “You did twenty.”
“So you win.”
“I win.”
He whispered it, like winning wasn’t actually the point.
“So, what’s your prize?”
He looked me up and down again, and for a moment his eyes went entirely black.
Wait.
Even in Crescent Cove, that wasn’t really something that happened.
I blinked, and they were back to deep brown.
“How about your best smoothie, on the house?”
That easygoing grin was back.
Oh.
“I mean, it’s the least you could do after you sent your attack bird after me,” he said with a small laugh.
I extracted myself from his arms and went back inside the shack, trying to ignore all the heated signals my body was giving me—especially what felt suspiciously like disappointment in my gut.
My best smoothie was more of a mangonada.
I started the blender, grabbed my knife, and sliced the fruit without looking at him.
He sat down on one of my stools, leaning over the counter.
“You seem disappointed. Were you expecting a different answer?”
“Just so you know, the bird does whatever he wants.”
“Oh, that much is obvious.” He glared up at the roof, and I heard an unbothered coo.
I rimmed a glass with chamoy and Tajín, then poured in the smoothie and added fruit to the top until the glass barely stayed upright.
“Your prize, Tibby.”
He chuckled, grabbing the elaborate creation.
“You know, you may have caught me in a mildly embarrassing content-creation situation, but despite what you think, I’m not going to make a girl fuck me for losing a pull-up contest.”
He held my gaze as I glared at him.
“Should I give you another prize for not being a total piece of shit?”
The irony wasn’t lost on me. That was exactly what I was trying to do to him.
“If it’s another one of these smoothies, then definitely.”
He licked the chamoy from the rim, his tongue curling—
No.
Stop it right now.
Goddamn it, he saw.
“But if a beautiful, strong and suspiciously seagull-accompanied woman was interested, I wouldn’t say no.”
“Who says I’m interested?”
“Who says I was talking about you? I know tons of women who have seagulls at their beck and call.”
As if summoned, El Soldado flapped down onto the counter, squawked, and he threw him a piece of mango.
The bird swallowed it in one gulp, then stared at me with that unblinking, all-seeing stare.
Don’t be stubborn.
Or maybe it was, Don’t be a dumbass.
I was still learning seagullian.
“I’ll still eat you,” my stranger warned the bird, which I ignored as I gathered my courage.
I could do this.
For the beach, the town, and the turtles.
Definitely only for those things.
“I’m going to take a break in ten if you want—”
He already had that smirk plastered on.
“This time, I won’t go easy on you, baby.”