Chapter 17 Johnny
JOHNNY
“I don’t want to go inside yet. Do you?”
Natalia kills the engine but doesn’t move. Just sits there staring past the beach house toward the ocean, her hands still on the wheel.
“Not even a little.”
Mostly because if we go inside right now, with her in those leggings and the taste of that conversation still hanging in the air, I’m going to do something that requires a lot less clothing.
Beach it is.
She smiles, and we drop our shoes on the deck and head for the water.
The sun is finally out, and it’s warmer than I expected for late fall. The wind died somewhere between the gym and here, and the sunlight on my skin almost makes me forget what month it is.
We stroll past the house, past the dunes, down to where the public stretch of beach opens up.
It isn’t exactly crowded, but the warm day pulled a handful of people out of wherever they hibernate this time of year.
A family walking a dog, some kids chasing each other near the waterline, and a group running a volleyball net about fifty yards down.
Natalia tugs my arm toward an open stretch of sand. She ditched her zip-up in the car, so she’s just in her tank top and leggings from class, hair still up in a high ponytail, and I’m trying very hard not to stare at the strip of bare skin above her waistband.
Trying, not succeeding, which at this point is basically my permanent state around this woman.
We’re maybe ten minutes down the waterline when a volleyball lands at my feet.
A guy jogs over to grab it, tanned and grinning, hands up in apology. “My bad, man.”
“No worries.” I toss the ball back to him.
He catches it one-handed, glances up at me, then up a little more. “Hey, we’re short a player. You want in?”
I look over at Natalia, ready to wave him off, but she’s already shoving my shoulder.
“Go. I want to watch.”
“You’re not getting rid of me that easily.”
“Johnny. Go hit something. You’ve been twitchy since this morning.”
She’s not wrong.
I have no idea if I’ve ever touched a volleyball in my life, but my body’s been full of surprises lately.
I pull my shirt off, toss it to Natalia, and jog over to the net.
Turns out I can play volleyball, too. After a few shaky rallies I’m reading sets before they happen and putting balls where people aren’t.
One of the guys slaps my back after a block. “Dude, where have you been hiding?”
“Wish I knew, man.”
I score a point on a hard spike and flex like an idiot because I can hear Natalia cheering from the sand, and making her laugh is rapidly becoming my favorite thing on the planet.
The game wraps up after a while, and I shake hands with the guys, loose and sweating and grinning like an idiot for no reason I can name. I’m heading back toward Natalia when a voice catches me from behind.
“That was impressive.”
I turn to find a redhead in a string bikini, the kind of woman who walks up to a stranger with a smile that comes preloaded with an agenda. She steps into my space, hip cocked, eyes doing a slow tour of my bare chest like I’m a car she’s thinking about test-driving.
By all accounts she’s attractive. By all accounts I could not be less interested.
“We’re heading to the seafood spot up the beach. You should come.”
I give her a polite smile. “That’s nice, but—”
A hand lands flat on my chest.
Natalia materializes out of nowhere, and she’s looking at this woman like she’s considering the most efficient way to dispose of a body, which, given her family, she might actually know.
“He’s taken.”
Two words. Bitten off clean. The redhead recoils, mutters something I don’t catch, and stalks away down the beach. I barely notice. I’m too busy looking down at Natalia’s hand splayed flat against my chest.
She doesn’t seem to realize it’s still there.
For one second neither of us moves. Her palm is warm against my skin, fingers spread, and the possessive little caveman part of my brain starts pounding on the bars of its cage.
She just told a stranger I’m taken.
My heart gives one hard, painful thud.
She follows my gaze a second later.
Her eyes go wide.
And she snatches her hand back like my skin burned her.
“Oh my god.” She buries her face in both palms. “I didn’t—that wasn’t—I don’t know why I did that.”
I’m grinning so wide my face hurts.
“Nat.”
“That was insane. We haven’t even talked about—I mean, you could have a girlfriend somewhere you don’t remember, and I just—”
“Natalia.” I step close enough that we’re toe to toe. “I’ve told you before, there’s no way I have a girlfriend.”
She groans behind her hands.
“And for the record? That was the hottest thing I’ve ever seen.” I wrap my fingers lightly around her wrists, easing her hands down from her face until she has no choice but to look at me. “I say that as a guy with almost no memory, so technically the bar is low. Still pretty confident, though.”
She groans. I laugh.
I’m standing there watching her blush all the way down to her collarbone, and my brain does the math on its own: gorgeous woman, ocean right there, an hour ago she told me she’s never been in it.
I grab her hand and start walking toward the surf.
She resists immediately. “What are you doing?”
“You told me you’ve lived on this beach for two months and never gone in past your knees. Today’s the day that changes.”
“I don’t have a swimsuit.”
“You’re wearing a workout tank top and leggings. Close enough.”
“Johnny, the water is freezing. It’s November.”
“Then we’ll be quick.”
She’s still protesting when the first wave hits our ankles, and holy shit, she wasn’t kidding. The Atlantic in November is a full-body assault, cold enough to steal my breath, cold enough to make every inch of skin scream at once.
Natalia shrieks, this high startled sound I’ve never heard from her, and then she’s laughing, gripping my arm with both hands as a wave crashes into our thighs and tries to drag us sideways.
“Oh my god. This is terrible.”
“Keep going.”
“You’re out of your mind.” But she’s gripping my arm tighter, not pulling away.
“Probably. Keep going.”
Waist deep now, the water surging against us, her teeth chattering so hard I can hear them.
But she’s smiling. The kind where her whole face scrunches up and she looks about ten years younger, like a carefree kid.
I pull her deeper and she wraps her arms around my neck because the waves keep knocking her off balance.
Her skin is freezing where it presses against mine, but neither of us lets go.
The ocean lifts us, sets us down, lifts us again.
Salt spray catches on her eyelashes and the late afternoon sun turns everything around us warm and gold.
I want to stay in this moment until the tide pulls us both under.
“You’re in the ocean, Nat.”
She laughs, breathless and half-disbelieving. “I’m in the ocean.”
She sounds so startled by her own happiness that I can’t help smiling.
I tighten my arms around her waist. “One down. Long list to go.”
She looks at me then, and there’s nothing guarded about it.
Her face is wide open and maybe a little scared of how good this feels.
Her fingers curl tighter against the back of my neck, her pulse hammering where her wrist presses against my skin, and she opens her mouth like she’s about to say something but doesn’t. Just holds on.
I don’t ask. I just hold on too.
We stay until we can’t feel our feet.
Then we stumble back to shore, soaked and shaking, sand sticking to every inch of exposed skin, and jog up the beach toward the house.
My arm is around her shoulders, and she’s pressed into my side, and we’re both laughing at nothing, at everything, at the fact that we just threw ourselves into the Atlantic in November like two people with absolutely no common sense.
At the back door, Natalia digs through her bag with numb fingers while I bounce on my heels trying to generate heat. She pulls out her phone, a hair tie, a lip balm, but no house key.
“You’re kidding me.” She digs again, more frantic this time, then presses her face to the glass and lets out a groan. “The key’s on the coffee table. I can see it sitting right there.”
“Want me to break a window?”
“On a rental? No.” She’s already crouching in front of the door lock, pulling two bobby pins from her hair.
She bends one into an L-shape with her teeth, slides it into the bottom of the keyhole, and works the second one in above it with a kind of practiced steadiness that tells me she’s done this before. Maybe more than once.
Thirty seconds. Maybe less.
Click.
She pushes the door open and stands up, brushing off her knees. I stare at her with my jaw hanging open.
“Where the hell did you learn to do that?”
She shrugs, but she doesn’t look at me. “My father used to lock my bedroom door from the outside. You learn things.”
The sentence lands between us, heavy and wrong.
I file it away and don’t push, because her jaw is set in a way that tells me the topic is closed. But I won’t forget it. I’m building a picture of the man who raised her, and every new detail makes me want to put my fist through something with his name on it.
“Shower,” she announces, already hurrying through the house with her arms wrapped around herself. “I can’t feel my toes.”
I follow her inside, both of us leaving a trail of saltwater and sand across the tile. She disappears into the bathroom, and a second later I hear the shower kick on.
I’m standing in the hallway like an idiot trying to decide if I’m invited or if this is the kind of moment where a gentleman gives a woman her privacy.
I’m about ninety percent sure I’m not a gentleman, but I’m trying to be one for her, which is—
“Johnny.” Her voice cuts through the steam already spilling into the hall. “You’re turning blue. Get in here.”
That settles it.