Chapter 7 #3
My hands knew what to do.
My mouth moved against hers.
Heat built.
Desire sparked.
But something inside me stayed dim.
Not dead.
Not alive either.
Just going through the motions of a man who should have been grateful for easy warmth and clean want, but kept waiting for the wrong ghost to appear behind his eyes.
And she always did.
Destiny.
I hated myself for it.
Georgia would laugh, and I’d hear Destiny trying not to cry at her mother’s grave.
Georgia would touch my jaw, and I’d remember Destiny’s fingertips tracing my clean-shaven cheek under the palms in Cabo.
Georgia would kiss my neck, and I’d remember turning cold at a beach bar because some woman’s perfume wasn’t hers.
One night, Georgia pulled back and studied me in the blue flicker of the television.
“You disappear sometimes,” she said.
I looked at her hand resting against my chest. “I’m right here.”
“No.” Her smile was sad. “Your body is.”
That hit too close.
I sat up slowly, dragging a hand through my hair.
Georgia adjusted her shirt and pulled her knees beneath her on the couch. She wasn’t angry. That almost made it worse. Anger I could handle. Anger gave me something to fight.
Kindness just left me standing there with myself.
“There’s someone,” she said.
“No.”
“Dylan.”
I closed my eyes.
She gave a quiet laugh. “You know, when men say no that fast, it usually means yes with a tragic backstory.”
“She’s not mine.”
“That wasn’t what I asked.”
“She’s young.”
Georgia’s brows lifted.
“Not like that,” I said quickly, then exhaled hard. “She was eighteen when I left. She’s nineteen now.”
Georgia was quiet for a long second.
“And you love her?”
“No.”
That word came too fast too.
Georgia noticed.
Of course she did.
“I don’t know what it is,” I said.
That was the most honest answer I had.
Georgia tucked a strand of highlighted hair behind her ear. “Does she love you?”
I laughed once, low and humorless. “She thinks she does.”
“That sounds like something a man says when he’s trying to decide for a woman.”
I looked at her.
She shrugged. “I’m just saying.”
“She has a whole life ahead of her.”
“So do you.”
“It’s different.”
“Because you think she deserves better?”
“Because she does.”
Georgia looked at me with those bright blue eyes, kind and disappointed and far too clear. “Maybe she does. Maybe you do too.”
I didn’t know what to say to that.
So I said nothing.
Georgia stayed my friend after that.
Mostly.
We studied. We got dinner. We went to movies. Sometimes she still kissed me, but softer now, like she was kissing a door she knew might never open all the way. Sometimes I kissed her back and tried to become the man who could choose easy.
I wanted to.
That was another ugly truth.
I wanted to want Georgia enough.
She would have been good for me. A clean life.
Sunday dinners. Study groups. Her mother sending me home with leftovers.
Her father asking if I could look at a loose cabinet door.
A woman who smelled like vanilla lotion and printer paper, who would smile when I walked in and never make me feel like fate had dragged me into a burning desert.
Georgia was not second best.
She was not some cheap replacement.
She was good.
She was warm.
She deserved a man whose heart didn’t flinch every time a motorcycle ride took him north toward Malibu.
That man wasn’t me.
A year passed like that.
Classes.
Runs.
Georgia.
Nate’s jokes.
Callum’s quiet approval.
Destiny’s name never spoken and always there.
Then one Friday night, I was in Santa Monica with Nate, sitting at a corner table at Coastal Thai, pretending I had driven up because the food was worth the ride.
It was worth the ride.
That was the problem with a good lie. The best ones had truth baked into them.
Coastal Thai was my favorite place on that stretch of town. Tiny dining room, warm lights, chili oil that could make a grown man reassess his life, and pad see ew good enough that Nate had stopped making fun of me after the first bite.
Mostly.
He still knew.
Nate always knew.
He sat across from me, twirling noodles around his fork with an expression far too innocent to be trusted.
“So,” he said.
“No.”
“I didn’t ask anything.”
“You breathed like a question.”
He grinned. “We drove two hours for Thai food.”
“I like Thai food.”
“You like Thai food in San Diego too.”
“This place is better.”
“Uh-huh.”
I picked up my beer and looked toward the window instead of answering.
Outside, Santa Monica moved in bright pieces. Cars. Tourists. Girls in dresses heading toward bars. Couples crossing the street hand in hand. College kids laughing too loud because they still believed every night out might turn into a memory worth keeping.
Pepperdine wasn’t far.
Destiny wasn’t far.
That was the part I refused to say.
Nate leaned back and tapped his fork against the edge of his plate. “You know, for a guy trying real hard not to hover, you’ve developed a fascinating number of errands within a thirty-mile radius of Malibu.”
“I had business.”
“Last week it was business. Tonight it’s noodles. Before that it was picking up a part from a guy who could have mailed it.”
“I don’t trust shipping.”
“You don’t trust yourself.”
I looked at him.
He smiled like he had scored a point and knew I wouldn’t punch him in public because the waitress liked us.
“Eat your food,” I said.
“I am. While observing your emotional collapse.”
“I’m not collapsing.”
“Brother, you are emotionally folded like a napkin swan.”
“I spent last night with Georgia.”
Nate’s fork stopped.
For once, I had surprised him.
He studied me carefully. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“How was that?”
I looked at the beer label.
Nice.
Warm.
Soft.
Not dead.
Not alive.
“None of your business.”
“That bad?”
“No.”
“That good?”
“No.”
Nate winced. “Ouch.”
“She’s a good woman.”
“I know.”
“She deserves better than my head being somewhere else.”
“You tell her that?”
“Some version.”
“And?”
“She already knew.”
Nate nodded slowly. “Women usually do.”
I looked back out the window.
Santa Monica glowed. Beautiful and crowded and full of lives that had nothing to do with me. Somewhere out there, Destiny had built one of her own. A life with matcha lattes and nursing textbooks and a best friend from Idaho who named feral cats like cupcakes. A life I was not supposed to touch.
“Georgia’s easy,” I said.
Nate was quiet.
“She’s clean,” I continued. “Her family is normal. Her dad grills. Her mom hugs. She likes me for reasons I can’t figure out.”
“Sounds terrible.”
“It should be enough.”
Nate set his fork down.
“But it isn’t,” he said.
I didn’t answer.
That was answer enough.
His phone rang.
Not his regular phone.
The charter line.
Nate’s expression changed instantly.
He answered. “San Diego.”
I saw it happen.
The joke left his face.
Then his eyes cut to mine.
My fork stopped halfway to my mouth.
Nate straightened. “Location.”
A pause.
His gaze stayed locked on me.
“Santa Monica. Third Street area. Outside Mariposa Tacos,” he repeated.
My chair scraped back.
Nate listened for one more second.
Then his mouth tightened.
“She said Santa Fe connection. Three men, two women. And…” He paused, eyes flicking briefly away from mine. “She said she doesn’t want Dylan.”
For one second, everything in me went still.
The restaurant noise dimmed.
Steam curled from the plates.
Someone laughed near the bar.
A waitress moved past with curry balanced on one hand.
And all I could hear was Destiny’s voice in my head.
I don’t want Dylan.
Good.
Smart girl.
Too damn bad.
I grabbed my keys off the table.
Nate was already throwing cash down beside our half-finished plates.
“She called the charter,” I said.
“Yeah.”
“She asked for help.”
“Yeah.”
“Then she gets help.”
Nate’s mouth curved grimly. “Figured you’d say that.”
We were out the door before the waitress could ask if we needed boxes.
My bike was parked half a block down, Nate’s beside it. The night air hit my face, cool and full of salt, fried food, perfume, exhaust, and the old, familiar taste of trouble.
I swung onto the bike.
Nate pulled on his helmet. “Dyl.”
I looked over.
“She specifically said not you.”
I put my helmet on.
“I heard you the first time.”
“And?”
I started the engine.
It roared beneath me, loud enough to drown out every promise I had made to stay away.
For a year, I had told myself I was doing the right thing.
For a year, I had let her build a life without my shadow across it.
For a year, I had tried to become a man who deserved to stand somewhere in the distance and be proud of her.
But she was in Santa Monica.
She had called my charter.
And someone from her past had found her anyway.
Maybe Destiny was not mine.
Maybe she never would be.
But if the past thought it could touch her again while I was five minutes away eating noodles and pretending I wasn’t orbiting her life like a doomed planet, it was about to learn exactly what kind of man I had spent a year trying not to be.
“Too bad,” I said.
Then I tore out of the parking spot toward Third Street.
After Santa Monica, I told myself I was done.
Not done with Destiny.
A man could lie to himself only so much before even his reflection started laughing.
Done with limbo.
Done with living my life like a dog outside a window, watching a light I had no right to walk toward.
Done riding north and pretending I liked Thai food enough to cross county lines for it.
Done collecting pieces of her life through security updates, Regan’s careful little reports, Nate’s big mouth, and Callum’s knowing silences.
I had seen her.
That should have helped.
It didn’t.
It made everything worse.
Destiny on that sidewalk in Santa Monica, wearing a black dress, boots, her mother’s diamonds, her mother’s turquoise ring, and my cuff half-hidden under her sleeve like a secret she still carried.
Destiny staring at me like she had waited a year for answers and hated me for bringing none.