Chapter 23
SUMMER
My heart hadn’t stopped racing since I pulled that dress out of the box. I could still feel the ghost of the satin ribbon between my fingers. The anticipation of not knowing what was inside. Seeing the dress had made my heart skip several beats, but that was nothing compared to this.
Colt just told me he was wrong. Not in the half-hearted, covering-his-bases way men apologized when they wanted something from you.
He told me the truth about what he’d been thinking.
He didn’t try to excuse what he did or try to make me understand his angle.
He owned it. That was sexy. That was mature. I was so sick of immature boys.
The waitress came to take our orders. I could barely think straight. I thought about getting the lobster but I was not going to risk getting butter splatters on the dress. I was a nervous wreck just sitting in the damn thing.
“Are you okay?” Colt asked after the waitress left.
I nodded. “Yes. I think so.”
I could hate the port. I could hate Judd Mathers with every fiber of my being.
I could even hate the version of Colt that brought the nightmare to my door while he thought about money.
But I couldn’t hate the man sitting across from me with his sleeves rolled to his elbows and those eyes that hypnotized me.
If I hated him, I couldn’t fall back in love with him. But I can’t hate him. I’ve never been able to hate him because part of me has always and will probably forever love him. And that sucks because it will hurt if and when he shatters my heart.
“I know you hate what I did but I promise you, it’s not quite as nefarious as it sounds,” he said.
“It’s easy to look at a picture and see people and places and not allow myself to feel what those people do.
But I thought about our ranch in Texas and what it would feel like to lose it.
I get it. I can’t believe I was such an asshole not to think about it before.
I brought Judd to your door and I’m so sorry. ”
I accepted his apology. I believed he was genuine. It didn’t solve the problem, but I believed he would be on our side and work to be part of the solution.
“Can we talk about Mathers later?” I asked. “I don’t want to spend the whole night on it.” I looked at him over the rim of my glass. “I’d really like to just sit here with you for a while. Catch up with an old friend like normal people. I’ve given that man too much of my time and energy as it is.”
He relaxed, his smile returning. He reached across the table and took my hand.
His thumb moved slowly over my knuckles, back and forth in that way he used to do when we were sitting on the beach in the middle of the night.
We’d had great sex, but it wasn’t always about the sex.
Sometimes, we just held hands and that was more intimate than the physical act.
“I’d like nothing more,” he said.
And just like that, the night changed.
The server refilled our glasses and brought the food.
We talked. Really talked. Not about business or the port or the mess waiting for us tomorrow.
We talked about the summer Cody had tried to teach half the bonfire crowd to line dance on the beach and nearly concussed himself tripping over a cooler.
The funny part was Cody didn’t know how to line dance.
“Remember he said Garth Brooks taught him?” Colt asked with a grin. “Everyone thought that since we were from Texas, we must know all the country stars.”
“Oh, I remember you had me convinced you lived next door to Jason Aldean.”
He winked. “I have met him.”
“Remember that night we snuck out and watched the meteor shower?” I asked. Just thinking of the night sent goosebumps over my body.
“You were terrified your father was going to get up to watch it and find you missing,” he said.
I nodded. “He loved watching that stuff. If there was a comet or an eclipse, he had us on the beach to get the best view.”
“Those are good memories,” he said.
“Becca and I try to do that stuff with her kids,” I said. “When I have kids, I want to raise them here and show them all the things my parents showed us.”
And oh my God, I was talking about children with Colt. What the hell!
Colt looked into my eyes. “I think this is a great place to raise a family.”
The words hung in the warm air between us, caught somewhere between a hypothetical and a confession. Heat climbed up my neck. I reached for my wine glass just to have something to do with my hands.
“Right,” I said. “Great place for a family.”
He was still looking at me with those sea-green eyes like he could see every dirty thought I had about him.
I wanted to crawl under the table. I had just talked about having children with the man I was desperately trying not to fall back in love with.
While sitting on a beach with nothing but candlelight.
The most romantic setting possible. My self-preservation instincts were clearly offline for the night.
“Sorry,” I said. “I was just talking.”
“Don’t apologize,” he said.
“I was rambling.”
“Summer.” He looked at me, making my breath catch. “Stop.”
I took a breath and let it out slowly and looked at the water instead of at him. The other tables had emptied out around us without me noticing. At some point the evening had swallowed us whole and the rest of the world had gone home. We spent so much of our time alone, it felt normal.
I looked back at him. He was still watching me. He wasn’t smiling or laughing. Just looking at me as if he couldn’t believe I was real. It was the look that always made me feel like I was the only other human on the planet.
I cleared my throat. “So.”
“So,” he echoed.
“This is nice,” I said. “I haven’t been here in forever. We brought my dad here for his birthday dinner a couple of years ago.”
“We came here probably five years ago and I think it looked exactly like this.”
“Can I ask you something?” I said around a mouthful of pasta.
“Always.”
“That summer. The one with the Hendersons’ party.” I watched his face to see if he remembered which one I meant.
He threw his head back and laughed, which told me did remember. “The luau.”
“It wasn’t a luau.”
“They had a pig on a spit.”
“It was a backyard party. Remember that kid that said he was a DJ?”
He groaned. “He was playing that weird EDM shit. No one knew how to dance to it.”
“It was popular back then,” I said. “A few of my friends had been to Vegas for some big EDM thing. They thought they were so cool and cultured and the rest of us were just small-town country kids.”
“Trust me, I know small-town country kids and you guys aren’t it,” he said.
I smiled thinking about that night. I’d been wearing a yellow sundress and pretending I didn’t know him in front of everyone.
I remembered him pretending the same. We had been so careful.
It had been exhausting and thrilling in equal measure.
The secret had its own electricity. Every time our eyes met across a crowded backyard we had to look away.
Every accidental brush of fingers reaching for the same beer felt like a lightning strike.
“You were flirting with that girl,” I said.
“Which girl?”
“The redhead. She wasn’t a local.”
He thought about it for a moment like he was genuinely trying to remember and then understanding crossed his face. “I wasn’t flirting with her. She was flirting with me.”
“You were smiling at her.”
“I’m a friendly person.”
“I know all your smiles. That one was the dangerous one.”
He leaned forward on his elbows. “You were watching me that closely.”
“I was keeping an eye on the situation.”
“The situation,” he repeated. “Jealous.”
I shrugged.
“You were jealous,” he said.
“You did it on purpose,” I accused.
He laughed again. “Just keeping you on your toes. And you did the same thing to me. All those surfer boys panting after you.”
I flashed a smile. “Didn’t want anyone guessing there might be another man in my life.”
“For what it’s worth,” he said, his voice dropping just slightly, “I went home with you that night.”
I remembered that too. I remembered slipping out the back of the party separately and meeting him at the gate in the fence line. I remembered him pulling me into the shadows of the jasmine and kissing me before I’d even said a word. We’d both been waiting the entire evening to do exactly that.
“There was that one guy, he was just a friend and you pushed him into the sand.”
“I didn’t like his hands on you.”
“No?”
“No,” he said. “I still don’t like another man putting his hands on you.”
I swallowed, the moment suddenly very charged. I wasn’t the type that liked a caveman, but Colt jealous was hot.
“Remember the night we fell off my board,” I said, trying to change the subject.
“You pushed me.”
“I was showing you how to redistribute your weight and you overcorrected.”
“You pushed me,” he said again with complete conviction. “We went over the side together and you came up laughing so hard you swallowed half the Pacific.”
“You had it coming,” I said. “You were being insufferable about your pop-up. I showed you once and you acted like you were some surfing god.”
He shook his head but he was smiling. I could see the server through the window of the restaurant, leaning against the host stand with her phone in hand, waiting us out. The restaurant was technically open another thirty minutes.
“The night we floated out past the break,” he said quietly.
My stomach dropped.
He was watching me carefully. “You remember.”
I remembered every detail. It was the second summer of our secret romance.
We’d gone out after midnight. We’d been lying on my board together looking up.
He’d been behind me with one arm around my waist and our legs hanging off either side.
The board had been barely big enough for both of us and we kept nearly tipping. We didn’t care.
“I remember,” I said.
His eyes held mine and I felt the years fade. Four years of distance and silence and convincing myself I was over it. All of it gone, just like that. Like sand washing back from under my feet in the pull of a wave.
“The shallows,” I said softly, surprising myself.
I saw the heat flare in his eyes. “Yeah,” he said.
I pressed my lips together and looked down at the table. My heart was hammering. I was warm all over and it had nothing to do with the weather.
We didn’t need to get into the details. We both remembered making love that night. It had been incredible. It was the first night I realized how much I was in love with him.
The waitress returned with the bill. A clear sign she wanted us to move along. I watched him pull out his credit card. I didn’t want the night to be over, but I also knew how dangerous it was. We were traversing down Memory Lane and pretending the last four years never happened.
It was easy. Nice. But once he settled the business with Judd, he’d be gone. He would have no reason to stay. I should let him drop me off at home, thank him, and tell him goodbye. For good.
But I can’t deny myself the one thing I’ve wanted more than anything else in my entire life. Colt Anderson.