Chapter 41
SUMMER
Icould see it in his face. The war he was fighting behind his eyes, the way his jaw worked like he was chewing on something he couldn’t swallow.
He was trying to hide it and doing a terrible job.
I loved him too much to pretend I didn’t see every single bit of it.
It broke my heart that he was struggling.
I didn’t want him to feel any kind of sadness or pain.
I kissed him. Just a press of my lips against his, my hand sliding into his hair.
Our naked bodies pressed against each other.
Being naked with him was amazing. Being naked outside was a million times better.
It was freeing. His heart was beating too fast against my chest. I felt it and said nothing about it.
“We should get dressed,” he said. “I think we’ve pushed our luck long enough. I don’t want to be the star of the next sex tape.”
I laughed. “You’d look damn good in it.”
We found our suits in the grass and got dressed without much ceremony.
He helped me back into the bikini top, even though I’d been dressing myself for twenty-five years.
His fingers brushed my shoulders and just happened to slide down my spine.
I let him because I could tell he needed to.
I turned around when he was done and looked up at him in the near dark and managed something close to a smile.
“Come on,” I said. “Let’s head back.”
We paddled in silence. The last of the light had gone entirely by the time we rounded back toward the familiar stretch of beach. The houses were lit up along the shore. The distance between them had never felt so loaded.
I stopped paddling when the water was still deep enough to float. He came up beside me and we both sat up on our boards without having to say we were doing it. The ocean rocked us gently. I could hear the bonfire crowd somewhere far down the beach, faint music and laughter. A different world.
I straddled my board and faced him.
He was looking at the shore. At the houses.
I watched his profile and felt the bad feeling settle heavier in my stomach, the one that had been sitting there for too long.
I had felt the change in him since I felt his forehead drop to the back of my neck like a man saying goodbye.
I knew that feeling. I had felt it before, a long time ago.
My mind recognized the feeling. It was the anticipation of impact.
“Colt.”
He looked at me.
I took a breath and let it out slowly through my nose. I was glad it was dark, the moon only a sliver. It gave me the shield I needed to say what I needed to. The words were going to be painful, but it didn’t make them any less true.
“It’s okay,” I said. “If you can’t stay.”
He went very still on his board.
“I mean it.” My voice came out steadier than I thought I could muster.
“I’ve been thinking about it since the bonfire.
Since I asked you. And I’ve been watching you carry it around like it’s something you did wrong, and it’s not.
” I pushed my wet hair back from my face.
“Texas is your home. The ranch, your parents, your brothers, everything you’ve built there.
Your whole life is there, Colt. I know that. I’ve always known that.”
The muscle in his jaw moved. He was gripping the edges of his board.
“I’m not asking you to choose,” I said. “I shouldn’t have put it on you the way I did at the bonfire. That wasn’t fair.”
“Summer.” His voice revealed just how wrecked he was. I hated that I had done that to him.
“I’m serious,” I said. “I just wanted you to know that I understand. I do. And whatever you decide, I’m good. I’ll be fine. I’ve always known what this is. I’ll have my feelings and I’m going to be okay with them.”
He exhaled, his strong shoulders dropping forward.
I forced a smile. “It’s okay.”
He turned his head to look at me. “But you’re here.”
I felt the tears that I was desperately trying not to let fall.
My heart was breaking. I knew I would eventually be okay, but it didn’t make the pain just stop.
It would take years before I would be able to move on.
I knew deep down I would never stop loving him.
He would always live in a little corner of my heart.
He reached across the water between us. His hand closed around the nose of my board and he pulled.
My board slid through the water toward his until they bumped together softly, side by side once again.
His hand came up to wipe the tears I hoped he wouldn’t see.
He pressed his forehead to mine. I closed my eyes.
“It’s not okay,” he said.
“What?”
“I left you behind once,” he said quietly.
“It ate me alive for years.” He exhaled slowly through his nose.
I felt the warmth of it against my lips.
“There hasn’t been a single day you didn’t cross my mind.
Not one. I told myself that was just the way it was.
That I was born into a life where getting the girl I actually wanted wasn’t in the cards, because we came from different worlds.
” His thumb traced the line of my jaw. “Different coasts. Different everything. And I told myself that was just the truth of it.”
I kept my eyes closed. I was afraid to open them.
“For the last few years,” he said, “I believed the lie I told myself.”
The boards rocked gently beneath us. The ocean breathed in and out. His forehead was still pressed to mine. It was an intimate connection. Far more intimate than the sex we had thirty minutes ago. I felt him trying to speak to my very soul.
“And then I came back here,” he said.
I opened my eyes.
He was looking at me. Right into my eyes with nothing held back and nowhere to hide. The kind of look that had wrecked me the first time I laid eyes on him.
“Every single lie I told myself for four years fell apart in about forty-eight hours,” he said.
“Because you were still you. And I was still me. And whatever this is between us, Summer, it is not something I made up. It is not something I’m going to survive losing again.
I know it’s one of those things that’s rare.
We’re so lucky to have found it. I can’t let it go.
Fate keeps bringing me back to you. I’ve been a damn fool the last seven years trying to convince myself it wasn’t real. ”
I didn’t trust my voice. I pressed my lips together hard and nodded once with our foreheads still touching. I could keep the sob from escaping, but there was no stopping the tears.
“I don’t have the answer yet,” he said. “I want you to know that’s not because I don’t want to. I want to so badly it scares the hell out of me. But I’m not going to make you a promise I haven’t thought all the way through. You deserve better than a promise I can’t keep.”
“I know,” I managed.
“I’m working on it,” he said. “I need you to believe that.”
“I do.”
“I’ve been thinking about what you said,” he said.
I cringed because I did feel a little guilty for making him stress. But I had a feeling he was going to be thinking about the situation whether I said it or not. And that was proof he did care. He wasn’t counting down the minutes until he could leave me. He was cherishing the time we did have.
“And what have you come up with?” I asked softly.
“I feel like I can’t live without you,” he said.
My heart squeezed. We were both in an impossible position.
“But can you live without them?” I whispered.
I knew he was very close to his family. His brothers. His nieces and nephews. His parents. What if he resented me because he stayed in Surfside? What if my home wasn’t enough for him? What if I wasn’t enough for him?
“I can.”
“Colt, you have a whole family in Texas. And I feel so selfish even suggesting it because I don’t think I could ever leave my family.”
“Is that what you think?” he asked.
I was ashamed. I looked away, unable to look into his soulful eyes. It hurt. We were hurting each other because we both wanted each other.
“Hey, look at me,” I said.
I looked up.
He smiled. “I love you, Summer Banks. I have since the first day we met and I saved that kid’s life.”
My mouth dropped open. The tears had stopped, but dammit, they were back. Different kind of tears.
Just when I was about to tell him I loved him, I realized what he said.
I shoved his chest playfully, knocking him off his board. “You saved him? My ass! You didn’t even know he was drowning. I had him.”
“He was drowning you,” he said as he came up sputtering. “I had to take him before he pulled you under.”
I rolled my eyes. “I had it under control.”
“Did you?”
He swam up to my board, that gorgeous smile making my heart thud against my chest. I could still feel the tingling between my legs from where he’d been planted there but I wanted him again. I leaned down and kissed him.
“You know I’m the better swimmer,” I said. “But I still love you.”
He burst into laughter and pulled me off my board. I sank before popping up and slapping at his chest.
He caught me around the waist, hauling me up against his chest with the water churning around us both. I grabbed his shoulders and used him as a ladder, trying to climb high enough to dunk him properly, which only resulted in us both going under again in a tangle of limbs and laughter.
We came up gasping.
“You’re a menace,” he said, pushing his hair back from his face. The water was running down his jaw, highlighting his masculinity.
“You started it.” I pushed off his chest and floated onto my back, spreading my arms wide and staring up at the dark sky. Every muscle I owned was making itself known. “I’m retiring,” I announced to nobody in particular. “Right here. I’m just going to float away.”
“Think we could float to Hawaii?” he asked.
He came up beside me and floated on his back too. Our shoulders bumped in the gentle swell. I turned my head to look at him. His eyes were closed, his face tipped up toward the sky. He looked more relaxed than I’d seen him look since he’d come back to Surfside.
I let myself float and breathe and not think for a little while. The ocean held us both up. It always did. It just carried you.
“Okay,” I said eventually. “I’m ready to be done.”
“Yeah?”
“My arms stopped working about ten minutes ago and I’m running on pure stubbornness.”
We paddled after our boards that were headed to the shore. We caught them and climbed on, straddling them as we paddled to shore.
We crawled onto shore. I was beyond exhausted. I didn’t know if I had the strength to walk to the house, which wasn’t all that far away.
“You okay?” he asked.
I laughed. “I’m not sure.”
We collapsed on the sand. He pulled me over his body. I kissed him, not caring that we were probably creating quite the scandal on the very public beach.
I dropped my forehead against his chin and laughed softly.
“What?” he asked.
“Nothing.” I shook my head. “Just happy.”
He pulled me closer, his arms coming around my waist and holding me against him.
“I have nothing left,” I said. “The sex alone would have done it but then you had to go and make me swim around in the dark for another hour.”
“You made yourself swim around,” he said. “I was trying to go home.”
I laughed again and untangled myself from him. It took all my strength to get to my feet.
He stood and pulled me in for another hug. “I love you.”
“I love you.”
“We’re going to figure this out.”
“I hope so.”
He held my gaze for a long moment. “We will,” he said with conviction.
“Busy tomorrow night?” I asked.
“Yep.”
“Oh.”
“Busy seeing you,” he added. “Can I pick you up at six?”
“I’ll be ready.”