Chapter Fifteen
For the next few days, Cecily says she has work to do and camps out in her hotel room, only joining me for lunch and dinner each day. She keeps our conversation to anything that isn’t the happenings in Willow Cove or my marriage, which is becoming increasingly more frustrating because she won’t say a word about what she’s planning to tell Mr. Vanderman.
The only comment she has made so far was the day after the macaron situation, after I found a little plastic baggie filled with poorly assembled macarons and tied with a ribbon. King baked the cookies, which didn’t rise properly, and sandwiched a few of them with light green frosting that was incredibly lumpy but properly proportioned. They weren’t much to look at, but they tasted good, and the fact that he finished the task without direction from me seemed to please Cecily.
“How sweet of your husband,” she said.
That has been the only mention of King in days, and I am terrified about what’s coming next from her.
I’ve seen King a couple of times, mostly when he’s on his way in to the surf shack. He tries to stop by the bakery whenever Mrs. Vanderman is in the lobby, and though we’ve avoided any kissing, like there’s an unspoken agreement between us to forgo that necessity if we can, I’ve started getting used to my morning hugs from Royal Kingston.
Hugs from that man are life-giving.
I’ve also fallen into the habit of calling him Royal again. He hasn’t corrected me, so either he’s giving in because he thinks it’s stubbornness fueling the change and is tired of fighting me, or he is starting to like his name. I don’t remember him ever letting anyone call him by his first name except me, and the allowance now has set a fire in my belly.
When it comes to this version of King, I think every step he allows me in his direction is a big thing. And I find myself wanting to take whatever steps I can.
“So you don’t have to answer this if you don’t want to,” Emily says as she wipes down the front counter. For the first time in days, we don’t have any customers, and both of us are enjoying the quiet. At least, I was until Emily started her inquiry. “But how did you and King meet?”
Though I would like to keep reading this blog about which country has the best butter for baking, I can tell Emily has been wanting to ask this question for a long time. Probably since the day I showed up in Willow Cove.
I give her a smile and put my phone in my pocket. “It was actually here in the bakery when we were twelve.”
She gasps, eyes going comically wide. “Really?”
“Yep. It’s probably hard to imagine, but King was all limbs back then.” I look at the wall of pictures behind me, hunting for one of my favorites. “Ah! Here he is. He’s probably fourteen or so in this one.”
The picture is one of Bill and King, both clutching surf boards and looking bedraggled. Like I told Emily, King is tall and gangly in his wetsuit, though it’s easy to tell that he’s starting to fill out with surfing muscles. His dark hair flops in his eyes, but his smile makes it clear he couldn’t be happier with his current situation.
Emily hurries over to check out the picture. “Oh my gosh, he’s so cute! I’ve never really looked at these pictures before.” She starts examining them all, taking in the documentation of Bill’s bakery from its humble beginnings up until what I’m guessing isn’t long before he died.
I look a little more closely as well, surprised to see how many pictures of King are on this wall. There’s a photo of eighteen-year-old King in a graduation gown, King cutting a ribbon in front of the newly renovated surf shack, King on the campus of Charleston Southern University. As they go along, the pictures are less and less about the bakery and more about the Kingston family, even if that family was just the two of them.
The picture with the surfboards was probably taken right before King’s mom died and Bill took him in. Bill was never annoyed that he had to take care of his nephew, and sometimes I was pretty sure he was grateful to have someone with him. Bill and I spent a lot of time together over the summers, and he was always so proud of the person King was becoming. He liked to say whoever earned King’s love would be a lucky person indeed, and he always had a mischievous glint in his eye when he did.
I don’t think I was lying when I told Mr. Vanderman that Bill wanted King and me to get together.
“Why did you guys take so long to get married?” Emily asks, still checking out the photos.
My answer comes more easily than I expect it to. “Because I was scared.”
“Scared of King?”
“Scared of missing out on the life I thought I was supposed to live.”
Emily giggles a little and returns to cleaning the countertop. “At least you figured out it doesn’t get better than being with King!”
Did I figure that out? A week ago, I would have said no, but every time he leaves the bakery with a warm smile, a part of me aches for him to stay. I’ve been more relaxed over the last week than I’ve been in years, and as much as I don’t want to admit it out loud, Willow Cove is starting to feel like home.
Maybe my dreams were all wrong. What if it wasn’t control I craved but knowing I would be okay even when things go wrong? I know I can find that safety with King because it has always been there. Since the day I met him. He’s the steadiest person I’ve ever known. What if I…
The bell above the door jingles, and excitement rushes through me when Cecily steps inside.
“Finally!” The word rushes out of me.
My friend lifts an eyebrow. “Finally?”
“I was starting to think you’d never show up.”
“You miss me that much?”
“Yes?”
Cecily’s grin turns devilish. “Why did that sound like a question, Georgie?”
It wasn’t supposed to be, and I don’t know why my heart rate has kicked up a notch. “It wasn’t a question! I’m always glad to see you, Cece.”
“You’re glad to see me because it means you get to see King.”
Absolutely. “Do I? I thought you were here to see me.”
“I am here to save your marriage.” She grabs my hand and starts dragging me to the door. “Emily, Meg and Rebecca will be here soon!”
While I’m glad Cecily made sure my teenage employee won’t be on her own, I get caught up on the first thing she said, nearly tripping over the doorway on the way out. “You mean solidify my marriage, right?” This marriage won’t be lasting long enough for it to ever need saving.
My stomach twists.
In true Cecily fashion, she doesn’t say a word until we reach the surf shop. Though King is in the middle of a conversation with a girl who looks like she was born to surf—long, strong legs, glowing bronze skin, silky blonde hair running down her back in a thick braid—Cecily makes an announcement to the whole shop in her loudest voice. “Kingston, your next lesson is here!” Then she shoves me forward.
I squeak at the same time King’s eyes go wide. “What?” I gasp.
King swallows. “I thought you wanted to learn, Cecily.”
“Why would I want to learn how to surf? The ocean is terrifying.”
“Something we agree on!” I complain.
Folding his arms, King glances at the girl next to him and then to the open doors, like he’s considering running away. He doesn’t need to worry; it’s not like I’m ever going to get on a surfboard, no matter what Cecily says. “Lacey,” he says to the girl, “maybe you can take this one?”
Lacey eyes me with a raised eyebrow. “Don’t you want to teach your wife, King?”
“That would be a bad idea,” he says at the same time I say, “I don’t want to learn.”
“Too bad,” Cecily says behind me. “This is your next counseling session, and Mr. Vanderman was curious about how things are going and wanted to watch this one.”
King swears under his breath. I’m starting to wonder why he’s so opposed to this. He’s not the one who will be fearing for his life.
I need to find a way out of this. “I don’t have a swim—”
Cecily holds a polka-dotted piece of fabric in front of my face. “And yes, it’s in your size.”
“It’s also in two pieces,” I point out. I’m all for women expressing themselves with fun swimwear, but this baker’s body prefers to be a little more covered. “I have one at home. I can go—”
“Run and hide?” Cecily stuffs the suit into my hands and pushes me toward the changing room on the left side of the shop. “It’ll just be you and your husband out on the water, Georgie. You’ll be fine.”
“My husband and Mr. Vanderman, apparently.”
“Like the old man’s going to be able to see you from the shore.”
“But—”
“Georgie,” King says, cutting through our argument. “You can pick anything on the rack. It’s fine.”
Releasing a breath of relief, I scurry to the rack of swimsuits before Cecily can keep trying to push the bikini. While I’m sure King would have appreciated seeing me in something more revealing, which was likely Cecily’s reasoning, I can’t help but love how easily he offered a better option. I’m not especially self-conscious—I love butter and sugar too much to worry about my figure—but I’m going to need to be as comfortable as possible for this. Grabbing the first suit that I find in my size, I hop into the changing room and do my best to ignore the fact that I’m going to have to go out into the ocean to save my bakery.
That logic seems questionable, but nothing about this whole thing has made a lot of sense.
As I change, I listen intently to the conversation happening outside the door, since King and Cecily aren’t trying to keep their voices down.
“If she doesn’t want to learn, I’m not taking her out there,” King says. “No matter if Vanderman is watching.”
“You agreed to make macarons,” is Cecily’s argument, which isn’t the same at all. “So the least she can do is—”
“Almond flour isn’t the ocean, Cecily. I never pushed Georgie to go surfing because the last thing I want to do is put her in danger.”
I press a hand to the changing room door as warmth spreads through me. He’s a good man and always has been. I don’t know if I could ever find a better man than him.
“You’re not going to let her get hurt,” Cecily says. “I know you won’t. I also know how Georgie can be, and while most of the time it’s easier to let her steamroll and blaze her own trail, she needs to learn that she can’t go through life alone. Sometimes she needs to relinquish her control and trust that someone else can lead the way.”
King doesn’t have a reply to that, which settles like a rock in my stomach. I know I’m headstrong, but… His words from our wedding day flicker into my memory. I can’t get caught up in your orbit just for you to leave me drifting again. That was how my relationship was with Lane. He was always making the decisions and pulling me along with him, ignoring my ideas but taking credit for them when he inevitably presented them as his own. His way was the only way.
I wouldn’t wish a relationship like that on anyone.
It’s that thought that spurs me forward with a new determination. Tugging on the suit, which is one of those sport-types that are meant for function rather than fashion, I hurry back out to the lobby and breathlessly announce, “I want to try it! At least once.”
King gapes at me. It’s like he didn’t in a million years think I would agree, which only makes my guilt worse. Then his eyes slip down over my body, and the guilt is quickly replaced with heat as his expression morphs into thinly veiled desire. Apparently I don’t need a bikini to prove my husband is attracted to me.
“There, you see?” Cecily says, but even she seems surprised that I agreed. Maybe she hadn’t intended for us to go surfing at all and simply thought the argument would count as counseling. “I’ll, uh, go see if Mr. Vanderman has arrived yet.” She wanders out almost in a daze.
“I’ve got the shop covered,” Lacey says, and I’m pretty sure she’s trying not to laugh. Whether she’s laughing at me or something else, I can’t bring myself to care as long as King keeps looking at me with that fire blazing in his eyes. I would let him look at me like this forever.
It takes several seconds before King finally moves, heading for the row of surfboards with a rigidness to his posture that wasn’t there before I put on the swimsuit. Maybe I’m not lithe and limber, but these bread-kneading biceps are clearly doing it for the man I married, and I’m going to take a lot of pride in that fact.
For the next hour, King seems to do his best to pretend I’m just another student, though I notice he rarely looks at me as he goes through his process. When he does look, he tends to lose his train of thought, so I get it. He walks me through how to stand up and balance while still on the sand, and he describes the general mechanics of catching a wave’s momentum. He asks me multiple times if I’m sure about going out on the water. I’m not, but I also know that if he’s out there with me, I’ll be okay.
I want him to know that I care about the things he cares about, even if they scare me.
“Watch this one,” he says, pointing to a surfer who starts paddling to catch the wave. “She’s going to paddle until the wave starts moving her faster than she’s going on her own, and then…”
The woman jumps to her feet and turns her board so it goes in the opposite direction of where the wave is curling over.
“I’m guessing I’ll need to pay attention to the way the wave breaks,” I say, gesturing vaguely at the wave as it crashes and dissipates. The movement brings me close enough to King that our arms touch, and a thrill runs through me when he doesn’t pull away. It’s not like I haven’t touched this man—we’ve kissed twice since getting married and shared plenty of hugs—but something about today is different.
I’m telling myself that it’s because we’re being watched by the sunscreen-soaked attorney under the giant umbrella, but I’m pretty sure that’s a lie.
No, I know it’s a lie. I desperately wanted to kiss King when we were at the bakery the other night, and not because I wanted to make a point. Because I wanted to. Yesterday, when an adorable old couple came into the bakery and went on and on about how they have been coming to Kingston’s every summer for the last eight years since discovering it, I instantly wanted to tell King about them so we could smile about it together. When I woke up this morning, I found Prince Harry splashing in the pool. He isn’t likely to drown now that the water level is lower, but I figured it would be good to get him back in his pen. So I hunted down a rope and spent almost an hour guiding him to the stairs and tugging him up and out because I didn’t want to wake King. He’d gotten home later than normal and looked tired as he walked around the house without a shirt on before going to bed.
And yeah, I was spying on him from the pool house instead of going to sleep, but I couldn’t help it.
Basically, every moment of my day has started to include King in it, whether he’s present or not. I’m getting addicted to this man, and I’m not sure it’s a habit I want to kick. Standing on a beach in the last few hours of daylight, watching the crash of waves and listening to the sounds of happy vacationers, I’m starting to realize that I am still very much in love with the man next to me.
Not sure I ever really stopped loving him.
“Well, what do you think?” King says, looking at me for the first time in several minutes. “Want to try hitting a wave before it gets too late?”
“You’ll be with me?” I hate that my voice shakes on that question, but the ocean is still just as terrifying as it always has been.
King grabs hold of my hand and squeezes it. “Always, Shortcake.”
Oh goodness, he hasn’t called me that in years, and I can’t help but giggle. It’s a callback to when we first met and he came barreling into the bakery right as I was about to eat a strawberry cupcake. He thought it was hilarious and brought it up the next time we met, calling me Strawberry Shortcake even though that is a different dessert entirely. He quickly shortened it to Shortcake and claimed it was because I wasn’t very tall—I’m still not—but we both knew the day we met was an exceptionally good day that had impressed upon both of us. I always made sure to tell him I hated the nickname, knowing that would make him use it more often.
“I can’t believe you remember that,” I say, still grinning.
King chuckles. “I can’t believe you didn’t punch me for using it.”
“I can’t believe you’ve been letting me call you Royal.”
He actually grins at that, his eyes dancing in the golden light of the afternoon. “I can’t believe you think I would hate anything you call me.”
We definitely need to get in the water because I am about to spontaneously combust from the way he’s looking at me right now. I don’t know what changed between our macaron adventure and now, but this man isn’t holding back.
I grab my surfboard, which is comfortably shorter than his and made of a hard foam instead of whatever his is made out of. “You really gave me the kiddie board, didn’t you?”
He laughs. “A beginner’s board, Georgie. This one is less likely to knock you out if you fall wrong.”
“Wait, there’s a wrong way to fall?”
“Come along, Shortcake. We don’t have all day.” With a light jog, he rushes into the water and hops onto his board, gliding effortlessly out into the deeper water.
I’m far less graceful but somehow manage to join him. Getting in the water is easy; paddling deeper is harder. But King lets me take my time, filling the space between us with more tips and tricks as if he knows that listening to him talk is the best distraction from the rapidly dropping ocean floor beneath me. I keep my eyes on his face. On his kind eyes and warm smile. I tell myself over and over again that I trust this man more than I trust anyone, and I want to show him as much.
By the time he thinks I’m ready to actually try to catch a wave, I’m shaking in my metaphorical boots but doing everything I can to hide it. I like to think I’m tough and adventurous, but this is so far beyond my capabilities and know-how.
Still, being out here and seeing up close King in his element is helping me see another side to him, which is crazy considering I’ve always known he loves surfing. I’ve always loved watching him from the shore. But I didn’t know to what extent he loses all his inhibitions out here and looks entirely relaxed, and I want him to be this happy all the time.
He’s lost so much in his life, and I wish I had been brave enough to understand how much I hurt him when he lost me too. Will he survive when I leave again?
A pit forms in my belly at the thought of leaving this place. It feels a lot like the feeling I would get at the end of the summer when I was young, not yet ready to go back home.
“Watch me ride this next wave,” King says, oblivious to my fears. “Pay attention to the movement of the water now that you’re up close.”
It’s definitely different now that I’m in deeper water, and I watch not only King, who is exceptional, but the few other surfers who are out here with us as well. Theoretically I can mimic what they’re all doing, but I don’t have a lot of faith in my actual ability. Piping too-cold frosting isn’t the same level of skill as riding a wave that has the power to shove me deep under the water if I’m not careful. I can swim, but…the ocean is a beast unto itself.
Returning to my side, King reaches over and grabs my trembling hand. “No one will think less of you if you decide to go back to shore,” he says gently. “Just having you out on the water with me has made me happier than I can say.”
“It was always so easy to make you happy,” I murmur.
He actually blushes, though he ducks his head to hide it. “Not so much lately. Ever since Uncle Bill died, I think there’s been a shadow hanging over me that won’t go away. I don’t know if it ever will.”
I squeeze his fingers. “Maybe if we ride a wave together you can have a little sunshine.”
I don’t even know if we can share these waves, which aren’t exactly large, but that doesn’t stop a grin from spreading across his face. “Can’t hurt to try.”
It hurts a lot, in fact.
On my first attempt to pop up and get to my feet on a wave, the nose of the board takes a dive and sends me tumbling face first into the whitewater. Something hits my head hard, and the next thing I know I’m on the shore with King’s frantic face looming over me as I choke on the water in my lungs.
“Georgie!” he says, the word a little garbled. “Can you hear me?”
I cough and then grimace when everything hurts, from my lungs to my head. I swallow, my tongue tasting salt. “What happened?”
He exhales with relief and then pushes my hair out of my face. “You scared the crap out of me,” he breathes. “I think the board hit you in the head when you wiped out, and then you didn’t come up.”
I don’t remember any of that, but maybe that’s a good thing. “Was it the most pathetic crash you’ve ever seen?”
He chuckles, though the worry hasn’t left his eyes. “Nah. But maybe don’t try surfing again, okay?”
“Deal.”
“How’s your head?”
It’s throbbing, but everything is already becoming sharper, including my realization that King is practically lying on top of me in the wet sand. His body is warm, his skin smooth against mine, and I don’t want him to move. Even if I feel a bit like Prince Eric after Ariel—King, in this case—rescues him from the storm. I highly doubt King will start singing to me, though.
“I think I’ll live,” I say slowly, “but I might need to take the morning off tomorrow.”
Nodding, King runs his fingers through my bedraggled curls. His eyes keep roving over me, like he can’t quite believe that I’m okay. “I’ll text Meg.”
“She might not listen.”
“I’ll pay her extra.”
“You don’t have to worry about the bakery anymore, Royal.”
He smiles softly, and his thumb brushes across my cheekbone. “I know. But I’m worried about you.”
I don’t deserve that. I don’t deserve the warm concern in his eyes, or the gentle touch of his fingers, or the pleasure of lying this close to him, in the sand or otherwise. He deserves someone who will stick around, and that’s not me.
What’s making you leave?
The voice that asks that question sounds an awful lot like Cecily. But it also sounds like myself. I used to have a ready answer, but now I’m coming up blank. I certainly don’t want to leave right now.
“Do you think you can sit up?” King asks. “Cecily went to grab your clothes and a towel, but I think we should probably get you into bed after a crash like that.”
I’m exhausted, and my bed is calling to me like a siren song I can’t resist. I want nothing more than to sleep for days.
Except, as King helps me to my feet and then presses me up against his side in a sturdy embrace that shuts out the world, I think that statement might be wrong.
I think I might want him more.