Chapter 26
The sky is drizzling and overcast as Yolanda and I walk the beach, shoes in hand, feet scrunching against the moist sand. No moon or stars are visible in the sky, but lights from the resorts make it easy enough to see. She looks nervous. I’m nervous. She asked me to stay after the crew left, so we could talk. “So, what did you want to talk about?”
“No se,” she says, shrugging.
I laugh. “You forgot.”
She swings the strappy shoes in her hands. “I’ll remember soon.”
I wait for her to remember, watching her painted toenails as they sink into the sand with each step. The brush of waves against the shore fills the silence between us but does nothing to help my nerves. “I enjoyed meeting your family tonight.”
She snorts. “Even my prima? I don’t believe you.”
“Fine. I was kidding. They’re assholes.”
She bursts into laughter, and I smile so wide I feel it in my chest. Her family’s a mix of kindness and a bluntness that borders on painful. They’re fucking awesome. “You all seem to genuinely love and care for each other.”
“Claro. We’re familia.”
Warm water washes over my feet and I angle to get deeper into the waves. “It’s not always that way, you know?”
She turns her head toward me. Her shoes stop swinging. “On the night we met, you mentioned…” She closes her eyes for a beat. “I read in an interview that your father passed. Lo siento mucho. I’m so sorry.”
She reads interviews about me? That’s interesting, and also makes me happier than it should. “You know, that’s why I left you after our night.” The moment those words leave my mouth, I realize I’m an idiot. “I’m not making excuses for…”
The end of that sentence hangs there for a beat before she says, “For running out on me after you took my virginity?”
“You were a virgin?” I stop in the water, and a wave smashes into the back of my knees, soaking my jeans.
“Calláte.” She shushes me with a pat of her hands. “Someone will hear.”
There’s no one out on this overcast night. I jog out of the surf and match my stride to hers. “But you were in college, and you could do things with your… mouth.”
She throws her head back and laughs. “Ay. Dios. It’s not like I hadn’t had oral sex before.”
“Of course. You were so good at it.” What am I saying?
She looks up at me with light in her eyes. “That’s not the compliment you think it is.”
“Trust me, it’s a compliment. I’ve been thinking about that blowjob for over a decade.”
“Yes, well, this blowjob queen was still a virgin.” She pauses, licks her lips. “Did you think only of that?”
This woman. How is it that more than a decade has passed, but, right now, it feels like yesterday? “No, Yolanda. Not just that. And not just the sex. Though I have thought of it.” A fuck ton. “I think about you, about…” The man I was around you. “About that night. I have a lot of regrets about leaving.”
“Don’t, Easton. You were young. I was young. You had no idea I was a virgin. Your dad was so sick. I don’t hold that night against you. You don’t need to explain. That’s not why I brought you out here.”
I do need to explain. Grasping, her hand, I pull her to a stop. She’s so kind and genuine… I want to protect her. Even if it’s only from a bad memory.
When she doesn’t look up at me, I put the tip of my thumb against the curve of her chin and lift. She gazes at me with wide eyes and a blush staining her cheeks.
God help me. I’ve never gotten over her, those eyes, the kindness, her intelligence and ambition, not just for herself but her family and her community. “I had no intention of leaving that morning. And you should know, if I had planned on leaving, I never would have done so without at least calling you first.”
Her brow furrows. “What happened?”
The world collapsed in on me. “When I went down to my room, I found Stone standing there with”—tears in his eyes—”our bags packed.” I close my eyes as the rush of emotions hits me full in the throat, like a boxer slamming his fist into a heavy bag. I swallow painfully. “That night… while I was with you… my father…” I exhale so loudly that, for a moment, I can no longer hear the ocean. “He took his life.”
A sob of grief rips unexpectedly from Yolanda as she throws her arms around me. Her embrace is so warm, tight, and comforting that it’s all I can do to stop myself from burying my face against her hair.
“Lo siento,” she whispers hotly into my chest.
It’s been years since I let the ache of that grief out, let alone find voice, but her compassion has gutted me. I choke out, “He was dying and didn’t want to get treatment.”
She looks up at me, her chin resting on my chest. “I remember. You were upset and confused about why he didn’t want to get help.”
That’s right. I’d told her what I’d never told anyone, that it’d felt like I didn’t matter enough for him to try to live. “I couldn’t see his pain through my own.”
We stare at each other for long moments. When the heat of understanding starts to build another kind of heat between us, she lets me go and steps back.
“You would’ve. If he’d given you time, you would’ve seen his pain.”
Since Cecily, I’ve learned to reevaluate any situation that seems too easy, too right. I find myself doing that now. “You don’t know me. Not really.”
She shakes her head. “I don’t know all the details of your life, verdad, but I know your character, and, to be honest, that’s why your leaving hurt so much. Porque, because, during our night, I felt like I had connected with who you were at your core.”
Our night. That’s how I think of it, too. I’d wanted to reach out so many times. “After I left, I told myself you were better off without me, that you’d moved on. Of course, therapy eventually taught me that what I was really doing was punishing myself for not being there for Dad.”
“How long did it take before you stopped blaming yourself?”
That’s a loaded question. Meaning, How long before you thought of contacting me? Meaning, Why didn’t you contact me? “Two years. Just when I started to get my head on straight, my aunt died unexpectedly, and… that was even harder than Dad. I was really alone after that.”
This time, she grabs my hand, brings it to her chest, and squeezes it against her body. The feelings this woman hits me with are like a karate chop to the throat.
I whisper, “Yolanda, I thought of you, wanted…” you, “but… so much time had passed. I knew there was zero chance you hadn’t found someone.”
She laughs softly and drops my hand. “Many someones, but no one that stuck. No one that could ever compare…”
She doesn’t finish that sentence, and I feel a tug of grief for her and a selfish burst of hope for me. She cocks her head toward the sand in a silent offer.
Boats bob in the ocean, glimmering with distant lights and flashes of life as we sit on the damp beach. Her arm touches mine before she pulls it back. The hypnotic push-and-pull of ocean waves matches the tug and withdrawal between us.
The urge to roll her into the sand and kiss her until she begs me to enter her like she did that night is overfuckingwhelming.
I anchor my hands into the gritty, wet sand. “I never got a chance to thank you for all you did for me that night.”
She snorts, and I realize it sounds liked I’m thanking her for the sex. I grin, feeling playful. “It was a really good blowjob.”
She laughs. “I forgot you could be funny, Easton.”
I forgot I could be funny, too.I bump her shoulder. “As good as certain aspects of that night were, I meant I never thanked you for what you told me about using the good stuff to get through the hard stuff.
“Your advice became a lifeline for me. I used what I enjoyed, the work I envisioned helping others, creating a business and a brand to comfort myself. Starting a fitness company that donated not only to the charity of choice for our clients, but my own charity for lung cancer research made processing my pain and grief bearable. It’s what got me out of bed in the morning when everything in me didn’t want to get up. So, thank you.”
“Ay.” She places her hand flat against her chest. A glitter of tears gathers in her eyes, then falls down her cheeks. She dips her head and whisks them away with a swipe.
She brings up her knees and wraps her arms around them. Her dress rides high up her thighs. I try not to look. “You got yourself up. I’ve given that same advice to many people, but it doesn’t always work. It works for those who can make it work. You were able to do that.”
She stares out at the midnight ocean, her wet hair curling dramatically with the mist. She’s so beautiful it hurts.
Is it possible to want a do-over with someone so much that you’d fuck over your own future, the future of an entire company, and your closest friend? God, I hope not.
With a decisive nod, she releases her legs, sticks them straight out in front of her. Her shoulders relax and her hands fall away. “Mira, I asked you to come out here because I wanted to clear the air about our dance, about what it meant.”
I know exactly what she means even without her clarifying, but I can’t risk my broken and barely stable heart. “What are you getting at?”
A low, disappointed sigh escapes her. “We spend too much time on the show trying to look perfectly real while feeling perfectly fake. Those times can’t blur the moments when we get to be really real.” She leans back on the palms of her hands and stares up at me. “?Comprendes?”
I do. But I thought she brought me out here to talk about the past, not about the present. Or, fuck, the future. “We were kids. We’re not kids now. Things change.”
She looks down at where my hands are fisting sand. She grabs my wrist and flips it over. “This tattoo is a symbol of what hasn’t faded.” She runs a finger along my wolf howling at the moon tattoo and I have to close my eyes against the silk of her touch. “You feel it, too.”
I pull my hand away. Okay, yes, it’s not a huge leap to guess the meaning behind this tattoo, the longing for a night that still howls inside me, but to bring it up? The challenge in her statement sits there, as real as the ink on my arm.
Shit. “You’re so much braver than me.”
“You only have to decide to be brave. I decided at dinner that I won’t regret you again,” she whispers. “I brought you out here to talk about a truce, a compromise for a future I thought we might both feel.” She looks again at the tattoo. “I’ve followed you online for years. I could’ve reached out, but I didn’t. I’m reaching out now.”
She looks at me with such open expectation I can barely contain this pent-up need to kiss her until she is mindless for me.
She licks her lips, full and bitable, and the urge to claim her grows. It has been growing and simmering all night with each accidental touch of her hand, each brush of her arm, a soft sigh, and the sweep of hair across her face or even against her damn shoulder.
And, if I’m honest, it’s been building before tonight. It’d built when she hadn’t been there, when I’d thought of her, regretted her. It’d roared back to life when we were reunited, live, on air. Every moment I’ve been with her since, including that torturous dance, has been a kind of foreplay, teasing me into a state of unbridled hunger.
Now, with her head titled back, lips lifting in offer, want pounds through every cell in my body.
Fuck me.
I bend down and take her offer with a groan that’s waited a hundred thousand hours to release. She wraps her hands around my neck, draws me closer, and buries her hands in my hair.
I am gone.
She opens wide for me, and my tongue darts into her mouth, claiming her slick warmth. Claiming her.
The way she’s tugging my hair reminds me of our night, lapping at her sweet sex as we pleasured each other on that roof, of her soft and desperate moans.
The hard want surging between my legs grows painful.
She pulls at me, and I give way, rolling her to the ground, rolling on top of her.
She writhes under me, and I realize there is nothing that could stop me from having this woman. Not my company. Not the fallout. Not anything.
I slide demanding hands over her full breasts and moan into her mouth. Hooking a finger through the strap of her dress, I release her and bend to suck the bud of flesh my fingers now pinch.
There’s laughter on the beach. We freeze at nearly the same instant. She gasps, breathing heavily. She puts her hands against my chest and pushes.
With a pained groan, I roll off of her. Sitting next to her, gasping like I’ve run a marathon, I adjust myself.
She whispers something in Spanish that I don’t catch, but I get the tone of it. The we can’t of it. Fuck.
After a moment, she whispers, almost apologetically, “It’s my fault. I meant… I wanted to offer a truce, but… lo siento. I… I really need this contest. I can’t drop out.
I run a reproachful hand through my hair. “Fuck, no. I wouldn’t let you drop out.” Not that I’d have a choice, but she must get what I mean. “I can’t leave the show either, Yolanda. I would, but that thing with Cecily…”
She makes a noise to let me know she understands—it’s obviously no secret what happened—but I go further and explain what few people know. “My board gave me one shot to stay on as head of my company. I need the show to improve my reputation or the board is going to vote to kick me out.”
She reaches for me. Her hand floats in the air between us for a moment before drifting back to her own lap. “That seems so unfair. It’s your company. You created it.”
Yeah. And I created the rules. “Everyone at the company signs a morals clause which includes reputation. It was my idea. I didn’t want my company’s reputation tarnished by the actions of any of our employees without recourse. Never thought that would apply to me. That’s not the way I typically live my life.”
“Can I ask…”
She fiddles with her dress, straightening it in a way that reminds me of having my hands all over those beautiful breasts. My cock jerks. I look away and fist my hands back in the sand.
“Since we both need this show and neither of us can quit, would you be willing to… That is… If this thing between us is something you want to explore, you know, after the show?”
I laugh at her hesitation. She’s so damn cute as I sit here trying to wish my hard-on down. “If it wasn’t against the rules, I’d like to explore it during the show, right now. On this beach, in fact.”
She laughs. I stand up and offer her a hand. She takes it, and I pull her to her feet. Her hand is so warm. Her lips so close. I blink. Drop her hand. “I’m happy to wait for the possibility of us.”
And another night. I frown, thinking of the many complications of this arrangement. “I’m going to have to keep being a bit stern with you.” Heat rises up through my face. “But every time I do…” I lean down to her and whisper, “I want you to remember our night, remember me pouring heat and power into you, Yolanda. And know that’s what I’d rather be doing.”
“Pero, that’s not fair,” she gasps, feigning shocked outrage. She smiles. “You remember too, Easton.” She sways her hips. “What I’m actually saying with my hips when I stay really, really far away from you.”
We walk off the beach in silence, me drifting farther behind her as we go, remembering, with each sway of her hips, what she’s really saying.
It’s the best kind of torture.