A mistake who thought that screwing her brother’s best friend was the solution to heartbreak.
I don’t look at him while I dash for the door.
“Ellie,” he calls in a hushed whisper, but I ignore him.
I’ve already been someone’s mistake recently.
And as I barrel into the cold winter night and throw myself into the car, I vow to myself that I’ll never be anyone’s mistake ever again.
“Never again,” I whisper as I start my car.
“Never again,” I whisper as I gun it on the way down my parents’ street.
“Never again,” I’m whispering through tears five minutes later on the I-256 loop.
I see the movement flying up the entrance ramp next to me a second too late.
There’s a flash, sparks, a crack, a jolt.
Spinning.
Crunching.
Glass shattering.
Metal buckling.
Pain.
Blinding hot pain.
Never again.
It’s my last thought before everything goes black.
Chapter Two
Wyatt Morgan, aka a single dad military man unaware that an unresolved piece of his past is lurking in the bathtub
Six months later…
The house is too quiet.
Probably because Tucker quit talking as soon as he saw the socks and bra hanging on the chandelier in the foyer. I give myself a mental pat on the back.
Way to go, Dad. Introduce him to party central at a young age.
If Beck Ryder wasn’t the closest thing I had to a brother, and if just being here didn’t already bring back the same lingering guilt that’s been with me the last six months, I’d be plotting to put Icy Hot in those briefs he models right about now.
Instead, I give the living room a cursory glance and stifle a sigh while I kick my sandals off on the entry mat and nudge Tucker to do the same. Books, magazines, robot toys, and empty mugs and glasses are scattered over every flat surface of the spacious living space, from the end tables to the wide-plank maple floor. The mess ruins the effect of the tall bay windows overlooking the spruce and oaks sloping down the side of the mountain to the little landlocked town of Shipwreck, Virginia in the valley below.
A subtle scent of wood smoke hangs in the air, and the massive stone fireplace separating the living room from the dining room needs the ashes cleaned out. The kitchen is just as much a disaster, with dirty plates, cups, mixing bowls, and pots and pans scattered all about.
Use my weekend house, Beck said. Somebody should.
Go clean my weekend house, he meant.
He needs to be more careful with who he lets in here when he’s gone.
A family picture on the mantle catches my eye, and I do my best not to wince.
The guilt is still there. The guilt, and the lie.
I pissed her off.
That’s all I told Beck about what happened before Ellie’s accident.
Of course you did, Levi had said, because he’d also been lurking at the hospital when I showed up to check on her as soon as I got Beck’s text the next day. I’d never been so glad to have a buffer, and felt less like I deserved one, and after what I grew up with before my mom finally moved us to Copper Valley, that’s saying something. Levi hadn’t cracked a grin when he’d added, Pissing off Ellie is what you do.
Fuck, man, you got your own problems, Beck had told me. Don’t put this on yourself too.
And just like that, I was forgiven.
By them, anyway.
Not by her though.
And not by me.
It’s gotten easier to get back in the groove of participating in the group texts with all the guys from the neighborhood, but being here, in Beck’s second—third? fourth?—home, surrounded by reminders of his sister, makes me tenser than I’ve been in months.
Coming here was a bad idea.
But I’m not here for me.
Not entirely.
I squeeze Tucker’s shoulder. His gaze has drifted from the chandelier to the life-size cardboard cutout of Beck in his skivvies standing in the corner.
The air-brushing on that thing would be hilarious if my son wasn’t gaping at Beck’s six-pack. I turn the thing around, then nod toward the hallway beyond the kitchen. “C’mon, little dude. Let’s go find the bedrooms.”
He nods back. Sort of. I guide him past the kitchen and down the hallway toward the two bedrooms on this level. His suitcase goes into the guest bedroom, and I’m about to fling my duffel inside the master, but the rumpled sheets on the king-size four-poster bed, the glass of water on the heavy nightstand, the open suitcase next to the stone fireplace stuffed with—parrots?—and the flowery scent tickling my nose give me pause.
But it’s the soft light flickering in the bathroom doorway that makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
I put a hand out to stop Tucker from coming closer. “Stay here,” I murmur, my pulse suddenly hammering.
Since Christmas, it’s been just me. Alone. Except the one weekend a month I’ve flown to Copper Valley to visit my son.
Checking out an intruder? Twenty-eight days a month, I can handle that.
But on the first day I get Tucker for the summer? When it’s not just my neck on the line?
This is not how our week of vacation is supposed to go.
I slide my phone out of my pocket and creep softly to the bathroom door, one hand held back to remind Tucker to stay and be quiet.
He’s seven.
This isn’t going to end well.
But just as I decide getting the hell out of here and calling a sheriff is probably a better idea, I see what’s lurking in the bathroom.
A woman.
Alone.
In the corner tub.
Her dark hair is piled in a short ponytail on top of her head. The faint sound of country music drifts out of her earbuds. Candles line the tub shelf and the platform it sits on, causing the flickering glow. The bath bubbles are so high I can’t see her face.
My heart gives a squeeze and shoots out guilt, but I tell it to knock it off.
Beck lets anybody who asks use this house.
It’s not Ellie.
Her hair’s too short and too dark. Ellie always has blond streaks in her hair.
I step onto the cool tile floor, and I’m about to clear my throat to get her attention when Tucker exclaims, “A bubble bath!”
The woman shrieks, straightens, and spins, wide blue eyes connecting with mine for a split second before she disappears.
One second, she’s gape-mouthed and goggling like she’s just as shocked to see us as we are to see her, and the next, there’s a splash that sets my heart spiraling into a panic, because fuck me, that’s Ellie.
A flurry of foamy bubbles shoots into the air as she goes under the water. Her arm flaps up, then the other, waving wildly like she’s trying to find purchase to pull herself up. I dash across the slick tile to grab for her in the deep tub. My hand connects with soft wet flesh, and suddenly I’m getting a fist to the chest as she breaks through the water. “Back up, asshole. I’ll freaking cut you!”
That voice.
It’s coming out of a face covered with bubbles from the top of her head to the foam sticking to her eyelashes all the way down to the droopy bubble beard, but I know that voice, and it has my pounding heart suddenly beating from somewhere around my voice box.
“Ellie. Are you—”
The bubble eyes blink. “Wyatt?”
The shriek is amplified by the hard surfaces in the bathroom, bouncing off the glass window over the tub, the mirror, the hard floor.
She gasps, looks down and flings her arms over her bubble-covered chest, and ducks back down, but then she shrieks and disappears under the water again, arms flailing again, and what the hell is she soaking in that’s making the tub so slippery?
I bend at the waist to reach into the tub and grab onto her arm and pull, but no sooner does she surface than her eyes
narrow. “Let. Go,” she sputters around the bubbles cascading down her face.
“So you can drown?” Christ, she nearly died the last time I saw her. I’m not letting her drown.
No matter how much she irritates the snot out of me.
Or how—
Nope.
Not thinking about Ellie in any other way than the annoying and alive ways.
Still, we’re so close, I can count the specks of midnight in her blue irises and the new list of reasons she has to hate me.
And I know she’s naked under those bubbles.
Not good.
Think about my kid. Remember Beck. Think about Beck in his underwear…
Her eyelids snap up and down, more heat—anger, not interest—surging out of them. “I’m not going to—fu—”
Her words are cut off as she slips and flails again. She doesn’t go under, because she grabs a handful of my shirt.
And pulls.
Hard.
The floor slips beneath me, and suddenly I’m falling face-first into the bubbles.
Wet heat crashes over my face and soaks into my T-shirt. I choke on a lungful of soapy water and come up sputtering.
I probably deserve that.
And more.
“What the fu—he—heck was that for?” I spit out around a cough while I shove away from the tub though, because while I can admit to myself that I deserved that, I’m not ready to admit it to her.
I’m still pissed at her for ignoring me so effectively for the past six months.
She huddles in a corner, firmly gripping the faucet. “Get out.”
“Dad, you got bubbles on your head,” Tucker laughs. “Can I have bubbles? Can I take your picture?”
The force of Ellie’s glare is so hot I’m surprised the bubbles don’t melt. “Get. Out,” she repeats.
I swipe water off my face and ignore the stinging in my eyes. “Gladly. You’re welcome for trying to help.”
She flips me the bird.
Not the first time.
Won’t be the last.
Ellie Ryder and me?
We mix as well as water and lava.
And I don’t want to talk about how damn good it feels to finally confirm for myself that she’s still in one piece.
That she’s still breathing.
And that she still hates me.
More so, if that was possible.
I hate that she hates me, but I also need her to hate me.
We’re so damn complicated.
“Can I take a bubble bath?” Tucker wants to know while I pull him back out of the bedroom, grabbing my duffel and then his suitcase from the guest bedroom too. Water sloshes off my shirt and drips onto the runner while we head for the stairs.
Fucking Beck.
He knew.
He knew she’d be here.
Dude, seriously, get the stick out of your ass, screw your pride, and use my place out in Shipwreck. Tucker will love the pirate festival, and you’re not gonna get a more comfortable bed. Or a better chance to teach him to play Pac-Man. Or a cheaper vacation. How much are you paying in alimony?
“That was funny, Dad. You were taking a bubble bath with a girl. Mom says I’m too old to take baths with anyone, but you’re way older than me, and you were doing it. Can we take a bubble bath together? I won’t tell Mom. Promise.”
My heart trips again, but this time, it’s an entirely different reason.
How much does he promise his mother he won’t tell me?
He’s already grown an inch and a half since I saw him for two short days last month.
What else am I missing?
Forget Ellie.
Beck’s not lying about how well she’s healing. She’ll be fine, and she can hate me all she wants.
Tucker’s the only thing I need to concentrate on for the next week while I’m on leave. And then every spare minute the rest of the summer until I have to bring him back to his mom.
“Yeah, bud. Let’s go see if there’s a big tub upstairs.”
Hopefully Ellie will clear out by morning.
But even if she doesn’t, we can avoid her. House is big, and we have tons to do in Shipwreck.
She might’ve invaded this house, but she won’t interfere with my vacation with my son.
Unless she needs me.
Not that she’d ever admit it.
And not that I want to admit it either.
I scrub a hand over my face as we step into the first bedroom on the second floor. The queen bed is decked out with a comforter featuring Beck making moon-eyes in his briefs, and the pillow shams are printed with matching pictures of him winking.
Crazy fucker.
“Dad? Why’s your friend’s picture all over everywhere? And why’s he naked?” Tucker asks.
This is going to be one long week.
Chapter Three
Ellie
My doodle pad.
I left my doodle pad in the living room.
Where Wyatt Morgan is headed with his son.
I yank my dripping phone out of the water—wonderful—and hoist myself onto the edge of the tub, stifling a groan at the ache radiating from my left hip to my knee. The scars aren’t red and angry anymore, but they’re still ugly and twisted, and I still can’t move as fast as I used to.
Especially not after slipping in the tub three times. So the answer would be yes, I still need that stupid anti-slip mat.
Dammit.
After I wipe the worst of the bubbles off my face, I do my best not to limp over the towels that I toss on the ground to prevent me from slipping on the slick tile floor. The air’s cold now, but my bathrobe is warm, thanks to Beck’s towel warmer.
Once I have my slippers on—simple granny slippers with, you guessed it, grippy foot pads on the bottom—and my phone in my robe pocket, I carefully creak open the bedroom door.
There are voices, but they sound like they’re coming from upstairs.
It takes me longer than it should to get to the kitchen, dig out a box of Rice-a-Roni—no, my brother apparently doesn’t keep plain rice here—and get my phone drying out as best I can.
And then I go in search of my doodle pad.
It’s not on the glass end tables, in any of the magazine piles, or tucked into the crocheted ivory afghan on the brown leather couch. Nor is it between the couch cushions or hidden in the recliners. Not in the papers and random old mail on the coffee table, or on the fireplace hearth.
I look at the stack of magazines again, my blood pressure starting to rise.
No one gets to see my doodle pad.
Especially anyone under eighteen.
Or possibly thirty.
Or with a penis.
Or who creeps up on me in the bathtub.
My brother is getting an earful as soon as my phone’s dry.
I was doodling out here this afternoon after unloading my car, which I probably should’ve let Monica help me with, but it’s her wedding week, and I’m her maid of honor, dammit, not her friend who needs babysitting. I sat in that recliner, swiveled it to face the scenery, and drew—
Never mind what I drew.
The point is, I distinctly remember setting my doodle pad right there on the end table.
And it’s gone.
Nothing else is missing.
Just my doodle pad.
A shriek of laughter from above makes me eyeball the stairs. I could go ask Wyatt where he put it.
Or be polite and ask if he’s seen it. The tones of his voice carry through the ceiling as well, low, deep, and carefully modulated, because that’s Wyatt for you.
Always calm.
Always in control.
Always right.
Even about mistakes. Oh, fuck, Ellie, we shouldn’t have done that.
I shake my head, because the two things I absolutely will not think about are Wyatt’s hot, sweaty, naked body on mine, and the sound of metal crunching on metal and glass at sixty miles an hour in the dark.
Fuck.
Now I’m thinking about it.
About the dark. And the cold. And the pain.
The chill starts in my left femur and spreads a shiver through my bladder and up into that spot right beneath the bottom of my breastbone. The scent of blood floods my sinuses. My vision narrows, my skin goes clammy, and I get that itch between my shoulder blades while my lungs shrink to the size of a walnut.
I’m drowning.
I’m drowning in hot metal and sharp glass and snowflakes.
This is not real.
I’m safe.
This is not real.
I grip the edge of the leather recliner and focus on a single green leaf fluttering on an oak in the front yard.
Cool summer breeze. Warm summer sunshine.
I’m safe.
I’m safe.
I’m safe.
My fingers tingle, and my legs wobble, but I can see past the tree now. My lungs expand a little wider, and the rushing in my ears fades as quickly as it arrived.
I’m okay.
I’m okay.
My skin prickles as the last of my panic recedes—it’s been two months since the last one, I should’ve been done with these by now—and a reflected movement in the glass makes me tense up harder.
“Go. Away,” I grit out.
Wyatt’s at the bottom of the stairs. I didn’t hear him coming.
But I hear Wyatt from six months ago.
Fuck, Ellie…shouldn’t have done that.
We made a mistake.
You’re a mistake.
I squeeze my eyes shut, because he didn’t say that.
He didn’t say any of it beyond we shouldn’t have done that.
But why shouldn’t we?
Didn’t take much to fill in the blanks.
I was a mistake.
First Patrick—staying together this long was a mistake. If I was supposed to love you, I wouldn’t be in love with someone else—and then Wyatt. Fuck, Ellie, that was a mistake.
“Are you okay?” he asks, and his voice prompts another round of cold chills.
But this isn’t the same panicked cold chills still making my thighs and knees quiver, and sending that ache deeper into my left femur.
Nope, that’s regret cold chills.
“Just a little naked,” I reply, because I am naked under my robe, and I’m apparently feeling like being an asshole.
Beach Reads Box Set Page 49