by Sarah Sutton
She hoisted her bag higher up on her shoulder, watching Jewel trail after us with a distrustful gaze. “I’m in the second round.”
Without warning, two arms wrapped around my waist and pulled me backward, startling me so badly that I nearly dropped my slushy cup.
A soft voice accompanied the embrace, warm words close to my ear. “Found you.”
The quickness of my pulse didn’t lessen as my brain registered the voice as Walsh’s. In fact, it almost started to beat faster. I tried to catch my expression, to morph it into a look of elation.
Get your game face on, Sophia, I thought again, and gave a small, feigned gasp. “Walsh.” My voice was so high, and I fought off a cringe. “You scared me.”
When I turned to face him, I faltered at the view, at least on the inside. I’d seen him an hour ago, but for some reason, the sight of him now had me doing a doubletake. Probably because he was shirtless.
His dark navy trunks and blond hair both were dripping as if he’d just jumped into the bay, dripping water droplets onto his skin. My back had just been against his bare and tanned chest, and I couldn’t get past that thought.
“Sounds like it,” he said with a grin. “Is that a slushy?”
I could feel Jewel’s eyes on us like a physical weight, bouncing back and forth. Gosh, was I paranoid now?
Paranoid or not, I made sure not to let it show. “Of course.”
Walsh swiped the cup from me, his mouth closing over the straw, taking a long pull. I tried to breathe normally, watching my slushy in his hands, jittering with nerves. He smacked his lips together. “Mm. A little syrupy for me.”
I couldn’t stop looking at his mouth. “Syrupy is the best.”
“Shouldn’t you be on the court?” Jewel asked Walsh, gesturing to the volleyball players. “Weren’t you signed up for the first round?”
“Some girl named Eloise stepped in for me. I’m not feeling too great tonight.”
It didn’t take me long to realize why the name sounded familiar. Even from the corner of my eye, I saw Edith stiffen, and her eyes narrowed. “Eloise Xiang? Tall, dark hair?”
“Uh, I didn’t catch her last name, but yeah, she was tall. She’s from Greenville, I think.”
Edith grabbed Jewel’s beach blanket, the one Jewel clung to. “Come on.”
Jewel glanced back at me. “But Sophia—”
“I’ll catch up,” I told her, but Edith already dragged her away toward the volleyball net, out of earshot. I turned back to the bare-chested Walsh, forcing my gaze up to his eyes and totally not on all that golden skin. “Hey.”
“We’ve already done that part,” Walsh teased, teeth biting at his smile.
I glanced at where a bead of water dripped from his hair onto his collarbone, tracing a line across his tanned skin. “Why are you all wet?”
“Jumped in the water to cool off,” he said with a slight chuckle, like duh. “You know, I’m going to be honest. I’m surprised you wanted to come to this.”
“Why?” I raised an eyebrow at him, slightly offended. “Is that why you didn’t ask me to come? You didn’t think I’d be fun?”
Walsh reached out and wrapped his arms around me, loosely at my waist. In our time together, I’d come to learn what the sudden embrace meant. He sees someone.
This time, though, I didn’t have to force myself to relax against his chest. My body did that all on its own.
“I didn’t ask you because I wasn’t really feeling it tonight myself. I’m not much of a partier.”
“Walsh Hunter, the introvert?” I teased, reaching up and tracing my free hand down the side of his neck. Whoa, why am I touching him like this? His pulse fluttered underneath my skin, and the feel of his heartbeat made this moment turn warmer, feeling like someone dialed up the temperature. “You never answered my question earlier. Why didn’t you play tonight?”
Walsh smiled a little, looking down at me with a gaze that could’ve made any person weak in the knees. “Just tired,” he said, and then changed the subject. “Is that a swimsuit I see underneath that shirt?”
I arched an eyebrow. “Are you seriously trying to look through my shirt?”
His grin split wider, and he looked off to the side. If I didn’t know any better, I would’ve thought he was blushing. “I’m not—no. No.”
Teasing him like that sent something of a thrill down my spine, especially when I was so perfectly in his arms. My feet were in the soft sand, a slushy in my hand, and I was pressed against Walsh’s naked chest. I couldn’t tell if it was a very good world I’d been thrown into or a very bad one.
I took a drink from my slushy to cool down my insides, the cool blue-raspberry liquid covering my tongue. Walsh watched where the straw stuck in my mouth. “What do you think? Too syrupy?”
All at once, the realization hit me. He just drank from this. His mouth was just on this.
“I don’t have cooties, I swear,” Walsh chuckled as if reading my thoughts, gaze shifting toward the volleyball net. “You showed up with Jewel, huh?”
“She found me in the slushy line. She wanted us to sit together.” I held my cup between us, between his bare chest and my face, a small barrier that gave me a semblance of clarity. “That’s weird, right?”
“That your ex-boyfriend’s new girlfriend wants to sit by you?” He lifted a bare shoulder. “Does she know that he cheated on you with her?”
I looked over to where Jewel now sat in the sand, Edith on the blanket next to her. Jewel had her hands in her lap and her sunglasses on, a relaxed smile on her face. Edith was just the opposite, strung tight, arms crossed.
“I don’t know. I doubt Scott told her the truth. He probably just told her I was a friend.”
“She seems nice.”
Yeah, she did. So what’s a nice girl like her doing with a guy like Scott? I looked up at Walsh. “I didn’t know you played volleyball.”
“Oh, I don’t. Not well, anyway, which is why I backed out. Ryan had signed me up.”
That made sense. Seemed like Ryan liked to push Walsh out of his comfort zone.
I backed up out of Walsh’s embrace and ran my tongue over my lips, making sure there was no trace of syrupy slushy on them. Lifting my head, I looked him in the eye. “Take my picture.”
Walsh blinked once, and when he looked up and met my gaze, I realized he’d been looking at my mouth. “What?”
“Take my picture. I give you permission to post this one.”
Walsh hurried to get his cell from his pocket, fumbling to raise it. “Say, ‘Walsh is the best.’”
My smile faltered just a little bit. “No.”
“‘Sophie is the best’?”
“It’s an A, Walsh. Is it really that hard to replace one vowel?”
Walsh gave me a look that was a cross between playful and exasperated. “Fine, just smile.”
I forced my features into a somewhat relaxed expression, trying to look as happy and cheerful as I could without looking like I was trying too hard. Which was difficult. But Walsh, who was looking at the screen of his cell phone, smiled a bit as he snapped the photo, and I knew I must’ve done something right.
“You know, I’ve been thinking,” I said as Walsh slipped his cell back into his pocket. “Shouldn’t we be convincing people we’re growing apart? Not getting closer?”
“No, it’s too soon. We need to drag it out a bit more. Make it more believable. Our honeymoon phase wouldn’t be over yet.” His response was quick as he tossed his phone into the sand, grabbing my hand and pulling me after him. “Come on, let’s go for a swim.”
I blinked, nerves fluttering. “A swim?”
“I already know you’re wearing a suit.”
I yanked my hand free, folding my arms over my chest. “So you were looking through my shirt.”
Walsh stopped just on the edge of where the ocean met the dry sand. “You know, you haven’t asked me many questions for the article. It’s the perfect time to. Swim a little, interview a little.
It’ll be fun.” Walsh grabbed my purse strap, tugging. My grip on it tightened and for a moment we just grappled with it. “Do you not want to swim, Sophie?”
“I’m not…like the other girls here, you know.” Ugh, I so shouldn’t have been insecure, but everyone was wearing their pretty bikinis with their beautiful bodies with their flowing hair. Realistically, I knew me in my swimsuit was not a big deal—so many people on the beach wore even less—but I couldn’t shake the feeling, nor the heat in my cheeks. “All cute bikinis and flat stomachs. I’m not—”
Walsh placed a hand over my mouth, his scent filling my senses. The sharp scent of ocean water clung to his skin, smelling familiar, mixing with his natural earthy scent. “If you say you’re not as sexy or amazing as anyone on this beach, Sophia Whatever-Your-Middle-Name-Is Wallace, I’m going to throw you in the bay.”
It was the perfect moment for a snarky remark on my part. Dang, at least a freaking eye roll, because I had to do something other than gape at him, his hand on my lips, holding my jaw from falling to the ground. He’d called me sexy. No one ever called me that before. The word drew my eyes to his own naked chest, tightly toned from all the years of playing sports, a little unevenly tanned from his jersey.
When his hand fell from my lips, I had the strangest urge to reach out and touch him again. Not on his neck this time, but lower, along his flat, muscular stomach, to feel his smooth skin underneath my fingertips. What would he do in response? Would he laugh? Gasp? Reach out himself and trace a fingertip down my bare skin? Would he—
Mentally smacking myself, I forced myself to fill my mouth with slushy until my brain froze. Where had that come from?
“It’s Vanessa.” The words were barely there, breathless. “My middle name is Vanessa.”
He didn’t have to say that he liked it, because the sparkle in his eyes said it all.
Walsh tugged my purse from my grip, dropping it against the dry ground beside his cell before taking off toward the water. I stared after him, his bare back, hating the fact that my lungs refused to draw in air.
“Come on,” he called, turning around with a wide grin. The sun was a backlight behind him, filtering around his body. It made all his edges look soft, almost golden. “Last one to the farthest buoy buys the next slushy.”
Chapter Eleven
People always say “Tell me something no one knows about you,” and I never understood it. I never understood the significance of knowing the little things about someone, things that no one else in the entire universe knew. I used to think stuff like that was wasted knowledge, useless facts that cluttered up brain space.
But as Walsh and I paddled through the water together, dodging the waves and floating on our backs, I learned his little things.
His favorite color was brick red because that was the color of the truck his dad taught him to swing a bat on. It was an old truck, no engine, didn’t run, and Walsh’s dad took him out to practice his technique on the sides of it.
He had a chef/housekeeper/nanny/therapist—his words, not mine—named Janet, and they sometimes played poker before she left for the day. And according to him, she always kicked his butt.
He only drinks one brand of water, because all of the other brands don’t taste as good.
He box-dyed his golden hair black when he was thirteen, because he knew it would make his mother mad.
Small things, useless knowledge, and with the setting sun falling lower and lower on the horizon, I found that I could’ve been with him for the rest of the day, just to hear him talk.
And though I would’ve thought it’d be hard for me to open up, I told Walsh a bit about myself. I told him how my one passion was, above all else, writing. I told him that I could sit for hours writing. That had been why I joined the school newspaper, because I absolutely loved the craft of it.
“I want to be a journalist,” I had told Walsh decisively, smoothing my wet, auburn hair from my face. “That’s why this article means so much, why this class means so much. It opens so many doors.”
And Walsh had listened to everything I said. The idea that my words meant something to someone was almost jarring. To be heard when I spoke was a rarity for me. My parents didn’t pay attention; Scott never cared. But when I spoke, Walsh watched me the entire time, eyes doing that soft-melty thing that made me look over my shoulder. We’d been far out enough in the bay that even if people were watching, no one would’ve seen the look in his eye.
Had to hand it to that boy—he knew how to smolder.
When we’d been talking about baseball uniforms and helmets, how often the school purchased the team new equipment, he’d let the words slip.
“Ryan’s parents donated some money back in March for the team,” Walsh had said while he looked up at the sky, lips slanted into what almost looked like a frown. “The school’s not really allowed to take direct funding for stuff like that—I mean, yes, it goes into the sport’s fund, but not for a specific team. I don’t know why they allowed that.”
I couldn’t even remember what I’d replied with because my brain was too busy connecting dots. Though the money graph I’d found online meant a lot of gibberish, there was a spike in baseball funding in the beginning of spring.
That’s where it’d come from—Ryan’s parents. What a perfect bullet point to add once I got home.
No sooner than I’d thought that, my insides flinched. This was the point of everything—I’d ride out this fake dating thing with Walsh, and I’d write the article on the baseball team. That was the entire plan.
Then why did I feel so guilty?
The sun was fading fast as Walsh slowed to a stop in front of my house now, his brakes squeaking horribly. Walsh had draped towels over the seats to soak up any water that seeped through our clothes, but we were both mostly dried off now. My hair still was a little damp, dripping water onto my shorts.
When Walsh spoke, I realized that we’d both been quiet for a long time—long enough for me to get used to the silence while looking out the window. “Hey, you okay?”
“Yeah.” I’d left my bedroom light on and could see the outline of Shiba sitting on the windowsill. “Just lost in thought.”
It didn’t look like I was the only one either. The driver’s seat made a creaking noise as Walsh leaned his weight against it, hands slipping from the steering wheel to fall onto his bare knees. The way he slouched made me remember what Jewel told me earlier, saying that he didn’t play tonight. Walsh had said he was tired, and now as we sat in the quiet of his car, the energy seemed like it had been zapped out of him.
“You look exhausted,” I whispered in the quiet, thankful for the dimness of the cab and his closed eyes. Being so close in a small space seemed less intimate with him not looking at me, making me feel more relaxed. “Are you okay?”
“I didn’t get much sleep last night.” Walsh tipped his head to face me, the dashboard lights casting a haunting look across his features. “Coach put Taylor in today because I wasn’t in any shape to pitch.”
I thought about Scott’s comment about him falling asleep at one of the games. “Has that happened a lot?” I asked him. “Coach putting Taylor in?”
“Only when I ask. Today, I asked. Lately, it’s been more often than I’d like.” Walsh’s face screwed up as a surge of weariness crept across his features, shoulders wilting. Exhaustion coated his body and made him less guarded. “I love the sport. I could spend the rest of my life playing baseball. It’s just lately…it’s been tougher than usual.”
“How come?”
Walsh was a much more pensive guy than I’d previously given him credit for. His silent pauses rivaled my own in length, and I found myself almost eager for him to open his mouth, to speak, to confess to me. I wanted to know what was going on inside his head so badly.
“Family things have been making things rougher and…” He let out a sigh. “I’m different than those guys.”
“Oh, please,” I snorted, immediately shaking my head. “And y
ou call my romance books clichéd.”
That got his lips curving upward, just a tiny bit. “I meant that they’re more competitive than me. It’s all cutthroat to them. Do or die. I don’t…I don’t play that way.”
I tilted my head to the side ever so slightly. “You play for fun.”
“Like I said, I love the sport.” Walsh tipped his head to meet my gaze. “But I hate the game.”
I wanted to say something supportive, but words eluded me. I wasn’t used to comforting others. Especially Walsh. Because even though we were in this fake relationship, moments like this had me feeling like I hardly knew him. Like there was a whole other side of him that I couldn’t see—and I found myself wanting to uncover it.
“I’m sorry,” he said softly. “I should be giving you positive stuff for your article.”
“It’s okay.” My words came out immediately. “You can always say whatever you want.”
We sat in the quiet for another moment, and I knew I needed to get out of the car. Heck, he might’ve even been waiting for me to get out and go inside, but I didn’t want to. Not yet. I wanted to pull my book out of my purse and open up to another page and read. I wanted to turn on the radio and find a song that he would sing along to. I just wanted to stay in this moment of time a little longer.
Walsh reached over and placed a hand on my bare knee, his touch gentle. “We have another game on Sunday. You should come to that one.”
I mimicked the way he sat, my head against the cushion, slouching. My damp hair felt chilled against my neck, the air conditioner making it frigid. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t like baseball?”
Ha. “That’s an understatement.”
“Why?”
“A lot of reasons, I guess.” I traced where his hand rested on my bare leg with my eyes. “It’s long.”
“Football is long. Golf’s long.”
True. “I hate golf, too.”
The hand on my knee squeezed ever so slightly, trying to coax out a genuine answer. “Sophie.”
My eyes slipped shut, and I focused on the turned down music filtering over the radio, not recognizing the faint song. I listened to my breathing for a moment, to Walsh’s own inhales and exhales mixing with mine. With my eyes closed, it was easier to pretend I wasn’t talking to the infamous Walsh Hunter, Mr. Perfect and captain of the baseball team. He could be somebody else, anybody else.