Soaked (The Water's Edge #2)

by Stacy Kestwick

  The boat at the activities’ shed had a beanbag in the back, like the one I’d slept in on the Vitamin Sea.

  The sky turned the color of his eyes during the afternoon storms that moved through most days.

  And those damn paper planes showed up without fail every fucking morning.

  I was staring at them. Twelve of them strewn across my bed. Some were big and basic, the kind a second-grader might make. Others were smaller and intricately folded, mini fighter jets perhaps. Pieces of his angular handwriting peeked through on all of them.

  Messages.

  Words I’d been too angry, too scared, too raw to read.

  Until now.

  Tonight, I was tired of being on the tightrope, balancing anger on one hand and love—yes, goddamn it, love—on the other. I was tired and I was ready to fall. To let go of it all and just see where I landed. Discover which side was gonna win out in the end.

  I ran my finger across the wing of a plane, the one that had showed up the first day. I didn’t quite remember the order they’d all been delivered to me—didn’t know if that mattered—but I remembered this one.

  I had to give West credit. He hadn’t given up.

  I hadn’t called, hadn’t texted, hadn’t looked at Facebook once.

  No contact, yet the planes arrived faithfully each morning with a glass of orange juice.

  He was a stubborn bastard, if nothing else.

  Anticipation and nerves had my heart thudding heavily behind my ribs.

  Biting my lower lip, I tugged apart the folds of the plane, smoothing the paper out as best I could. I didn’t read it right away. Instead, I grabbed the next one and repeated my actions. Unfolded, smoothed, added it to the pile.

  When I had a stack of wrinkled notebook pages in my hand, I moved higher up the bed, stacking pillows behind me and leaning back against the carved-wood headboard.

  My hand shook and my pulse hammered in my throat.

  Somehow, it felt like these pages knew the answer. Like I was about to see what my future held.

  West or no West.

  I picked up the first one, tracing the creases his hands had made. The entire page was covered with the phrase I love you, written over and over again. Something shattered in my chest as some of the walls I’d thrown up to protect my heart cracked. A small PS message at the bottom said there was one I love you for each day since the morning I’d tried to save him from drowning.

  One airplane listed all the parts of my body he wanted to kiss me, and I blushed in places I didn’t know I could blush. Another ranked the best places we’d had sex—the stairwell after the BBQ coming in at number one. Several apologized for not being a better boyfriend, not knowing what I needed, and letting me down. He promised to learn, listen harder, communicate more, do better. But he wasn’t giving up. He made that abundantly clear. He would be waiting for me when my plane landed, he swore.

  But it was the one in my hand that had tears gathering in my eyes. It was the fourth time I’d read it.

  Sadie,

  Even though you’ll probably hate the comparison, you remind me of the ocean. See, I love the ocean. I switched addresses just to be closer to it. Moved in with my brother just so it’d be the first thing that I saw in the morning and the last thing I saw at night.

  But something’s changed. You’ve changed me.

  Now you’re what I crave. Need. Live for.

  Maybe I suck at showing it. But I feel it. I feel it deep and strong and wide and sure and as far as the horizon. I love you when you’re dark and stormy. I love you when you’re peaceful and calm. I love you when you’re wild and unexpected.

  I love it when I can still smell you on my skin and taste you on my tongue, hours after you’ve left.

  How I can close my eyes, and feel your nails scratching down my back and your hands in my hair. How your voice is the voice in my head now, arguing with me even when you aren’t there.

  You’ve given me a motivation to succeed I didn’t have before. Because now I have someone I want to take care of one day, spoil rotten with doughnuts and endless air hockey rematches and Lunchable picnics on my boat.

  I just want to touch you, be close to you, in you, near you . . . with you. My world makes sense with you there to ground me. Steady me. Love me.

  And I know you do.

  I see it in your eyes. Feel it in your kiss. Hear it in your laugh.

  Know it in my soul.

  I won’t give up on us. You can’t just pretend the ocean isn’t there. It’s too big, too much to ignore.

  Same with us.

  I love you.

  I should’ve said it sooner. I’ve felt it for weeks.

  I love you whether you’re here next to me or across the sea. In my bed or just on my mind. Today and a million tomorrows from now.

  I love you.

  I love you.

  I love you.

  —W

  Breathless, I collected the notes scattered around me into one semi-neat stack, then crushed the papers against my chest, a few rogue tears blazing hot trails down my cheeks.

  I loved him.

  Maybe it should be more complicated, maybe I should protect myself more, know better, run away, play it safe—but I loved him.

  And suddenly that wasn’t enough.

  I scrambled for my laptop, powering it up, impatiently waiting for it to boot up so I could log onto Facebook. I needed to see him—needed to see that he’d been missing me too.

  My hands were shaking so bad, I had to type my password in three times before I got it right. I typed in West Montgomery onto Facebook’s search bar, then faltered, remembering I’d unfriended him. And his page was private—I would need to be his friend to see his pictures.

  His friend. That word seemed far too small, too simple to encompass what we were. How my heart ached because I wasn’t with him. How my hands itched to stroke his skin, feel his muscles jump and contract under my touch.

  No, I couldn’t see his whole page. But I could see what public photos he’d been tagged in.

  It was better than nothing.

  I scrolled through the results. Client photos—proud men holding fish by the base of their tails, grinning like lunatics, West perched in the background. One from his sister Hailey, of West with his two-year-old nephew Cody riding on his shoulders. That one looked like it’d been taken at their grandparents’ house, where Hailey and Cody lived.

  I paused on that one. He looked scruffy. Like maybe he hadn’t shaved since I’d left.

  I wonder how that’d feel between my legs?

  His brother Wyatt tagged him in one from the house they shared, West asleep on the hammock, three crushed beer cans in a pile below him. Another of West mugging for the camera with Wyatt’s oversized hound dog, General Beauregard.

  I kept looking, like a junkie searching for her next fix. A series of group shots from the Wreck, the bar Wyatt and West co-owned. My grin faded. I recognized too many faces in that image. Boone, Trevor, Kendra, West, Wyatt, some other girls . . . and Aubrey.

  Fucking Aubrey.

  I checked the date. Last weekend.

  I scrolled faster there, looking for more with her.

  One more—another group shot. It looked like a restaurant. I didn’t recognize many of the people, but Aubrey was sitting next to West at the table.

  Nice.

  Real. Fucking. Nice.

  Yeah, try harder my ass.

  If he really, truly wanted to make things work between us—wouldn’t he have cut ties with her? Avoided her? Because based on this, nothing much had changed for West.

  Except the new dark hair highlighting his sculpted jaw.

  That she was probably rubbing her skanky hand along.

  I cut my eyes to the blinking red lights of the clock on the nightstand.

  9:47 pm.

  The bar downstairs was most definitely open. Open and full of booze. Booze that would make me forget. Make me happy. Make the pain in my heart that stabbed me with ea
ch beat just fucking stop.

  I was tired of this tightrope act.

  And drinking myself into oblivion sounded like the best plan I’d had in ages.

  I MADE A detour on the way to the bar. That ocean that West compared me to? It could have his damn paper planes. I didn’t need them.

  Kicking off my flip flops, I walked until I hit the shoreline where the water dueled the sand for dominance. I tried to fold the airplanes back up best I could. The ones I couldn’t figure out, I just crumpled into balls. Whatever. They would still fly when I threw them.

  One at a time, the sea swallowed his lies, the tide taking them away where they couldn’t hurt me any longer.

  I stood there, waiting to feel lighter, happier.

  It didn’t happen.

  The waves tickled my feet, soaking the bottom of my jeans.

  Something brushed against my toes, and I jumped back. One of the notes had made its way back to me. I scooped up the soggy paper, wondering if it was a sign. Peeling the edges apart, I held it up, squinting to see which one it was.

  I love you. The words covered the page.

  He’d said he’d never stop.

  So why did it hurt so bad?

  I dropped the page. The sand or the sea—either one could have it. I wasn’t fighting for it anymore.

  THE BARTENDER WAS my new best friend. I frowned. Well, after Rue. And Theo. My third best-est friend. Because she kept pouring me these great margaritas.

  I normally hated margaritas.

  But Alison? My third best-est friend? She made some damn good ones. And there were so many flavors! Lime was okay. Mango was better. Watermelon wasn’t that great, but I drank it anyway because I didn’t want to hurt its feelings. I was almost finished with blood orange and it might have been my favorite, but I still had two flavors to go, so who knew?

  The only thing I needed to decide on was whether pink lemonade or pineapple was next.

  Wasn’t pineapple supposed to make cum taste sweeter?

  Wait—that only worked if the guy drank it. Right?

  I couldn’t remember now.

  And it was fucking glorious.

  Alison was my new third best-est friend and blood orange margaritas were the shit.

  Best. Night. Ever.

  I swung my head around when I heard the stool next to me being slid across the terracotta-tiled floor and almost lost my balance.

  But Nick caught me.

  Niiiiiiick. He looked nice tonight. Tight, dark shirt. Fitted khakis. I could kind of see the outline of his bulge against the fabric.

  It wasn’t bad.

  West had a nice bulge too.

  I wrinkled my forehead. No. I shook my head. No.

  Not thinking about him tonight.

  Hey! Nick was here. Maybe he could drink the pineapple margarita and help me remember. I could get the pink lemonade one then.

  I grinned up at him, and poked him in the chest with my finger.

  “Alison!” I yelled. “This guy—” poke “—needs a pineapple margarita. And I’ll take the lemonade one next.”

  She raised an eyebrow and looked at Nick for confirmation.

  Nick with the bulge.

  He leaned closer to me. “Why pineapple?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Because I can’t remember. And this will solve the problem!”

  “Can’t remember what?”

  “If it’ll make you taste sweeter.”

  He stared at me, then coughed. “Do you mean—”

  I leaned over and patted his lap. “Down here.”

  He mumbled something and removed my hand from his lap. “Maybe Alison can get you a water if I agree to drink a pineapple margarita?” He shuddered and made a face when he said pineapple.

  “I don’t want water.”

  Alison slid a bottle of water in front of me, top removed. She was such a good friend.

  I drank half of it down in one swallow.

  Nick was watching my throat with a bit of a glazed look in his eyes.

  Or were my eyes glazed? Could you see if your own eyes were glazed, or just someone else’s?

  I scrunched up my face and stared at his eyes, trying to puzzle it out.

  Alison put a different drink in front Nick. Something dark in a squat glass with a few ice cubes.

  “That is not a pineapple margarita.”

  “No.” He smirked at me.

  “You lied to me. Why does every fucking guy on this planet lie to me? Is it a gender thing? Or is it something about me specifically?” I pushed Nick’s shoulder, but he didn’t budge.

  Nick took a swallow of his drink. I bet it was something fancy. Refined. Scotch. Or whiskey. Some top-shelf shit. He closed his eyes for a moment as he put his drink down. He had a nice neck. I’d never really noticed before.

  “But now I won’t be able to answer my question.” I frowned at him. It was all his fault.

  “How would you have known if it was sweeter?”

  I squinted at him. “Tasted it?”

  “But how would you have known if it tasted sweeter? Wouldn’t you have needed an initial taste to compare it to?”

  Damn. Nick with the bulge was fucking smart. “I haven’t tasted you yet.” Something else I failed at. I wouldn’t get the answer to my question now.

  “Nope.”

  “Does it taste okay normally?”

  Nick choked on his drink. “I’ve, uh, not had any complaints.”

  “But have you tried drinking pineapple juice before?”

  Handing me the water bottle again, which I obligingly took a sip of, Nick sighed. “Sadie. Why are you down here getting wasted?”

  I was not wasted. I was . . . close, maybe. But not sloppy drunk. “Because of reasons.” I nodded.

  “Tell me the main one.”

  I’m not sure why that did it. Why that little phrase was enough to unlock all the confusion bottled up inside, but it was. The four margaritas probably helped too.

  Words tumbled out of me. I told him about West, who wasn’t drowning after all. And West who wouldn’t let me walk home. And West who drove me home from a party, but I was wasted and woke up in his bed and my thighs weren’t sore at all because we hadn’t had sex. And West who showed up at a drive-in and let another girl climb in the back of his truck before he saw me. And West who took care of me when I was sunburned, and made me penis pancakes for breakfast. And West who fucked me silly on a staircase, but then let another woman stay at his place that night. And West who flew a kite with his nephew and made me fall in love with him, but had pictures of another girl in his nightstand. And West who then carried that same girl in his arms off his boat, and away to their picture-perfect fucking future. And the West who finally said he loved me, who fucked me in a parking lot, but it was too damn late because I was done, gone, over it, and out of there.

  That West.

  By the time I was finished, I wasn’t as drunk as I’d been when I’d started and two more empty water bottles lay on their sides on the bar. Alison had done last call twenty minutes ago.

  I should’ve been humiliated.

  But, fuck, it just felt good to let it all out.

  “What kind of pictures?”

  “What?”

  “What kind,” Nick repeated, “of pictures were in his nightstand?”

  “Oh.” I scowled, picked at the hem of my shirt. “Boudoir shots. They were good too. I took them myself. Wasn’t that nice of me?”

  Nick raised his eyebrows.

  “Show me.”

  “Show you what?”

  “Show me the images. Do you have any on your phone?”

  I huffed and pulled it out, jabbing at the screen until the thumbnails I was looking for were displayed. “I never showed you these. They’re confidential.” My flat tone had him chuckling.

  He studied them, blowing two up to see the details better, before handing my phone back. “Have you ever done any?”

  “I just told you. I took those.”

  “No.�
� Nick smiled. “Have you ever had some taken of you?”

  I wrinkled my nose and looked down at myself. “No.”

  “You should. You should get to experience what it’s like to pose for a session.” Pulling out his phone, he tapped it a few times and slid it across the bar to me. “For the kind of boudoir pictures I take.”

  I squinted at them, unsurprised to find his technique in this also topped mine. “Why? What’s so special about the way you do it?”

  He dropped his hand on top of mine, waiting until I met his gaze. “In my sessions, the woman puts me under her spell. She teases me, tempts me, taunts me with flashes of her body, her skin. She lets me look, fucking turns me on just about every time, but she knows I can’t touch. It’s a strong, heady feeling to have all that power. To feel sexy and wanted and beautiful and to be in control of the situation.” He withdrew his hand slowly, his thumb rubbing my wrist once, twice. His eyes were darker than earlier, his voice deeper. “You should let me shoot you, Sadie. Show you what that’s like. Remind you that you are all those things.”

  My palms were damp, and when I realized I’d curled my fingers into loose fists, I forced myself to relax and wiped my hands against my jean-clad thighs.

  “The pictures would be yours. You could have the memory card when we finished.”

  The offer was tempting. “What would you get out of it?”

  He chuckled. “You saw me after that session with that lady the other day. Did it look like it was a hardship? And with you? Seeing you in that setting would be reward enough.”

  I glanced down. His bulge was bigger.

  “Let’s do it.” I wanted that—all those things he described. To feel sexy, desirable, powerful. Not this emotional hot mess sitting at a closed bar.

  “Maybe tomor—”

  “Now.”

  “I don’t thi—”

  “Now.” If I didn’t do it tonight, before I lost my nerve, I knew I wouldn’t. And I wanted to. Wanted to seize the moment, be reckless.

  Nick dropped his hand, adjusted himself. He’d do it. “You—you’ve been drinking.” He stumbled over his words, belatedly playing the gentleman. “We should wa—”

  I put my finger over his lips. “You done arguing?”