Bella glanced out the window. “But I still can’t figure out how you guys pulled off a secret relationship, and how we didn’t notice.”
Amy smiled, thinking about how they’d snuck around that summer and how exciting it had been. “The first time we kissed was after a bonfire at Cahoon Hollow. You guys were all hanging out on the beach, and I had gone for a walk by the dunes. You know how if you walk close to the dunes, it’s really dark?”
“Mm-hmm,” Bella answered.
“Well, that’s where we were. Tony caught up to me. I don’t know what I was thinking that night, but it wasn’t that Tony and I would end up in a relationship. Especially a secret one. But when he was with me, just the two of us, he looked at me and…Gosh. It felt like this huge moment, you know? People say there are times when the earth stands still, but for me the earth didn’t even exist. Nothing existed but us. His eyes were all dark and sexy, and I remember he was standing so close that our bare toes were touching. I got tingly all over just thinking about if he meant for our feet to touch or not. Gosh, I was so young and naive, but then again, I think I still get those same types of thoughts about him touching me sometimes. A lot, actually. Anyway, then I blurted out that I wanted to kiss him.”
“You did not,” Jenna said.
“I did. I have no idea how I got that brave. I told him I’d loved him since I was six, which was totally true.”
“Oh my God, Amy. What did he say?” Leanna smiled. “I’m trying to remember Tony at twenty.”
“He was sweet, confident, and so handsome.” Amy sighed, feeling like she was eighteen and swooning all over again. “He behaved. He was afraid to kiss me because of my father, not that he didn’t want to. I think we went back and forth a little about if we should or shouldn’t, and boy did I want to. You know how at that age everything is magnified? I felt like if he didn’t kiss me I was going to die, because then what? Would he go back to Jamie and laugh about it?”
“He never would have done that. He respected you too much, even back then,” Leanna assured her.
“Yeah, but at that age, who knew, right?” Years of repressed tension rolled off as Amy confessed to her friends. “Anyway, we kissed, and let me tell you, we did not want to stop.” She glanced at Jenna. “But someone came around collecting rocks. Ahem…”
“Yeah, that would be me. Sorry, Ames. Didn’t mean to lip-block you.”
Amy laughed. “That’s okay. We stole time together when we could. After everyone was asleep, we’d sneak out. He had a sleeping bag he stowed in the woods by the pool and we’d go there.”
“In the woods?” Jenna asked. “That’s so romantic.”
“Yeah, and we made out under the pier in P-town. Behind the ice-cream shop by Nauset. Behind the bathrooms at Cahoon Hollow.” Amy smiled as the memories rolled in. “He was everything to me.”
Leanna leaned closer. “He still is, Amy. He’s always been your everything.”
“Your everything brought you a little something for breakfast.”
They turned at the sound of Tony’s deep voice. His skin glistened with sweat from his run. He lifted his hands, in which he held a jar of Luscious Leanna’s Sweet Treats jam and a box of croissants. Enough for all of them.
He caught Amy’s eye, and she held her breath. He’d heard her say he was her everything, and she still had an inkling of worry that maybe she’d made last night bigger in her mind than he might have thought it was. Tony’s lips curved up, his eyes warmed, and Amy knew that everything was going to be okay.
“Are you okay?” His voice was just above a whisper.
Amy nodded. “Yeah.”
“I knocked, but you guys must not have heard me.” He came into the room, his eyes gliding over the others.
Amy wondered what he saw. Did he see the same love and commitment from her friends that she did? Did he see the emotional discontent of the last half hour? Or did he just see women crawling across the bed and reaching into the Chocolate Sparrow box?
“I like this new boyfriend Tony,” Jenna said. “He brings breakfast and delivers it in sexy shorts.”
Amy winced. “Sorry, Tony. I never said he was my boyfriend, Jenna.”
Jenna shrugged. “I just assumed.”
“So did I.” Tony held the box out toward Amy. “Should I not?”
Bella tapped his waistband. “Any man inked with a pet name is allowed to be called a boyfriend.”
“Is everyone out to embarrass me?” Amy rose on her knees, skipping the croissant Tony offered. Instead she reached for his arm and tugged him toward her. “Do you really want to be my boyfriend? Just because we slept together doesn’t mean you have to.” Please say yes. Please, please say yes.
“You’re right. Sex doesn’t equate to boyfriend-girlfriend, but when you tell each other you’re madly in love, that should count for something.” He stared into her eyes with a serious look on his face.
Amy glanced nervously around the room. Her friends’ eyes were as wide as she was sure hers were.
“I’m going to look really stupid in about three seconds if you don’t acknowledge me in some way,” he whispered.
“Yes. It counts for everything.”
There was a collective aww as the girls filed out of the room.
“Bonfire at Cahoon tonight. Be there or we’ll assume you’re riding the pipe,” Bella yelled on her way out.
Tony arched a brow. “Riding the pipe?”
“Don’t ask.”
Tony set the box down and pulled her into his arms. “You had me scared for a minute there, but I figured it was love when I saw your key chain.” He held up her keys. The surfboard key chain she’d bought at the Wellfleet Market dangled from the silver ring. “Unless there’s another surfer in your life?”
“That’s a big leap to make over a key chain.” She smiled at the devilish grin on his lips. “I think there’s a rule about surfers in the girl handbook. Only one surfer per lifetime. You’re stuck with me if you want me.”
“Kitten, it’s never a question of if.”
She pressed her hands to his chest, thinking about the job with Duke, how her friends had handled her admission, and Tony. God, Tony. Could they really do this? Long-term? The nagging question left her lungs before she had a chance to check it.
“Do you think we’re rushing things?” After coming clean with the girls, she felt like a weight had been lifted from her shoulders. She felt more confident, stronger, like she could handle just about anything. She was ready to rush, but she knew that she and Tony still had a lot of healing and rebuilding to do, and the job in Australia weighed heavily on her mind. They couldn’t heal and rebuild if she was in Australia. She had to know what he was thinking before she made any final decisions about the job.
“Fourteen years is a little fast, isn’t it?” He lowered his mouth so his lips brushed hers when he spoke. “Maybe we should rethink this whole claim our feelings thing.”
“I’m still emotionally fragile. I think I need you to prove your love to me again.” She kissed him. “And again.”
Chapter Thirteen
AMY SAT ON her deck working through the notes she’d taken during her meeting with Duke. It was midafternoon, and Tony had gone to catch the waves at high tide with a few surfing buddies. She sat back and kicked her feet up on another deck chair. The Seaside complex was quiet.
She glanced at Leanna’s empty cottage. She and Kurt had gone to stay at Kurt’s home on the bay side, which was only a few miles from Seaside. Caden and Bella were renovating their house in Wellfleet, and they were spending the afternoon painting the living room and dining room with Evan and his friends. Pete was working on refinishing a boat at his bay-side house with his father, and Jenna and Sky were hanging out there for the day. Blue was meeting them to go to the bonfire later. Jamie and Jessica were still on their honeymoon. They were bringing Jamie’s grandmother, Vera, who raised him after his parents were killed when he was six, up to the Cape with them when they returned in two weeks.
Amy’s eyes drifted to Tony’s cottage. She was meeting him at his cottage later, and they were going to the bonfire together to meet the others. She put her notebook on the table and leaned forward, looking down at the woods beyond the pool. Her pulse sped up as she rose to her feet and stepped off her deck.
The gravel crunched beneath her flip-flops, reminding her of the nights long ago when she and Tony had snuck out together. She’d been so scared back then. Scared of everything, it seemed. Pleasing her father, who adored her but had high expectations, nonetheless. Scared of the emotions that felt as if they owned her. She physically ached when she thought of Tony, and that first night they’d made love, she’d been trembling so badly that Tony had nearly backed out. He’d thought she was too scared of it hurting, when in reality, she’d been even more scared of feeling as much as she did for him.
When her feet left the gravel and met the thick lawn, Amy slowed her pace and drank in the sparse woods. The trees had grown much taller, raising their full branches higher and stealing the camouflage that had made her feel safe from prying eyes. She turned and glanced up the hill at the cottages, thinking about how naive they’d been. Anyone could have heard them sneaking out, or caught them in the woods. She remembered the heady anticipation, the threat of being caught in the back of her mind, and the way she’d blocked it out as strongly as she’d blocked out that terrible night.
But she’d never blocked out her love for Tony.
She wound through the woods to the spot between the two pitch pine trees that grew closer together than other neighboring trees. Our spot.
She lowered herself down to her back and stared up at slices of the light blue sky through the canopy of trees.
Do you think I’m doing the wrong thing? Tony’s twenty-year-old voice wrapped around her. That summer, they’d often spent an hour or more talking after making love, sometimes until the first feathers of dawn spread their wings.
You never do the wrong thing. He’d asked about going against his father’s wishes and pursuing a surfing competition in Hawaii instead of finally going to college. It’s one of the things I love about you. I’m not strong like you are. I’m hiding from what I really want, which is to be with you all the time. You? You’re brilliantly strong, and one day your father will understand and you’ll make him so proud.
She closed her eyes with the memory. Tony’s father never had a chance to show his pride, or to make up for the way he’d treated Tony that summer. It was a mystery to her, the way his father had gone from supportive—always with a stern parental edge—to harsh and demeaning.
Amy had been there for the funeral. The warmth she’d loved in Tony’s eyes had gone cold when they’d glossed over her. He’d lost weight in the weeks since they’d seen each other. Amy had wanted to hold him until he forgot why he was so sad, but she’d been too scared. Opening up to him after building a fortress around herself would have sent her spiraling back into the pain she’d finally buried deep enough to function. She had to finish college. Those first few months she was never sure what would set her off. Sometimes just thinking about Tony sent her into a world of tears. And she couldn’t risk distracting Tony. He had to concentrate on being the best damn surfer there was. It wasn’t just a silly dream, as his father had declared. It was what Tony lived for. She couldn’t risk taking him down with her.
How many nights had Tony risked everything to be with her? They had no idea how her father would react, but how would any father react to his teenage daughter sneaking out to have sex—even if she was in love?
She’d been selfish.
Horrifically so.
Amy had chosen to go through their ordeal alone.
Tony hadn’t.
And here he was, willing to put his heart at risk again, for her.
She opened her eyes and sat up, swatting leaves and twigs from her clothing and pushing away the guilt. She rose to her feet and walked around the tree to her left. The bark had split around their initials, but they were still there. She traced the ancient carving, remembering Tony’s determined features as he carved their initials with his Swiss Army knife. She’d worried about someone seeing them, and Tony had looked at her with those sexy eyes that could convince her the ocean was red if he’d tried and said, Have you ever seen any adult come into these woods?
T + A 4 Ever.
How did she get lucky enough to have another chance at forever?
How could she possibly deserve it?
Amy walked back out to the road, thinking about how she could possibly make up for not being there when Tony needed her. She’d been so consumed in her own sadness that she hadn’t taken into account that he’d lost something, too. She didn’t have a magic wand, and she was pretty sure the time machine they used in Back to the Future wasn’t real. Short of undoing the past, how did a person make up for their selfish actions? She’d like to think that love was enough. It was for her. Just being in Tony’s arms again numbed her pain, and after making love earlier that morning—twice—she was beginning to think that Tony really could love the pain away. He certainly has quite an effective magic wand. She smiled at the thought. Not that she had any other man to compare him to, but she didn’t need comparisons. When she was making love with Tony, everything felt right.
Maybe she was focusing on the wrong things. Tony certainly seemed to take as much happiness from their love as she did. Maybe it was less about going back in time and fixing the past and more about showing him that she’d always be there for him from now on. That she’d never make the mistake of hiding or pushing him away again.
She hurried up the road to her cottage and called Bella, who put her in touch with Evan. There were things about that summer that she’d never forget, and the more she thought about not being emotionally there for Tony when his father had passed away, the more she wanted to try to ease that pain, too.
AMY SAT BETWEEN Tony’s legs on a blanket by the bonfire at Cahoon Hollow Beach later that evening. Caden and Bella were sitting in beach chairs across the fire from them, and Pete and Jenna were cuddled up on a single beach chair off to their left with Joey lying at their feet. Blue and Sky were cooking burgers on the hibachi, and Leanna and Kurt were huddled together on a blanket whispering to each other.
“Is that one of Hunter’s hibachis?” Tony nodded toward the kidney-shaped grill. Hunter Lacroux was one of Pete’s younger brothers. He was a sculptor who specialized in using raw materials such as stone, steel, and wood. He lived in New York but had grown up on the Cape, and he also made uniquely shaped, upscale hibachis that had become very popular across the Cape.
“Yeah. I told him I needed another hibachi like I needed another girlfriend, but…” Pete laughed and reached down to pet Joey.
Jenna swatted him. “I love the hibachis, and you have an excellent girlfriend.”
“Nope.” Pete pulled a pink plastic tiara out of his pocket and set it on Jenna’s head. “I have an excellent fiancée, who also happens to be my marshmallow princess.”
Jenna snuggled in and kissed him. Pete had deemed Jenna his marshmallow princess the summer they got engaged. She was as OCD about the way her marshmallows were roasted as she was about everything else in her life. Pete adored Jenna, and he was a clever man. He’d calculated the exact number of seconds the marshmallow needed to be held over the fire on each side and from every angle. Now he had it down pat, and Jenna was a very happy marshmallow princess.
“When did you get a pink tiara?” Sky asked. “I thought Pete bought you a clear one.”
“He did, but—” Jenna pointed at her pink hoodie.
“Sky, how long have you known Jenna?” Pete teased. “Tiaras must match her outfits. They are accessories, after all.”
The ache of longing and jealousy over what he wanted and thought was out of reach was gone. Tony laced his fingers with Amy’s and silently thanked the heavens above that they’d crossed the bridge he never thought they would.
They ate dinner and talked about Am
y’s new job. Tony sensed Amy’s discomfort in the way she kept dropping her eyes. This was another hurdle for them, and as much as this was her decision to make, it took all of his focus for him not to beg her to not go through with moving to Australia. He’d been the one to tell her to take the job, after all. What a big mistake that was.
Amy wasn’t the type of person who accepted a job and then walked away from it. The similarity to her commitment to Tony all those years ago, even if secret, and how she’d walked away and cut him out of her life did not escape him. Was this any different? Would this time be any different?
Amy smiled at him and squeezed his hand, as if she’d read his mind. Yeah, he knew this time would be different. It had to be.
Evan, Caden’s son, was walking beside the dunes, heading in their direction. Evan had just graduated from high school and was leaving for college in the fall.
“What was he doing over by the dunes?” Tony leaned closer to Amy. “I’d like to take you over by the dunes.”
“I bet you would,” she teased. “Evan was doing me a favor, but it’s a secret.” She put her finger over her lips.
Tony drew his brows together. “A favor?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“That’s where it all started for us. Remember?” He kissed her again. He couldn’t get enough of being with her as a real couple.
“How could I ever forget?”
He never would. He remembered every second of every moment they’d ever spent together, including that last awful afternoon. He remembered the blood dripping down her legs, the rush at the hospital as they pushed her through the double doors on a gurney and left him standing in the cold, sterile hallway, feeling as though his life had just slipped through his fingertips. And he’d never forget the cold eyes of the nurse who’d glared at him and asked, How could you let your pregnant girlfriend go surfing?
Tony pulled Amy closer, pushing those horrible memories aside and bringing forth the memory of their first kiss, the kiss that had changed his life forever.
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