by Meg Collett
“Okay. Just go slow.” Kyra took a deep breath and looped her hands around Stevie’s neck as she leaned over her. “I wanted to see if you were up, but I didn’t want to knock and wake you if you weren’t.”
Stevie straightened slightly and Kyra screamed in her ear. “Son of a biscuit!”
With their faces pressed together, Stevie couldn’t direct her glare at Kyra, so the full effect was lost on the bush. “I will drop you if you scream like that again. Not even kidding.”
“Remind me to never come see you if you haven’t had your coffee.”
“I thought that would be obvious by now.”
Stevie reached around Kyra’s waist and found the thorns stuck in the back of her leg and butt. Eventually, she managed to work out the barbs trapping Kyra’s shirt. She’d started on another vine, when they both heard a dog’s yappy bark.
“Please, no. Not her,” Kyra whispered in her ear.
Stevie looked toward the main road, and sure enough, Mrs. Walker was staring at them, mouth agape, with her Snickershitter yapping its head off.
“What?” Stevie called out.
“I have never!” Mrs. Walker shook her head, her nineteen-fifties pink curlers flapping against her ears.
“Never what?” Stevie yanked a thorn free while Kyra was distracted. Kyra couldn’t see the expression on Mrs. Walker’s face, which was good since it wasn’t pretty and Kyra didn’t take well to mean people. “You live with a thorn up your ass. It’s a wonder you can even walk.”
“Stevie!” Kyra hissed. “Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh.”
Mrs. Walker’s mouth flopped open and closed, her words sputtering out in her mouth. Bright red spots bloomed over her crêpe-like skin.
“That’s right,” Stevie said, reaching for the thorns attached to Kyra’s legs. She kept the fact that Kyra’s butt crack was exposed to the entire street, where cars were slowing to see what had captured Mrs. Walker’s attention, secret from Kyra, who would undoubtedly start yowling even louder if she knew. In the yard across the way, Mrs. Harrison gaped at them, her water hose spraying the pavement in front of her hydrangeas.
“Nothing to see here,” Stevie called to all of them. “Move along.”
“Oh my gosh,” Kyra was still saying.
“I will mention this at the next Neighborhood Watch meeting, young lady!” Mrs. Walker jerked her dog’s leash, making it yelp in indignation, and hurried away.
Stevie rolled her eyes and pried out the last thorn. Without anymore resistance, Kyra lurched forward into her and they tumbled to the ground.
Kyra groaned, her legs straddling Stevie’s hips, and she lay on top of Stevie for a second. “Ouch,” she said, her head on Stevie’s chest.
A car honked from the road, and Stevie lifted her unpinned arm to wave.
Kyra sat up and looked down at Stevie sternly. “You told Mrs. Walker she has a thorn up her butt.”
“Yeah, well, she does. And I said ‘ass,’ to be precise. Besides, it’s too early for niceties.”
“You’re never nice.”
“This is also true.” Stevie wiggled her hips. “Now get off.”
Kyra tenderly stood and offered Stevie a hand. They brushed themselves off and looked around as Kyra hitched her bikini bottoms back up.
“Thanks for that, girls!”
Stevie and Kyra turned toward the voice at the same time. Across the alley, on Kyra’s back porch, Hale sat drinking his coffee, feet propped up on the porch’s railing. He lifted his cup at them, a sly, crooked smile on his face.
“I always knew you liked it rough, Hale Cooper!” Stevie shouted back, loud enough for Mrs. Harrison to hear from across the road. The old lady dropped her running hose and rushed back inside her house.
“Can you two knock it off?” Kyra said as she started limping back across the alley toward her house. When she hit the sand and headed around to her back gate, she called back to Stevie, “I came over to see if you wanted to surf with me.”
At that, Hale howled with laughter, his coffee sloshing over the mug’s rim. Stevie gave him her best blank stare. Clearly, they were making his morning something truly special.
“I mean it!” Kyra kept trying, bless her heart. “You might enjoy it!”
Hale’s laughter doubled in volume. He wrapped an arm around his middle, gasping for air between guffaws.
“I could surf if I wanted to,” Stevie told him, planting a hand on her hip. She was still wearing the clothes from last night’s dinner. If Kyra had noticed, she wasn’t saying anything.
“Stop!” Hale flapped a hand in her direction. “I can’t take any more!”
Stevie flipped him off and stomped back toward her back door.
Her feet hit the hot sand right as Kyra called out, “That’s the spirit! How about this afternoon?”
“Whatever,” Stevie shouted back. She slammed her back gate closed and tracked sand onto her back porch.
Inside, her coffee was cold.
* * *
Stevie hadn’t believed Kyra was serious about teaching her to surf until she found herself sitting out in the ocean, past the breaking rollers, with her feet pulled up on the surfboard and her teeth chattering.
“Let your legs dangle, Stevie. You’ll fall in the water like that.”
She bobbed up as the water undulated beneath her board, and she did, in fact, almost fall in. “One word,” she said through clenched teeth. “Sharks, Kyra. Sharks.”
Kyra lifted her face to the sky and sighed heavily. Stevie’s large board dwarfed the one Kyra sat on, which looked built for speed and agility while hers looked built for an elephant. Kyra’s tanned legs were scratched from this morning’s debacle, and she’d yipped when the salt water first hit the cuts, but she didn’t complain.
Unlike Kyra, who wore a bikini, Stevie was in a full-body suit that cut into her curvy hips and plastered her C-cups to her ribs. If a shark did munch on her, it would at least have to pick some tight-ass neoprene out of its teeth.
“Sharks won’t bother you,” Kyra was saying, repeating what she’d already told Stevie twenty times before. “It’s symbiotic. We don’t bother them, they don’t bother us. We can all exist in nature together.”
“You’re such a freakin’ hippie—what was that?” Stevie finished in a screech. She jerked back on her massive board, nearly plunging straight into the water where a dark shadow—definitely shark shaped—had passed beneath her.
“It’s just kelp. Get a grip. Six-year-olds surf out here.”
“I’m not woman enough to pull off a shark bite, you hear me? I can’t do it. I’m too pale for that shit.”
Kyra groaned, a little dramatically in Stevie’s opinion. “Are you going to at least try? I can show you again if you want.”
“Maybe I’d try if your stupid boy toy would stop mocking me.”
Hale and Cade sat on Kyra’s back porch, sipping on beers as they watched Stevie’s surfing lesson. They’d hooted the entire time Stevie had wrangled her board into the water, and their laughter had followed her while she’d nearly drowned through the breakers. Kyra had dived under the tiny waves just to show off, but Stevie had flopped and fallen over them like a drowning sloth.
From the beach, right on cue, the Cooper brothers sent up another cheer, and Kyra waved back at them.
“Hale would make good shark bait,” Stevie muttered.
Kyra tried to hold in her laugh. “Come on. Let’s try at least once, okay?’
She was about to paddle off, her attention directed over her shoulder where the waves rolled in from farther out, but Stevie grabbed her board before she could take off. “Hey, wait.”
She’d agreed to the lesson for a reason, and it wasn’t to learn how to dance on a piece of fiberglass like some monkey ballerina.
Kyra straightened out of her paddling position and frowned at Stevie. “Now you’re just being—”
“No, I have a question.”
“I’ve told you everything—”
“About Cad
e and Hale’s mom.”
Kyra’s mouth closed, her expression confused as the conversation turned to Annabelle Cooper. “Oh,” she managed.
Stevie had clearly caught her off guard. She’d wanted to ask all day, and this was the only chance she’d have to get Kyra alone without Hale hovering in the background like some hunky shadow; it was the weekend and he apparently had nothing better to do. While Kyra recovered, he’d been on high alert, watching her every move for signs of relapse, which meant he was around a lot.
“Okay,” Kyra said slowly. “What do you want to know?”
“Her cancer is pretty bad?” Stevie felt awful asking, but she had to know if what Shepherd had told her was true, and in her time on the island, she’d never met the Cooper matriarch. “I mean, they’re trying a lot of treatments and stuff, right?”
“Annabelle is a fighter.” Kyra’s voice had turned thick. She’d spent a lot of time with Hale’s mother lately, helping the twenty-four-hour nurse with Annabelle’s care as often as she could. “But you know it’s not looking good. I think . . .” Kyra stumbled over the words. “I think she’s just trying another round of treatment for the boys.”
Stevie’s heart ached, and her gaze slid across the water to where Cade and Hale were laughing together. They were such a unit, a pair, and always had been, judging from the stories Kyra had told her. The only family they had left was their mother. Stevie imagined Annabelle must be something special to raise Hale and Cade. It took a strong woman to mold compassionate men.
“How are they, you know, um . . .” Stevie couldn’t think of a delicate way of phrasing her question, so she just dove in. “. . . paying for all of it? Does their insurance cover everything?”
A shadow shuttered Kyra’s face and Stevie knew the answer right away. Shepherd had been right.
“Hale hasn’t told me everything,” Kyra said, starting softly, “but I can guess they’re struggling some. Good insurance for small businesses is hard to come by, and Annabelle’s Medicare doesn’t cover much.”
“Oh, okay.”
Kyra reached between them, their bodies swaying in the water, and took Stevie’s hand. “What’s going on?”
Stevie had hoped it wouldn’t come to this, but now that it had, she didn’t feel ready. “I was offered a television show.”
Kyra instantly frowned. “What? The rehab one?”
“No. It’s a home renovation competition for the RealTV network. I, ah, know the showrunner. He asked me about Hale and Cade.”
“Wait, I’m confused.” She angled her board to look at Stevie straight on. “They offered it to you? Like, you would be on it?”
“From what I read in the email this morning, there’ll be eight teams of only two people each, plus a building assistant. One contractor—Hale—and a designer, which would be me.”
“No,” Kyra said. “They’re using you as a ratings ploy.”
“Exactly.”
“You shouldn’t do it.” She shook her head, fists clenched atop her board. The water lapped over her thighs. The scars along her arms glistened in the sunlight. “They can screw off.”
Stevie smiled faintly at her best friend. Kyra knew where Stevie’s skeletons were buried, and most importantly, she knew how Stevie felt about reality television and the damage it had done to her. “There’s a weekly stipend for all the competitors, plus a payout when a team gets voted off, based on how far they make it. The showrunner said Hale could make it pretty far. It would be a big chunk of change.”
“And you need the money,” Kyra said, realization dawning.
“And Hale and Cade need the business the exposure would bring them.” Stevie took a deep breath. “The money could help their mom too.”
“Oh,” Kyra said.
From her tormented expression, Stevie knew her friend was torn between what she knew about Stevie’s past and how much the show could help Hale and Cade. She struggled to come up with something to say, her loyalties pulling her apart.
Stevie hurried to fill the awkward silence, not wanting Kyra to have to choose between her and Hale. “I want to do it. It has nothing to do with my parents, and yeah, I mean, the producers will use my past, but I can handle it. It’s a . . . good opportunity for everyone.”
Kyra’s shoulders slumped in relief, and she offered Stevie a slight smile. “And you know the showrunner? You trust him?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
Kyra didn’t catch Stevie’s lie. “You’re certain about this?”
“I want to do it.”
Kyra watched her for a long moment, but Stevie was a good actor. She’d been acting her entire life, always pretending to be someone else. Someone more likable than herself. Kyra bought it.
“Hale would be so awful on television.” She giggled. “Could you imagine him scowling at everyone all the time?”
Stevie forced a smile. “Yeah, it’ll be pretty rough.”
“Let’s go tell the guys!” Kyra leaned over her board and started paddling away. “They’ll be so excited!”
Back on the beach, after Stevie had almost drowned yet again, words spilled out of Kyra’s mouth with Stevie supplying the details. After they’d finished talking, Hale and Cade were stunned to silence.
Cade was the first to talk, stuttering in his excitement. “Is th-this for real?”
“As real as reality television gets,” Stevie said, hoping she didn’t sound too cynical.
Cade whooped, making her jump. A huge grin split across Hale’s face. It was the happiest Stevie had seen him look, aside from when he made fun of her. Kyra threw her arms around him, and he spun her, laughing into her windswept hair. Stevie was watching them, hoping she looked happy, when Cade grabbed her.
He crushed her in a hug, pinning her arms to her sides, and lifted her off the ground, whooping and laughing. Stevie realized, just then in Cade’s desperate hug, that the Cooper brothers needed this far more than even Kyra had known. This show was a lifeline for them. It might even save their mother’s life.
Cade lowered her back onto her feet, his hands still on her upper arms. “This is really happening?” he asked, breathless.
“I have the contracts in an email.” Stevie told herself to get it together, to not sound so flat and dry. “You’ll want to read them thoroughly. The network can slip in some shit sometimes, but I can help with that.”
His hands slid up her arms and cupped the back of her neck. He leaned over her, blocking the sun, and for a dizzying moment, Stevie thought he might kiss her. It wouldn’t make everything better, but it certainly wouldn’t hurt either. Her eyes were closing in anticipation as he said, “Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you.” He said it over and over, the words slipping across her salty cheeks.
His forehead pressed against hers, the gesture far more intimate than a kiss. Stevie felt him unwind, as if he’d been carrying a staggering load on his shoulders. His breath whooshed out in a loose laugh as he whispered, “Thank you.”
He kissed her brow before stepping back. Stevie wished she had the right to close the space between them and steal a kiss from him, but she didn’t. So she stayed back and smiled as Cade turned to his brother and enveloped him in a bearish, back-clapping hug.
Over their shoulders, Kyra silently mouthed, “Thank you.”
“Wait,” Hale said, his arm still thrown over Cade’s shoulders. His smile was slipping away. “There’s only one problem.”
Cade snorted. “What’s that? Worried about being famous?”
“No.” Hale shook his head. “I can’t do the show.”
5
“What do you mean?” Stevie asked, hating herself for the flare of hope in her heart.
She was such a piece of shit.
“Someone has to finish the jobs we have scheduled,” Hale said to Cade. “We can’t just drop those. It took too much to book them.”
Cade ran a hand through his sun-bleached brown hair. He wore a loose, blue button-up and pressed khaki shorts, as if he could still at
tend a casual business meeting at a second’s notice. “How long is the show?” he asked Stevie.
All eyes went to her. “It starts in two weeks and it’ll last around three weeks, depending on the schedule. Why can’t Cade just handle the jobs you have going?”
Hale coughed, and Cade’s cheeks flushed. “Cade, ah . . .” Hale suppressed a grin. “He can barely hammer a nail.”
“It’s true,” Cade admitted and laughed, but there was a flicker of embarrassment in the tight squint of his eyes and a hesitation in meeting anyone’s gaze head-on. “I’m an awful builder.”
“But there’ll be actual building on this show,” Stevie said. “It’s the whole premise. Each team gets one experienced helper, but that’s it.”
“Could Hale be the helper then? Would he be on the show less that way? Maybe he could work on the other jobs?” Everyone brightened at Kyra’s questions.
Stevie licked her salt-crusted lips as she recalled the email she’d read earlier. “No, they already chose the helpers. The show is using wounded soldiers to promote job placements for veterans.”
“Well,” Kyra said, “that’s really nice of them.”
Stevie tried to hide her scowl. The vets were just another ratings ploy. Sucked for them.
“So, what are we going to do?” Cade asked, his eyes dancing between all of them.
Stevie shrugged. “Looks like Cade better figure out how to use a hammer.”
“And you’re supposed to be the designer?” Hale asked like all hope was lost. “Do you know anything about construction?”
“Apparently, I know more than Cade.”
“Hey!” Cade held up his hands. “I’m not that bad.”
“Listen,” Stevie said before they kept arguing over semantics. “We can’t let the show know this. They think you’re both qualified to do the work, and they didn’t specify which one of you had to do it. So we’ll just say Cade was the plan all along. It’ll be fine.” Her words were like ice water dumped over them. They knew her well enough to know she was never optimistic. “I’m serious. Hale can prep Cade and me before filming, and we’ll make our helper do most of the work.”