Saved by Love

by Christine Kingsley

  She nodded and listened carefully as he began to explain the basic concept of how to balance on the boards. He’d forgone any instructors that the resort offered, knowing he had enough experience to be able to teach Abby anything she needed to know at the beginner level. Plus, he loved being the one to introduce her to one of his favorite sports.

  She caught on quickly, no doubt because she’d spent years of her life watching surfers and had a general idea already of what she needed to do. Once he felt like she had a good handle on how to get up on the board and how to find the right wave and align herself with it, the only thing left was to get out there and actually try it. Ethan was a big believer in learning by doing.

  “You ready?” he asked, grabbing his board and securing it to his ankle before tucking it under his arm.

  She did the same, then looked at him and nodded. There was only a trace of hesitation in her eyes, but the fear was gone.

  “You’ve got this, baby.” He gave her an approving nod back, then kissed her again. “Let’s go.”

  Abby followed him into the water and he saw her close her eyes briefly when they were waist deep in the ocean. It looked like she let out a big breath and then looked up at the sky and said something he couldn’t hear over the crashing waves.

  “You good?” he called.

  She nodded and smiled, calling back, “It feels good to be back in the ocean. It’s been a while.”

  He waded a little closer to her and reminded her of some of the instructions he’d given her, then smiled encouragingly as he moved to a safe distance from her. He put his board in front of him and jumped onto it, lying on his stomach and paddling out past the break line, gesturing for her to do the same. He was glad she had worn a bright red swimsuit so he could better see her against the water. She followed his lead and got on her board as well.

  As they paddled out further, she gave him a huge grin. Whatever concern she’d had seemed to be gone and she seemed to be getting the same adrenaline rush he always did when surfing.

  The waves were actually a little bigger than they’d been when they’d first come down to the water that morning, but that was better. It was a bit easier to catch a wave when there was something big enough to catch.

  He saw the perfect swell coming up and called to her as loudly as he could, also gesturing with his arm. “There it is! Line up your board!”

  She quickly turned her board and got her body in position, just like he’d shown her. As the water caught her board and started pushing it forward, she jumped from her stomach and positioned her feet, then rose up quickly. Like all first timers, getting the balance right was practically impossible and she toppled over the top of the wave and fell under the water.

  He paddled over to her as she resurfaced with the biggest smile he’d ever seen, her eyes wide and full of elation.

  “I did it! I actually got up on my feet!” she said excitedly.

  He knew exactly the rush she was feeling. He remembered his first time too and he couldn’t be prouder of her. To even get to her feet for a couple seconds on her first time out was something to be proud of.

  “That was awesome, Abby. I swear, you’re a natural.”

  She beamed at his praise and swam over to him, wrapping her arms around his neck as the waves continued to break over them. She planted a hard kiss on his mouth. “That was amazing. I can’t believe I did that. It was even better than I expected.”

  “You ready to try again?”

  She nodded, her eyes gleaming. They paddled out again and Ethan watched her a few times to make sure she was comfortable before going to catch a few waves of his own. She was doing great, and looked to be having the time of her life. Awesome wasn’t even the word to describe how he felt at being out on the water doing what he loved most with the woman he loved.

  The thought hit him as hard as if a wave had just knocked him under and left him totally disoriented. Loved? Is that what he felt for Abby? It seemed crazy. It had only been a couple weeks since they’d met. But he’d fallen hard and fast, and he’d be lying to himself if he said love wasn’t what he was feeling for her.

  He was reeling from the revelation and almost didn’t notice Braden, Bryce and Dillon on the shore waving them in. He caught Abby’s attention and they made their way back to the beach.

  “That was incredible,” Braden said, awe in his eyes as he watched Abby carry her board up and stick it in the sand. The other guys agreed and Ethan wrapped his arm around Abby’s waist, dragging her to him for a wet, salty sea water kiss.

  “It was,” he murmured in her ear.

  She was grinning and full of pride, and as she looked up at him, her eyes full of emotion, she said, “Thank you so much for encouraging me to do this. It was better than I ever could have imagined. I think I’m going to be sore for days, though.”

  “Probably,” he agreed. “But in a good way. What’s up, guys?” He turned his attention to the men standing around.

  Braden spoke first. “We heard from some of the instructors that there are some bigger waves down the beach a few miles past the cove. We surfed there last year. We’re going to check them out if you want to come.” He looked from Ethan to Abby and back again.

  Ethan absolutely wanted to go, but there was no way he could let Abby surf those waves if they were anything like he remembered. While they weren’t crazy, they definitely weren’t for beginners, and there was an occasional undertow that could be dangerous if you weren’t experienced.

  He looked at Abby, then shook his head regretfully. “Sorry, bro, but I can’t take Abby out in those, and she’s having too good of a time to stop yet.”

  “It’s okay,” she interjected quickly. “I probably need the break. Plus, we’re here for four more days. There’s plenty of time for me to practice.” She still had a flush to her cheeks from the exertion and the adrenaline pumping through her veins, and Ethan couldn’t resist pulling her closer and running his hand down her back and resting it on her hip.

  “Are you sure?” He wanted to go pretty badly, but he didn’t want to cut her fun off prematurely.

  “It’s fine. I promise.” She looked up at him and smiled encouragingly.

  “Okay, if you’re really sure.” She nodded at the question in his eyes. Then he grabbed his board and high-fived Braden. “Then what are we waiting for?”

  ***

  Abby sat on a beach towel watching the four guys as they surfed some pretty great waves. They were all really good, but she couldn’t take her eyes off Ethan. He looked like he was at home out there on his board. She was glad he hadn’t missed out on coming down to this part of the beach.

  She still felt high on her adrenaline rush and couldn’t get over how amazing it felt to actually get up on her board and ride a wave. Sure, she’d wiped out pretty quickly every time, but what did she expect her first time out? It was still one of the most thrilling things she’d ever experienced. Her mom would have been so proud of her.

  She let her mind drift to her mother, something she didn’t allow very often. But she didn’t feel the deep sadness she often did when thinking about her. This time she felt a sense of pride that she’d done something she’d always wanted to. Something her mother would have wanted her to do.

  When she’d married Derek, he had expected her to settle down. He didn’t think it was becoming of her to still want to live out her teenage fantasies and be a wild child. She shook her head, wondering now how she had ever been okay with that. That was who she was—then and now—and she’d nearly forgotten that. She suppressed her passion for living her life because she’d loved him so much.

  But now that she was falling for Ethan and experiencing such a different kind of love, one that accepted her for who she already was, she wondered how she and Derek had ever even ended up together. She could only chalk it up to being young and not knowing any better.

  She felt a little bit of guilt at thinking back on her relationship with him with anything but good memories, but if she was hon
est, they never should have gotten married in the first place. If anything good could come out of the tragedy of his death, she thought that finding herself again might be it.

  While she watched Ethan and his friends enjoy the waves, her mind drifted back to the day Derek had died. They had rented a boat and gone out for the afternoon. When they dropped anchor to have lunch and swim for a while, she never expected what would happen next. They shared a bottle of wine and some pasta salad, then he said he wanted to go for a swim and took off his life jacket.

  Abby recalled vividly the irritation she felt when she told him that under no circumstances was he getting off that boat without a life jacket. They were out in the ocean, for goodness sake.

  He laughed at her. “Come on, Abby. I’ve lived by the ocean my entire life. I think I can handle a swim.”

  He should have known because of that just how unpredictable the ocean was. He hadn’t been in the water for more than five minutes when he got caught in a rip tide. He was a decently strong swimmer, but he’d had more to drink than Abby. He was pulled out to sea, disappearing from her sight almost before she knew what happened.

  Abby swallowed the lump in her throat at the memories flooding in. She’d made an emergency call and the Coast Guard had initiated a search for him. After a few hours, they found him. But it was too late.

  She squeezed her eyes shut at the onslaught of images in her head. His body being pulled from the water. The pity in the rescuers’ eyes when they told her he was already gone.

  The pain was still there. It probably always would be. But she was starting to think she could live with it more easily now. Ethan had brought a breath of fresh air into her life and she had a reason to get out there and live it again. She tucked her memories of Derek back into the corner of her heart, knowing he’d always be part of who she was, but she was ready to move forward.

  Pushing herself up from her beach towel, Abby made her way to the shoreline, shading her eyes as she watched the surfers. Ethan was incredible. He navigated the waves like a pro.

  She noticed a flurry of movement to the left of him and looked over to see Braden and the other guys waving wildly, trying to get Ethan’s attention. Just then, a huge wave swelled behind him and he positioned his board. The guys waved their arms even bigger, but Ethan didn’t seem to notice. He got right up on the wave as it began to crest and looked as if he was going to ride it all the way to the end, but then he caught sight of the guys and jerked his head around, losing his balance.

  He fell off the board and the wave came crashing down on top of him. Abby waited for him to resurface, and after a few seconds when she didn’t see him she began to panic. Why wasn’t he coming to the surface?

  His board popped up out of the water, the ankle strap flying high into the air.

  Not attached to Ethan.

  Abby began seeing white spots in her vision, pricking at her eyelids as she squeezed them closed, willing Ethan to be there when she reopened them. But when she peeked again, he wasn’t there.

  “Ethan!” she screamed over and over again, her throat feeling raw.

  She started to rush into the water, not even sure what she planned on doing, just knowing that she had to do something. Someone caught her by the arm and she spun around.

  Braden shook his head at her, his grip like a vise on her arm. “You can’t go in there,” he said roughly, his eyes scanning the surface of the sea.

  “Where is he? What happened? I can’t just stand here.” She knew she was screaming at him, but she couldn’t help it. Fear gripped her and wouldn’t let go.

  “Bryce is making the call.” He nodded toward his brother, who had run up to their stuff on the beach and was on his phone.

  “Call? What call?” Abby was in full-fledged panic mode now. She struggled against Braden’s hold on her arm, but it was useless. He wasn’t letting her go.

  “Nine-one-one.” Abby’s chest seized up at his next words and she couldn’t breathe. “There’s an undertow out there and I think I spotted a shark.”

  She didn’t hear anything he said next because her legs felt numb. The last thing she said as she collapsed on the sand, her vision blinking out, was, “Please, God, not again.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “I think she’s coming around.”

  A flurry of voices was sounding at the edge of Ethan’s consciousness, but he was too focused on Abby to worry about what anyone was saying. She was lying on her back in the sand just a few feet from the water’s edge where Braden had carried her when he said she’d passed out.

  “Abby! Abby, can you hear me?” Please let her be okay. His friends said she’d been out for only a few minutes, and he’d only just arrived on the scene. “Abby!” He cradled her head, rubbing her cheek and praying she’d wake up soon.

  He felt a pull on his shoulder and glanced up to find Braden staring down at him. He had to focus to listen to what he was saying. “Dude, you have to get checked out. Let the paramedics take care of her. She’ll be fine. You’re the one I’m worried about.”

  “I’m fine,” Ethan said tersely. He turned his attention back to Abby. When he’d been knocked off his board, a strong current had started to pull him under, but he’d been doing this long enough to know what to do. Fighting it only made things worse. He’d relaxed until he the current eased up enough for him to swim parallel to the shore and get out of it. By the time he made it up to the beach, everyone on the beach who wasn’t frantically looking for him was crowded around Abby. He was tired, but other than some strained muscles he was fine.

  Abby moaned and started flailing her arms around, groggily trying to sit up. “Where is he?” she yelled. Or tried to. Her voice was really hoarse. “Derek? Did you find him?”

  Derek? Ethan tried to pull her into his arms and murmur soothing words to her, hoping to calm her down so he could make sure she was okay. The paramedics had just arrived and were now clearing people away and getting down on the sand in front of Abby. They tried to get him to move aside, but he refused. He wasn’t leaving her for a second.

  She pushed against his grasp on her, struggling to push herself up. “Where is Derek?” Her eyes were confused and she seemed disoriented as she looked first at the paramedics, then at the beach around her, and finally at him. “Ethan?” she asked, confusion evident in her expression. “Wait, what happened?”

  She put her head in her hands and rubbed her face, then looked back at him, a little more lucid. “Ethan, oh my God, you’re here. You’re alive. Are you okay?” She flung her arms around him as a sob escaped, her body shaking violently against his.

  “Get her a blanket,” he ordered the paramedics. “I think she may be going into shock.” He’d seen it plenty of times at the scene of an accident. He stroked her hair, trying to comfort her. “Shh, it’s okay, baby.”

  She pulled back and looked at him, her eyes wide. “I’m okay. What about you? I thought you were dead.”

  He chuckled. “Not got much faith in me, do you? I’ve been doing this long enough to know how to handle an undertow.”

  She turned paler than she already was, a haunted look coming over her face. Then she buried her head in his chest and started crying. One of the paramedics returned with a blanket and Ethan wrapped it around Abby’s shoulders.

  After a minute, the paramedics grew impatient. “We need to check you both out and make sure you’re okay.”

  “Check her first.”

  There were two of them, so they each did a quick check of their vitals and shortly pronounced them both fine. Ethan told them he was an emergency professional and that he knew what to watch for, and before long the paramedics left them with a caution to stay out of the water here.

  “Give us a minute, okay?” Ethan asked his friends, and they made their way up the beach back toward the resort, saying they’d send someone to give them a ride back. Finally, he was alone with Abby.

  She looked up at, much calmer than she’d been and he tucked her into his side under his arm
. “Abby, I’m okay, but I think we need to talk.”

  She nodded. Good, she wasn’t going to argue about it.

  “It wasn’t exactly dangerous conditions out there. I’m the first one to respect the power of the ocean and I recognize how bad a riptide can be, but it really wasn’t that bad.” He tried to remember what Braden had told him when he’d come up the shore to find Abby passed out, then what she’d said as she was waking up. “Abby, who is Derek? And what happened?”

  She flinched as if she’d been slapped, and Ethan knew that whatever she was about to say—because after this, he needed to know what he was dealing with—it was big.

  He continued to rub her back through the blanket and let her take her time with it. After a moment she took a tremulous breath and stared out at the sea as she quietly spoke.

  “He was my husband.”

  Ethan couldn’t have been more shocked if a giant sea monster had reared up out of the ocean right in front of them. Husband? But he didn’t say anything yet, not wanting her to stop now that she was finally opening up to him.

  “We got married when we were really young. Too young. He was my first love.”

  Ethan’s heart clenched, and he wasn’t sure if he was feeling jealousy over a man who obviously wasn’t in her life anymore or if he was hoping that there was another love in her life now—him.

  When she didn’t say anything for a while, he gently prodded her. “What happened?”

  “He died.” The tremor in her voice had him wrapping her in even tighter. She’d been married, and he’d died? It was almost too much to take in.

  “We were out one afternoon on a boat…” She proceeded to tell him one of the most heartbreaking stories he’d ever heard, and he wanted nothing more than to take away the pain he knew she must be feeling. Then his heart sank as he realized how similar it was to what happened today, and why she would have had what seemed like an over-the-top reaction to it.

  “Oh, Abby, baby,” he whispered against her hair. “I wish I’d known. I never would have pushed you to do this today.” Now all her hesitation about the trip, especially surfing, made sense. She’d been through a traumatic event, one he almost couldn’t imagine the pain of. Almost.