“A swim?” She repeated as if it were a foreign word.
Of course, she hadn’t heard him correctly.
He stared hard at the waves and the hair rose on the back of her neck and along her bare arms.
“Kadan, no, you can’t mean...you can’t go in the...the...ocean.”
He grabbed his crutches. “Watch me,” he said grimly and maneuvered down the three steps from the deck to the beach.
“Kadan, you can’t.” She followed him, catching at the waist of his board shorts.
He continued as if her strength didn’t register.
“Kadan, this is nuts.” She clung to him, but her heart was pounding now. Her throat was chalk, choking her. “You can’t go in the ocean. You’re ankle will get beat up.”
“I’m in the ocean hours every day. It’s been too long.”
He was halfway there now and the boom of the waves seemed amplified like she was in a war zone. What had been a pleasant rhythm while she’d been eating on the deck now sounded ominous. Kadan could get in trouble out there. He could hit a rock or get caught in a rip and not have the strength to get out. Or fight the waves to get back to the beach. And what if he blacked out from the pain when he got pulled under a wave.
“You can’t.” She gasped out the words feeling like they got pounded into the sand by the boom of each wave hitting and the rattle of the sand as the water retreated from the beach. “You can’t. You’re not ready.”
“It’s been nearly two weeks since my last surgery. I’m more than ready.”
“No please.” She caught his arm. “Please, please, please don’t,” she whispered digging her heels into the sand. “Please, Kadan, please. Please. For me.”
She could see black spots in front of her and the sounds seemed muted.
“Kadan, don’t go. Not now. Not tonight. I’m scared.”
He stopped. She found herself staring at the beach, bent in half while his hand stroked through her cascading hair that trailed over her feet and into the sand. She gulped, but it seemed like no air got through.
“Panic attacks are new, duchess,” he said softly. “Care to share.”
No.
She didn’t answer.
“Waiting.”
He could wait forever. She didn’t owe him any explanation. Not that she could give him one even if she wanted to. She squeezed her eyes tight. This sucked. Totally humiliating, but at least he stopped. She had no idea what she would have done if he’d actually made it to the water. Could she have gone in after him?
“Better?”
“Yes,” she whispered.
He removed his hand from her head and she straightened up, refusing to look at him. He caught her chin in his palm and forced her to meet his tense blue gaze.
“This is your third freak out in two days so I wasn’t really asking about wanting to share. Tell me.”
A few excuses bounced around in her brain, but she knew they wouldn’t cut it with him.
“I think freak out is a bit of an exaggeration.” She hedged.
His expression didn’t change, but she felt his laser focus home on her.
“I don’t want you to risk it. The ocean,” she said softly. “I’m scared.”
“Of me being hurt or the ocean?”
She swallowed hard. “I couldn’t help you if you got in trouble.”
“You’re a fish in the water and strong. And I can take care of myself.”
“I can’t swim anymore.”
“Hollis, you’ve been swimming since you were a toddler. Hell, we used to go out at night and swim a mile easy.”
She nodded. She’d told herself this over and over again.
“I can’t,” she said, helplessly.
“Since when?”
When had it started? Even she didn’t know. It had been dreams at first. Holland drowning. Calling to her and she would flail in the water trying to reach him even though she hadn’t been there that day. She’d been nerdily raising her hand trying to answer every question in her Algebra II class while her brother got pounded into the pier and sucked out to sea.
Then the dread started. Even driving on the Alaskan Way Viaduct that skirted Seattle’s waterfront area had started giving her problems. The sight of all that water stretching out to Bainbridge Island. And the bridges across Lake Washington had progressively caused her to panic so much that she’d once passed out. Someone had called an ambulance.
She shook her head. “Water scares me. The ocean—” She broke off. “I get all panicky when I think about it. How big it is. Dark.”
“Because of Holland?”
She twisted out of his hold and stared hard at her bare toes mostly buried in the sand. “I don’t know.”
“But you swam with me, surfed with me for years after he died.”
“I know,” she said. “This started slow. Last couple of years, I think. And I could mostly ignore it because no one really swims in Elliot Bay and Lake Washington is cold, too, but....”
“But what?”
Even looking at the water could trigger an attack. But she couldn’t tell him that. It sounded insane. She’d gown up on the ocean. Swam in it practically daily. And he probably had the Pacific for blood.
He sighed in frustration. “I need to swim, Hollis. I need to.”
“Please, Kadan.” She put her hand on his bare arm. She had to change his mind. Save him. “I can take you up to the house,” she promised rashly. “You can swim in the pool there. I can show you some exercises for your ankle.”
He looked back towards the ocean. The endless pull of the waves. The sun had set sending grey and purple tendrils inking across the sky, whispering away the brilliant orange until it eddied into a mere memory. She could feel it calling him.
And knew he had to answer. The same way Holland had always answered even on the day of the huge storm out of Japan, which had quickly taken his life.
“Kadan, please.” She tangled her fingers in his.
“If you’ll swim with me.”
Swimming had been practically a code word for them. Memories banged on the door of her consciousness. Kadan, sleek and wet, untying her bikini top with his teeth. Kadan, kissing her under the waterfall from the top pool to the lower pool until she’d been boneless, her legs, too weak to stand, wrapped around his waist.
“Swimming only,” she said trying to sound unaffected.
“That’s what I said.” He turned around, his fingers still linked with hers, and Hollis felt herself relax a little. Then he winked. “Why would you think I’d mean anything else?”
Chapter Seven
Hollis heard the splash of water, and she hurried out of the pool cabana, barely remembering to slip the swim wrap through her arms. Kaden sat beside the pool, taking his boot off.
“Wait.” She hurried forward.
“I’m in the shallow end, duchess. I think I can manage.”
“You’re so arrogant.” She forced herself to stare at his scars to gauge how bad it had been, how much recovery time he faced.
The scars were still red, swollen. Too swollen for a cast yet. He could get a water proof one. Still....
Even though she was done with being a physical therapist, her mind still began organizing what types of exercises he should do. What equipment they would need.
“I remember that suit.” He snapped her mind away from his injury with that one drawn out, innocent comment. “Mostly I remember how I liked to take it off.”
Okay, not so innocent comment.
“Still fits,” she said tightly.
“I’m not sure.” His eyes roved up and down her body with an appraisal so sexual, Hollis found herself pressing her thighs together. “I’m cursing your grandmother for providing such a well stocked pool cabana. I will have to have a word with her when she returns from Paris. Ditch the wrap.”
Hollis wrapped her arms around her waist. She knew she was acting ridiculously. This man knew her body as well as she did, and he knew ways to make her come a
live that still made her blush and marvel that anything so intensely physical and sensual could have ever happened to her when she felt so dead inside without him. It terrified her how much she wanted to remember how it felt to feel alive in his arms.
Where had her courage gone? Taking a deep breath and somehow managing to look at him directly, even though his sexual magnetism made her want to freeze; she was incapable of running at this point, she dropped the swim suit cover up and forced herself forward to the pool’s edge. Maybe she could sit on the side. Go slow. He should go slow.
“This is the hardest part,” she said, trying to distract herself from her fears and his appraisal. “I hate the cold.”
“The water’s warm.” He eased his uninjured leg into the water.
“Mmmmmm,” Hollis murmured sitting down on the edge, her legs crisscross applesauce.
Her heart stuttered and she mentally repeated her mantra that she’d used to get her through the early years when Holland, her twin brother had died.
“Don’t be in such a rush,” she told him.
“I do everything fast,” he said, then his eyes walked down her body. “Well not everything.”
She pressed her lips together and then, remembering her role, she stood up and walked to the cedar storage unit off to the side of the pool. She hauled out a few noodles and a raft as well as a square float.
“That is not swimming,” he said when Hollis returned.
She waggled the noodle at him and touched it to each of his powerful shoulders.
“I dub you Sir Constantly Pushing His Luck. Now tuck these under your arms and lean back. I want to keep your other leg out of the water at least until you have a doctor’s clearance to immerse it.”
“I’m fine.”
“Says you.”
“I’m the expert on myself. I’m a surfer. It’s my career. Of course my doctor knew I’d be back in the water. She’s a sport’s orthopedist.”
“Even if your doctor said ‘wait a month,’ you’d never tell me that.”
“True.”
She laughed. “Honest.”
“Yes, duchess. I have always been honest.”
She bit her lip. But he wasn’t. Hadn’t been. Not in the way that she’d desperately wanted and needed him to be. Hurt and anger speared through her red hot and painful and then of course despair followed. It seemed she just kept coming back full circle. Why didn’t she seem to be able to move on like other people? She kept getting sucked under, back into the sticky mud and ooze of the painful parts of her past and left to fight her way out of the pit only to be tossed back in, no stronger or smarter than the last time.
She could do this. She was a professional. The pool was well lit and shallow here. Nothing to grab her, pull her under. She’d swum here as a baby. Taking a deep breath, she eased into the water. It didn’t even come to her waist. Her breathing caught, but still her hands were gentle as she propped his foot and ankle onto the board. He leaned back, his head in the water, staring at the sky.
Hearing his sigh of contentment, something in her eased. Her breathing became less constricted.
“Better?”
“Yes.”
“This feels amazing.” Hollis lied and stood next to him as he floated arms outstretched as if he could embrace the night.
She tried to make out a few stars beginning to appear in the hazy night sky. “I didn’t even think about how my grandmother being gone for so long and the house renovations might mean the pool’s heater would be turned off completely. That would have sucked, but instead it’s even warmer than usual.”
“Your grandmother has always been so kind and thoughtful to me. She knew I would want to swim, would need the exercise and the water.”
Of course she would have. Kadan had always been special to her. Not many friends and acquaintances had understood why Caroline Remington had personally become so involved in helping Kadan during his teen years.
Yes, she had spearheaded many programs and donated hundreds of thousands of dollars that had benefited the children of San Clemente in many ways, school enrichment, after school tutoring and sports programs, arts programs, mobile clinics, food banks. But she had personally tutored Kadan. Personally intervened when he’d been in trouble with cops as a young teen. Personally invited him into her home when he’d been left to the streets at age fifteen. He’d declined. Crashing on couches of friends and a former priest, Preach, but then her grandmother had bought and opened a local house where teens could stay that was safe and clean and dialed in with social services, adult help, and food.
“She is amazing.” Hollis breathed, blinking hard several times to try to bring the stars back in focus.
Maybe that was it, Hollis thought sadly. Her grandmother was a compassionate force for social change. Her mother was a financial wizard. Her brother had been the best of all of them. Beautiful. Social. Wickedly smart. Science geek. Athletic. Daring. Charming. She had been the nothing. Still had nothing to show for her twenty-nine years on the earth, just a long string of attempts. And now a looming bankruptcy.
Hollis balled her fists under the water and forced herself to sink a little lower in the water. She focused on Kadan’s hair as it floated out a little from his head like liquid crown. She was having a long, self-indulgent pity party that had to stop right here, right now.
Hollis bit her lip hard until she tasted blood and then forced herself to freestyle down the pool and back twice. Fast as if demons chased her and they did. She practically didn’t breathe until she surfaced, but she managed. She sucked in air as quietly as she could, feeling shame wash over her at the silliness of the tiny victory.
“Show off,” he said when she came back after several laps.
“Just giving you something to aspire to.”
“You know I’m competitive.”
“Really?” Hollis teased. “I didn’t know.”
“I could probably still kick your ass,” he said, and the gleam in his eye both flipped her stomach in excitement and fear.
“Simmer down, surfer boy. You want to swim? I think back stroke would be good for tonight. I can put your boot back on and attach it to the board with yoga straps to keep your ankle immobile. It’s waterproof, right?”
He sighed. “Yes, and I can’t complain about your ingenuity. You must be a professional.”
Hollis felt her smile slip. “Yeah. Back stroke only.”
“Hardly qualifies as exercise.”
“Take it or leave it, surfer boy.”
“Really?” He scowled. “Surfer boy. That’s the best you got. I thought you were anti-nicknames, especially ridiculous ones.”
“Oh, and duchess is so me.”
“Very suited, actually.”
“In what way?”
“You remove yourself from everyone,” he said softly.
“No, I don’t,” she said. “I can’t even believe you said that.”
She fastened the boot carefully around his foot and ankle to keep it immobile.
“You do. It’s as natural to you as breathing.”
She thought of how emotionally wrenching working with the vets had been, especially the ones who were trying so hard, determined to regain some of their life back. After six months she’d been barely able to function. Forget sleeping. Distance was not her problem. Disengaging was. She hadn’t been able to let go of her work with the vets so that she could function, and clearly she had was not able to let go of Kadan, even though she had a million reasons why her heart should have dumped his ass years ago.
“Unfortunately that character reading falls flat,” she said wryly, both hurt and amused at his assessment. She should probably be angry, but he was just needling her because he was frustrated by his injury and probably worried.
“How bad?” she asked, tracing her finger along his scar after she finished wrapping a yoga belt around his ankle to keep it secure to the float.
“Four pins and a plate in my heel.”
Four, she mouthed and felt
herself go cold.
“I’m practically bionic. Going to be hell to get through airport security.”
It would be hell to get any mobility, much less feeling and flexibility back.
Four.
“And I’m going to be fitted with a cast probably next week.”
There were questions she could ask. Probably should. But she didn’t. Kadan wouldn’t want to answer those questions anymore than she wanted to answer his.
“Okay.” She rose out of the water and smiled, finding the mantle of professional physical therapist wore better than ex-girlfriend. “Let me run you through some exercises that will help your body stay strong while you are recovering but also take the stress off your muscles that have to work overtime because of the crutches, which”—she mock glared at him—“should be exchanged for a scooter.”
“Do these exercises involve touching?” His voice was smoky with sex, and it pierced her professional demeanor as if it had never existed.
“Kadan.” She breathed.
Four.
“I’m trying here. Please, just once, behave.”
He righted himself, his leg extended behind her, and the other on the floor of the pool holding him up so that she was caged between his thighs. In the pool lights dancing across the water, she could see how well his leg muscles were defined, and she could feel them behind her locking her close to his body. She searched for something to say that would cut through the sexual tension that hummed through her body and kept jumping to his, sparking and then running its potent current back through her again.
“Duchess.” His lips skimmed along the curve of her ear and kissed along her neck until her skin danced with goose bumps and her body trembled. “You know me better than that.”
She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think beyond how much she wanted to kiss him. To touch him. He was a drug for her. She craved him. Physically, sexually, emotionally, mentally. All of it. Her eyes closed in resignation. It was going to start all over again. She was powerless to stop it, and she didn’t really want to anyway. It wasn’t like her life was a screaming success without him. And it wasn’t as if distance and determination to forget had even put a dent in her feelings and desire for him. Always Kadan. He’d been her first. Her only.
Wrecked (Sons of San Clemente Book 2) Page 7