“I wonder most about my mother,” she said softly, somehow speaking the words even though they hurt and wouldn’t offer any comfort to Kadan, except perhaps he’d know that he was not the only one his mother had loudly and endlessly blamed. “If Health hadn’t gone that day, if he were still alive, if I’d have a relationship with her. If my father and she wouldn’t have divorced.”
Hollis laughed a little at the ludicrous but wishful thought. “I mean it was never really good. She was always so critical. Nothing I did was right, but she had Holland, and he was so...her everything. I mean my mom and dad just worshipped him. I worshipped him. He was so smart and funny and kind and jokey and present, alive in a way none of us were. It’s like he was a planet, and we were satellites, and then he was sucked in a black hole and we all got knocked off our orbits and away from each other.
“Sorry.” She ducked her head. She really was becoming the biggest downer in So Cal history. “I got all astrophysics on you. Holland loved science. He was the scientist. He wanted to be a doctor.”
“Yeah,” Kaden said. “Orthopedist. He wanted to deal with adrenalin junkies and athletes, idiots like me.”
He tangled his fingers in her hair. “I remember you loved to draw. And write. You had a whole Sons of San Clemente surf comic book thing happening. You copied it and printed it at Pacific Printing and sold it at your middle school and to tourists on the beach during the weekends. You gave each of us an avatar. Wave Shredder was mine. I caught a lot of shit from everyone over your crush.”
Hollis blushed. She’d never thought about it from his perspective. A twelve-year-old girl following him all the time. Then as a fourteen-year-old teen trying to join him with his friends, pretend they were equals, that she was so mature. And then when she was sixteen trying to get him to notice her as a woman when she was still a girl. Her flirting must have been cringe-inducing. It was amazing he hadn’t ever cut her down cruelly just to get her out of his line of sight for a minute. She’d sat on his deck for hours sometimes, waiting for him to come home at night or to get up. Her home had become intolerable.
Kadan laughed. “Bone Crusher was Lane’s because he used to fall off all the time. Should have been mine,” he said ruefully looking down at his booted ankle. “Zen was Wave Rider because he was so chill and graceful. I always hated that asshole.”
“Why?” She asked remembering her brother’s best friend as quiet and easygoing. Fun. Kind. Letting her hang with them.
“He was everything I wasn’t. So much a better man, and he watched you all the time. He was perfect for you. Couldn’t figure it out that you didn’t see it.”
She laughed. “You’re wrong, Kadan. He ignored me. You tried hard, too. I was a pest. Bait, you called me.”
“I was being polite. I meant jail bait. Everyone else knew what I meant.
“Still, you never made a move until I was almost nineteen.”
“Maybe I am a saint?” He mused and nuzzled her neck.
She sighed happily. Amazed that in a few days she’d gone from feeling so desperately lost and alone to feeling a sense of belonging that had eluded her for...well, maybe forever. She bit her lip. It wasn’t real. She and Kadan weren’t real even though he felt real. He’d always been her one and only. She wondered what he’d say if she told him that. That he’d been her only love. Her stomach churned. He definitely wouldn’t want to hear that when he’d had dozens, probably more.
“I’d forgotten about the comics,” she said, grabbing onto that safer topic.
She still marveled that she could have so completely forgotten something she’d done for three years. She’d created a new page, sometimes more, each week. Long involved stories.
“Holland was Wave Runner,” she said and felt a pain through her like a stab. She looked down, surprised to see nothing sticking out of her chest.
“Yeah,” he said. “No one was surprised you stopped, considering,” he said. “But medical school?” he asked softly. “I never saw that one coming until you went. I remember you passed out on my deck one afternoon when you tripped on my grill and knocked your toenail off and it oozed blood.”
Hollis let her breath out.
“And then when you got a gash in your shin when we were hiking, same thing. I was bandaging you up and other hikers were about the call 911, thinking I was some domestic abuser because you were so pale and woozy from the shock and blood.”
Hollis nibbled on her lower lip. Was she really that pathetically obvious to everyone but herself? No wonder none of it had worked out—residency, physical therapy, massage school, she thought with unwelcome insight. She’d tried to live what she thought Holland’s life would have been. She’d abandoned herself as quickly as her mother and father had. She’d always been the reader. Writing poetry. Drawing pictures. Locking herself up in her room for hours alone with her books and her notebooks and her sketch pads. Happy with her thoughts, dreaming about Kadan.
“Boring. Moody. Shy.” Her mom had dismissed.
The comic books had been her attempt to bridge her world and Holland’s. And to get noticed by Kadan. To join in. When Holland had died, she’d walked across that bridge and burned it in an attempt to make up for what she was missing. What her family was missing.
Another failure. Her dad had divorced her mom and taken a job at a hospital in LA and remarried within a year. He had two, maybe three kids now. He’d been too busy to see her while she’d been a teen and in her early twenties and she’d given up trying to reconnect to him a few years ago. Her mom had relocated to New York City, telling Hollis that she could go to boarding school for high school or stay with her grandmother.
So Hollis had stayed with her grandmother. Taken all the math and science she could and majored in biology and physics in college. She stifled a strangled laugh. Even in her grief she’d been boring and predictable. Desperate. Become a doctor like daddy, like her brother wanted. And now what?
What would she be now? Who was she? How did people even know who they were? Maybe that was why she was so magnetically drawn to Kadan. He was so strong and sure about who he was. What he wanted.
Hollis straightened her shoulders and forced herself to stare out at the ocean. She pictured herself walking down toward it, letting it wash over her toes. Even the image made her a little nauseous and she pushed it away. She would do it, she vowed. Face her fears head on. Not hide. And not live someone else’s life in the shadows. She deserved better.
Holland would have lived his own life had she died first. He might have been fifteen when he died, but he had been the only one in her family who had loved her as she was. He’d never tried to change her or mocked her interests. Most of her friends growing up had been Holland’s friends. He had been her bridge to the world. And after Holland, she’d floundered, relying on Kadan.
No more. She had to do it herself. Only... she glanced at Kadan who was also staring at the ocean, and she had no idea what he was thinking, Now she’d resumed a relationship with him. A sexual relationship. Because that was all they’d ever had. So how was she going to be strong on her own and figure out who she was if she allowed her love and lust for him to consume her?
Hollis stared at her bare feet covered in the sand. Like she was being buried.
She really was gloomy. Kadan was probably wishing she’d maybe take off her tank top to liven things up.
“Ready to head back?” She forced herself to say something, to sound casual. She needed time alone to think, to realize what she’d gotten herself into with him and what that meant.
He cupped her chin, forcing her to face him. “You ready to try the ocean?” he asked.
“I don’t need to get in the ocean to prove anything.” Panic tightened her voice even though she’d been thinking of tackling that fear. Just not today.
“I do.”
“You’re not ready.”
“You need it.”
“It’s not that big of a deal.”
“It is to me,” he said, “and it
is to you.”
She felt her stomach drop. He was serious. Really serious. And why not? He lived near the ocean. Worked and breathed and loved the ocean and its rhythms and waves. What was she thinking even pretending she could be with him more than a day?
She felt tears spurt in her eyes and she jerked her head away, wanting to hide from him.
“I don’t have to prove anything to you,” she whispered.
“Exactly. Don’t prove it to me. Prove it to yourself.”
“I don’t want to. It’s a stupid phobia. It’s probably totally temporary.”
“Letting fear rule you is stupid.”
“I’m not!”
“Then why the hell do you always run away?” he demanded.
Always run away.
The words were a slap and her denial was instinctive. “I don’t run away.”
He caught her hand and interlaced their fingers. “You’re running right now.”
“Just because I...”
“Feel how hard you’re pulling?”
She was. She was straining against him, leaning back and away from him, her arm outstretched, muscles taut, and his hand the only thing keeping her upright.
He pulled her to him, placed their linked hands on his chest.
“You’re heart is racing as fast as a jack rabbit’s,” he said softly. “You run away. You run from everything and everyone. Even yourself.”
“That is not true. That is not fair.” She pulled away and glared.
“You ran from dealing with Holland’s death. You ran from residency. You ran from me three times. And I think you’re running from something in Seattle now.”
“I never ran from you. You cheated on me. A lot. Of course, I left.”
“So you said.” A muscle ticked in his jaw. “You accused me of sleeping with practically every woman who said hi on the circuit. Or asked for an autograph.”
“On their breasts, with me standing there.” His words lashed her and her hurt flared. “And you’d do it.”
“Yeah, it was all good fun. It’s not like I slept with them.”
“I never said sleeping was involved,” she hissed. “And they sure as hell said a lot more than ‘Hi.’ They’d practically push me out of the way. And sometimes I’d come home and you’d be having a party, and there’d be a dozen women at the house, and that’s when I was staying with you.”
“So, of course I was having sex with all of them. In the same bed where I slept with you.” She could tell he was really pissed. “Maybe even two or three at a time. That’s what you said to me once.” His eyes were nearly black.
They just had too much painful history between them and Hollis had, in a weak moment, allowed all the skeletons of their past to be jerked out of the closet to scatter on the floor.
“A serial cheater with no respect for you and our so called life together. That’s the kind of man you supposedly loved.”
Each word was like a bullet in her chest. “There was no supposed about it. I loved you more than anything and you just threw it away.”
“I’m still here,” he said, his voice icy cold. “Holding on.” He laughed harshly. “I never let go. I never left. You left. Over and over.”
Hollis caught her breath. He still denied it. After all this time. Mr. Innocent. Mr. You Are Imagining Things, like she didn’t read the surf magazines and later the social media sites that swirled around every surf competition. She’d been in school and hadn’t been able to travel with him.
“And I never accused you of something that makes my skin crawl and makes me feel sick to my stomach,” he said. “So stop running, duchess. Stop nursing your imagined hurt.”
“Where do you get off talking to me like that, like I’m some coward who was a jealous, delusional shrew and you were a knight in shining armor? If you’re so perfect, why are you hiding in my grandmother’s guest house alone? You should have dozens of friends”—she spat and made air quotes around the word friends—“who would help you. And if I was so awful, and you were so harassed by my insecurities, why’d you even bother to...forget it.” She spun around and began to walk quickly back to the house.
Tears blinded her, but she was not hurt, she thought fiercely. She was angry. Definitely not emotionally devastated again. She wanted distance from him. She needed it.
“Hollis.”
She stiffened but kept walking. Then she stopped and her hands clenched into fists. What if he needed help getting back to the house? Then he should have kept his big mouth and critical opinions to himself. But wasn’t this running? Her steps slowed.
She could prove him wrong. She would. Prove she was strong and unaffected by his taunts.
“Yes?” she demanded.
“Little help.”
“With what?” She turned back and glared at him.
He stood there looking strong and perfect and so not needing anything from her. Then she saw that he’d dropped one of his crutches in the sand.
“You can get it,” she said quietly.
A wave rolled in, teasing the crutch, the white bubbles burbled around it picking it up and pulling it out just a little before racing back to rejoin the rest of the ocean.
“You did that on purpose,” she said. “Trying to manipulate me.”
“If I’d been able to manipulate you, I would have done it ten years ago and saved myself the drama of all the fights and break ups, although the reunions were fucking, mind-blowingly awesome.”
“Bastard.”
The next wave caught the crutch again, but it didn’t move much until the small wave behind it raced over the top and pulled it a few feet further.
“Probably,” he agreed. “My mother was never quite sure.”
Hollis winced at the reminder of his childhood littered with a series of men his mother would bring home for a night or a week or a month. Many of them addicts or abusive or both.
She watched his crutch move again with the eddy of the waves. Her eyes narrowed even as her stomached burbled like she might be sick.
“That could be a problem,” Kadan said softly.
“Your problem.” Hollis watched the next wave play with the crutch.
She was not going to play this game. He’d probably tossed it away, not dropped it. She wouldn’t put it past him, so it was his problem. Only...her fingers flexed and then fisted again.
She really was scared, wasn’t she? And if she wanted to reboot her life, maybe this was where she should start. Holland would be so disappointed with her, wouldn’t he? That she’d let herself get in this state. He’d been the ultimate example of living life to the fullest. That’s probably why he’d worshipped Kadan, who had living down to an art form.
“Would you like me to get your crutch?” She asked with sticky sweetness, letting him know she was on to him.
“Actually,” he said conversationally, “I’d like to never see the damn thing again, but unfortunately I need it.”
She watched another wave tumble the crutch out a bit more. A scooter wouldn’t get picked up by the ocean so quickly.
“And responsible world citizen that I am, I never litter.”
Hollis watched another wave come and go. Why the hell was she standing here? It wasn’t like he could run out and retrieve it. It was a crutch. But he’d started this game by dropping it. Another wave and another. She counted them along with her breaths. She’d grown up on the ocean. Had swum in it hundreds of times each year growing up, even after Holland’s death.
If she got it back, didn’t that mean he’d won? Or would she win because she would have taken her first steps towards rebuilding her life? Drawing in a deep breath, her eye on a the third wave out that was cresting larger, she forced herself to walk, not run the few yards out. And when the wave came, she didn’t run back. Her heart pounded as if she’d been running stairs. There were black spots in front of her eyes. The small, spent wave tickled over her feet, splashed her shins, stinging a little and sucking out her breath. She’d forgotten how cold the oc
ean was. She picked up the crutch, marveling at how fear could change perspective. She’d felt like the crutch was so far away, but in reality, she was only about ten yards from Kadan.
She turned around and walked back, holding the crutch out in front of her. She didn’t run.
He took it, leaning forward to capture her lips with his. Heat swept through her body, leaving her feeling weak. One of his hands curled around her waist, pressing her hips against him. She felt so safe, cherished. Again a feeling of belonging swept through her.
Abruptly, she straightened and pushed away. His eyes flared with surprise. It was the first time she’d ever broken away from his kiss.
“Don’t play me. I’m not one of your airhead, fake blonde fans.”
She spun around and ran back to the house.
Chapter Ten
“Hi.’ Hollis walked across the deck, a Venti Starbucks latte in her hand.
She’d driven off and had made it to Del Mar before she’d calmed down enough to pull over and talk herself off her pissed off at the world and Kadan is an asshole wall. “Peace offering. Loaded with caffeine. It will set my detoxifying your body and healing you plan back by a week.”
“Om and Shanti to you, too.”
She felt nervous with him, hyperaware that the distance she thought she could keep with him was an illusion. She’d always loved him, but if she were being honest with herself, she’d only ever let him see part of her. The fun part. The adventurous part. The endless physical desire. What would it be like to be herself? Hollis didn’t know. She’d never tried it with anyone other than her brother. Even with her grandmother, she’d been quiet, studious, helpful around the house. Afraid of being sent away because she was a pain in the ass teenager, who just wanted to lay in her bed and cry because her brother was dead, her parents had divorced and the boy, almost a man, she loved treated her like a sweet, but odd kid.
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