With Every Breath (Sea Swept #2)

by Chase, Valerie

  “No one could fix her,” she says raggedly, and puts her hand over her eyes.

  Her anger is gone, the annoyance and fiery attitude evaporated. Her shoulders start to tremble. Yasmin looks beaten now. She looks like one sharp breeze could dissolve her into a million pieces.

  She looks like she needs a goddamned hug.

  I shouldn’t be the one to give it to her, because she’s my employee, and I barely know her, and two seconds ago we were practically shouting at each other. But I’m the only one here. She’s hurting, and …

  Screw it. I can’t be an ass about this, not when I know what it’s like. Stepping forward, I pull Yasmin close and wrap my arms around her.

  Chapter 9

  Yasmin

  I’m enveloped in West’s strong arms, and it’s all too much. I’d almost managed to get my impending tears under control, but his sympathy breaks my hold on them. Suddenly I’m crying into his shirt, deep, wracking sobs.

  Why was I even picking a fight with West, anyway? I’m so stupid. Sofia is dead—dead—and arguing over health versus money isn’t going to bring her back. Nothing will. Sofia will never traipse through the dusty streets of a foreign country in search of fun things to photograph, like papayas at the markets. She’ll never drink a beer with me in a Mexican beach bar like I did with my new coworkers. She’ll never get to do anything ever again, and it kills me that I’m here, trying to complete her checklist for her.

  Sometimes I think I should be the one in the ground, because Sofia would have done more with her life than I’m doing with mine. Even when she was in the middle of her treatments, she had such big plans for the future, knew exactly what she wanted to be, while I’m lost, fumbling. And I want to apologize to her for that, but I can’t, which opens the hurt all over again.

  West stands silently, his arms locked around me. Faintly, I become aware of his hand brushing the nape of my neck in a soothing rhythm. My sobs subside and I begin to quiet, but I don’t want to move yet. I’m exhausted by my tears, like I’ve survived a hurricane, and West’s embrace is sturdy, holding me up. His chest against my cheek is hard underneath his t-shirt. My arms are caught between us, my hands clutching his shirt, but other than that I can feel every inch of his sculpted torso.

  Recalling how he looked with his shirt off last night, I start to feel warm, almost sunburned. Crap. I’m crying over my sister, but getting turned on by West. This is all sorts of wrong.

  I straighten, and West lets his arms fall. I don’t dare look at him, instead swiping at my cheeks with my palms. Thank God I took off all of that Señorita Star Heart mascara, but I bet I look like a total mess.

  “Sorry. This is embarrassing,” I say.

  “This is nothing.” West’s voice is deep and quiet. “After my mom died, I wound up crying in front of my whole class at a school assembly. The football team called me Cry Guy for a year. That’s embarrassing.”

  I glance up to see his rueful smile, and my own lips lift a little.

  “Ouch,” I murmur. But I don’t know what else to say to make this less awkward. There is a big damp spot on his T-shirt where I cried on him, and I know my eyes must be red and watery.

  “You feeling better?” he asks.

  I nod. I do feel better, lighter. I’d been holding so much inside of me for so long.

  “Sofia is why I’m here,” I find myself explaining. “On board the Radiant Star, I mean. She always wanted to work as a photographer. It was her dream.”

  West’s brow furrows. “Her dream was to take photos of passengers in various stages of sunburned inebriation?”

  That makes me laugh, which surprises me because I didn’t think I had any laughter left in me at the moment. I shake my head.

  “No, but I didn’t really qualify for any other photography jobs. I only had one semester of it, plus whatever tricks I picked up from Sofia.”

  He studies me. “You couldn’t have gone to grad school and done photography on the side?”

  He’s right. Of course he’s right. It’s not like I owe him an explanation, but I did cry all over his shirt and he’s still talking to me, so I guess he deserves an answer, such as it is. My fingers fidget with the straps of my camera bag.

  “For the longest time, I wanted to be a clinical psychologist for sick kids and their families. You know, help people who were going through what mine did. That was my dream. But now … I don’t think I can do it. That’s why I’m here, instead of in grad school.”

  “I’m not sure I follow,” West says after a moment.

  My parents were confused too, when I told them I wanted to defer school a year. They thought the best thing for me was to dive into the future. They thought I was doing well, that I was moving on just fine. Hadn’t I aced my senior courses, after all? But even though almost a year had passed since Sofia’s death, I couldn’t manage to tell them how lost I was. Still am.

  I struggle to put it into words. “It’s like … how am I supposed to help other people if I can’t help myself? I can’t even say Sofia’s name without crying. It’s like that part of me is broken.”

  My eyes well up again and the alleyway blurs, but I swallow hard and stare at the ground until the urge to cry subsides. I hate crying. I especially hate that I’m crying in front of my boss.

  Most of all, I hate that my sister is gone, and that I’ll never get her back.

  I focus on each breath, in and out, until I’ve pulled myself somewhat together. Finally I raise my head. I’m sort of surprised that West is still here, that he hasn’t fled such a weepy drag of a conversation. But he is leaning against the other wall of the narrow alley, regarding me with a steady, solemn expression.

  “There’s nothing wrong with you,” he says. “Everyone grieves differently.”

  I know that, it’s in all my books. I know dozens of ways people grieve. None of them are helping me.

  “I feel so lost,” I say. I should shut up, but the words won’t stop tumbling out. “I wanted to help people like my sister, help families like ours. But then Sofia died, and my parents and I stopped being able to talk about it. They kept busy with the charity they started in her name, and I kept busy with college. We hardly ever talk about her anymore, because when we do everyone winds up crying, and we’ve already cried so much that it’s less exhausting to not talk.” I wince, because I sound like I’m complaining about my parents, but I’m not. It’s just that after hearing them weep together at night, I can’t bear making them sad again by bringing up Sofia. And instead of finding a counselor at school to talk to, I made myself really busy instead.

  “Yeah,” West says. “I know what you mean. My dad got so choked up whenever I mentioned my mom that eventually I stopped. But that felt even worse.”

  Looking into his blue eyes, laced with shadows and old pain, it hits me that West really does know what I mean. He gets it. None of my friends at school did. They tried, but I saw how uncomfortable it made them when I was sad. Even my best friends Georgia and Parker, who were great and tried so hard to be there for me, couldn’t really do more than try to cheer me up. Not their fault; they just hadn’t been through it, and it’s not something I would wish on anyone.

  West doesn’t look uncomfortable at all, and something inside me eases. I don’t have to pretend to be okay here, with him, because he already knows I’m not.

  “I want to talk about her,” I say honestly, “but if I do, I wind up sobbing, and that makes people run away. But I want some way to remember her, to show the world that she existed. That’s why I need a photo from a bell tower.” I explain my photo collage project. “She had a notebook listing shots she never got to take. I’m going to take them for her.”

  “That sounds like a really great memorial,” West says softly.

  “In theory.” I make a face. “The hospital where Sofia got her treatments—she had acute leukemia—throws an art auction every year to raise money for research. It’s coming up in a couple months, and I’ve been meaning to donate the collage t
o the auction, but I can’t seem to get it right. I’ve been working on this for weeks, but the new pictures are nowhere near her level. She was an artist, and I’m just …”

  “Just what?”

  My eyes fill, and I look down at my feet so I won’t cry. My cute aqua wedges, which rarely fail to cheer me up, aren’t working their magic today. I take a ragged breath.

  “I’m just a girl with an inherited camera.” And inherited dreams. I feel like I’ll never do either of them justice.

  West leans across the alley to touch my hand. I glance up in surprise.

  “I could help, if you want,” he says. “With the project.”

  “You don’t have to,” I say, because he’s probably just offering to be nice.

  “I don’t mind. Really.” West smiles at me, his blue eyes warm. “It actually sounds like fun.”

  I should turn him down. I should do this project on my own—but I’m not Sofia and I’m definitely not an artist. I can imagine the look she’d give me if she saw the mess of a collage as it is right now. I want it to be something she’d be proud of.

  “You wouldn’t mind?” I say.

  “Not at all.” West cocks his head towards the end of the alley. “First, we’ll find you that bell tower.”

  A little shakily, I nod and push myself off the cool bricks. We walk through the alley and into the dusty streets. West doesn’t speak, and I’m too embarrassed to say anything. I can’t believe I cried all over his shirt. I’m a little worried that nice-West will turn back into boss-West at any moment, but when he glances my way, his blue eyes are still warm as the Caribbean sea. It does something fluttery to my stomach, but I stifle the feeling—after all, he hooked up with Camelia, and I don’t want these flutters to grow into anything more.

  A few blocks later, we walk into a little open square that smells of oranges. Along one side stretches an old building that looks like it might once have been a church. On one end, a bell tower rises into the sky.

  “It’s been converted into a museum of local history,” West explains.

  “It’s perfect,” I say, a grin spreading over my face. “How do we get in?”

  “In?”

  “Yeah, Sofia wrote that she wanted to take a picture from inside a bell tower. I think she was going for a different sort of perspective. Something about the lines of the bell. And, um, the tower.” This isn’t coming out right. If Sofia were here, she could explain this photography-speak so much better than I ever could.

  West eyes the tower, then shrugs. “Let’s go in, then.”

  We walk up to the entrance and pay for the museum admission, then step inside, where cool air conditioning breezes over our warm skin. Alcoves showcase artifacts and plaques describing the local history of the region. We browse for a few minutes before heading across the building to where the bell tower is situated. We round a corner, then stop; at the base of the bell tower’s stairs, a velvet rope blocks the doorway.

  “Damn,” I mutter, disappointed. “It’s off limits.”

  We stare at it for a moment.

  “I don’t think they’ll notice if we’re quick,” West says.

  “But we’re not allowed up there.”

  “I didn’t take you for someone who gives up so easily,” West says. His lips curve upward, a wicked glint in his eye, and my stomach flips. “Come on.” He checks down the hallway and back the way we came, then steps over the rope and holds a hand out to me.

  It’s not like I’ve never done anything illegal—hello, underage drinking at college—but overall I’m a pretty rule-abiding girl. For a moment I almost chicken out. But West’s grin is conspiratorial and contagious, and we’ve already paid seven dollars apiece, and I’m so close to Sofia’s bell-tower photo that it would be a letdown to stop now.

  I grab West’s hand and jump over the velvet rope. We duck around another corner, then run up the stairs.

  “Can’t you walk quieter?” West stage-whispers. “You sound like an elephant in those shoes.”

  My wedges slap against my soles with each step, and do sound loud in the stairwell. My heart races at the thought of being discovered.

  “Sorry, I forgot my super-spy flip flops,” I say, and West chokes back a laugh. We sprint up several flights of stairs before reaching a doorway filled with light. I follow West into the top of the bell tower, high above the ground.

  “Oh, wow,” I say. I pull my camera bag off my shoulder and set it on a little table by the doorway so I can walk around unencumbered. Up here we can see over the tops of all the buildings in Portales. To one side is the sea, with the Radiant Star and two other cruise ships gleaming huge and white at the end of the long pier. On our other side, rolling hills spread out from the edge of town, filled with bright green trees planted in orderly rows. Fruit trees, maybe.

  At the center of the open-air room is a great weathered bell. I step forward and gently lay my hand on its surface. The lever to ring the bell has been tied down so there’s no way for me—or anyone else—to move it. The metal feels heavy against my palm, and cool despite the heat of the day; above our heads, the thatched ceiling shades us. The ocean breeze up here is refreshing, teasing my hair away from my nape.

  “Say bikini,” West says softly, and I turn to find him pointing his camera at me. I laugh because that’s the line he uses on passengers, and he presses the shutter button.

  I walk to the side of the square room and lean out over the stone sill. In a minute I’ll grab the photo Sofia wanted, with the bell in the foreground and the countryside stretching out behind it, but right now I just take in the view. I wish Sofia could see this.

  West puts his camera down next to mine on the table and joins me, leaning his elbows on the stones.

  “I should have snuck up here before,” he says, turning toward me with a smile so wide and open that my heart flips. Usually after a crying jag I feel fragile for hours, but up here on top of the world with West, I’ve never felt more alive.

  Before I can think twice, I lean up and kiss him.

  Chapter 10

  Yasmin

  The kiss is quick, a simple press of my lips to his before I sink back onto my heels. Surprise flashes across West’s face, along with an intense look I can’t read. Already, I’m feeling embarrassed.

  Nice one, Yas, I think as my cheeks burn hot. First I sob on him, then I kiss him. I am on a roll of inappropriate-ness here.

  “Sorry,” I say. “I didn’t mean—”

  That’s all I can get out before West pulls me to him and covers my mouth with his. Suddenly it’s like all the sunlight along the coast has been focused on us by a giant magnifying glass, because the bell tower feels like an inferno. Every touch, from the hand on my bare shoulder to the strong fingers slipping surely along the waistline of my skirt, sets me further aflame.

  The intensity of West’s kiss throws me completely, but I surrender to it, drowning myself in the feel of him. The hard muscles of his chest flex under my fingers, and I slip my hands down to the hem of his shirt, then to the warm skin underneath. I trail my fingers along the smoothness, wanting more. Much more.

  West’s hunger matches mine. His tongue, hot and wet, invades my mouth in a delicious takeover that I yield to with a moan. His hands tighten on my waist, digging into my hips and pulling me tight against him. He’s hard, his need pressing into my stomach. My hands flatten against his sides under his shirt, caressing his bare skin, careful to avoid the bandage on his back. I run my fingers along his shoulders and pull myself up, wishing I were taller so I could reach more of him.

  West backs up two steps until he hits the corner of the bell tower, which forms a shadowed nook. The stone wall extends from the corner a couple feet, just wide enough for West’s shoulders. Propped against the wall, he can slouch a little, enough that I can meet him eye to eye, lips to lips.

  For a brief second, hesitation slides through me. I’ve vowed repeatedly not to do this, not to get distracted by a guy. And West not only slept with my room
mate, but is my boss. This is all sorts of wrong. But before I can pull away, West trails his tongue down my neck, and the sensation silences the protest on my lips. Any resolve I had vanishes.

  No distractions? To hell with that.

  Straddling one of West’s legs, I sink into a kiss so hot that I’m not sure how we don’t spontaneously burst into flame. His hands roam over my tank top, and I shudder with pleasure as he cups my breasts. Even through the fabric of my shirt and bra, his touch burns, and his thumbs brush my nipples until they harden. I arch against him, breaking the kiss, and West’s tongue makes wet, hungry trails down my throat. My breath catches, because damn, this feels so good.

  West runs his hand up my leg, under my skirt. He raises the hem and glances down. “Turquoise,” he says hoarsely, and I’m not sure what he means, but he’s even harder now. His hand returns to my knee and he raises my leg higher, to his hip, then caresses the back of my leg to the curve of my ass.

  His fingers slip under my panties, and I gasp. I’m wet, and the sound West makes deep in his throat when he discovers this makes me even wetter. Our touches get more frantic, and I wrap a hand around his neck and grind hard against him.

  West plunges a finger inside me, and I let out a moan. The sound echoes off the cool stone of the bell tower, but I don’t care because another finger joins the first, and they’re moving in and out of me, shooting heat all over my body. The sensation builds almost painfully when he glides his thumb over my clit, and in only a few seconds I’m already teetering at the brink.

  Before I can fall over the edge West pauses, breaking our kiss. Our breaths are ragged as I meet his gaze. He doesn’t say anything, but his eyes search mine, and I know what he’s asking. And in this moment, I don’t even think about pulling away. I don’t think about next week, or tomorrow, or even an hour from now.

  I have to have him. Now.

  I seize the bottom of his shirt and drag it up. West’s hands abandon me to finish taking it off, and then he seizes me by the waist and turns us so that my back is to the wall. He props me up against the cool, rough stones, and I grab his head and pull it back to mine.