by Hanna Hart
“The beach! The beach!” her daughter sang as they climbed the cast-iron staircase up to her apartment in the tiny fourplex.
“Nobody’s robbing you!” Megan shouted from down the hallway as June entered her home. “Just returning the dress I borrowed and stealing another one!”
“Sounds good,” June called back.
She knelt to Ember’s height and told her to go pick out her favorite swimsuit as she talked to auntie Megan, then winced as she made her way into her bedroom.
Megan was pulling hangers in the closet from side to side, looking for the perfect summer dress for her date night with her husband, Nate.
June wished she had the luxury of waiting until Megan left to start planning for her outing, but the beach was an hour’s drive, and she was going to be late enough as it was.
Without hesitation, she dug into one of her top drawers and pulled out an army green, backless one-piece with braided straps and walked into the bathroom to put it on. When she came back into her bedroom, Megan was watching her curiously.
June slipped her shorts and t-shirt back on overtop the swimsuit and grabbed her purse off the bed.
“You guys going swimming for the day?” her sister asked.
“Yep,” she nodded.
“Fun!” Megan cheered. “With who?”
June clenched her teeth. She wasn’t about to lie to her sister, but she wasn’t dying to get into the topic, either.
“With, uh,” she began slowly. “With Bennett.”
“The beach! The beach!” Ember called again from the hallway before bursting into the bedroom with her plastic shovel and pale.
“You’re taking her to the beach with Bennett?” Megan said under her breath. She narrowed her eyes at June and whispered, “I can’t believe you!”
“Can I bring my duck?” Ember asked as she ran up to June’s legs.
“Yes, of course! She’s in the bottom of your closet. You want to go get her for me and I’ll blow it up?” June said excitedly.
“Yes!” her daughter exclaimed before running down the hall toward her bedroom.
“Look at how excited she is, Megan. She’s going to have a blast.”
“Yeah,” Megan scoffed. “It’s not the swimming, sand-castle building part that I’m worried about.”
“Don’t,” June said quietly as she threw some sunblock into her beach bag.
Megan bit her lip, and June could tell she was quite literally trying to bite back her words. She stood in the middle of the room, midi-dress in hand, staring at June incredulously.
“This guy completely shattered your heart,” she finally snapped, tossing the dress down onto her vanity stool. “You can’t blame me for being worried.”
“I totally get it,” June agreed. She had been a wreck after breaking up with Bennett. She spent nights afterward crying to Megan, asking why Bennett couldn’t wait for her and why they couldn’t seem to work things out between them.
If the situation were reversed and Megan was inviting some jerk from her past back into her life, June probably wouldn’t be too thrilled, either.
“His sister happened to invite us, and it would have been rude to say no,” June said.
“And the dinner the other night?” Megan said, and June immediately bristled.
“Can I please take my daughter to the beach without getting the third degree from you?” she said with an annoyed laugh.
“Can you please be careful?” Megan said, grabbing June’s hand. “I don’t want to see you get hurt again.”
“It’s just the beach,” she said with a reassuring smile.
“It’s never ‘just’ anything with you and Bennett. Every time you run into this guy, you seem to get sucked back into seeing him, and it never, ever, ever works out.”
“I’m not trying to date him,” she sighed. “Being in a relationship is the last thing I want right now. You know that. I’m still recovering from the tornado of…” June paused and checked the door to see if Ember was nearby. Seeing the coast was clear, she lowered her tone to a whisper and continued, “Of the divorce and everything. Besides, Bennett isn’t staying in Texas.”
“And he never will,” Megan said firmly.
“So, there isn’t anything to worry about,” she grinned and leaned up to kiss her sister on the cheek. “But thank you for looking out for me.”
“You know where I am if you need me,” Megan said.
“Always,” June nodded.
She understood what it must look like. She and Bennett were like magnets that were undeniably drawn to one another. Even now, after all this time, she couldn’t seem to say no to him. Not to dinner and not to the beach.
He was just so likable.
Both at the dinner and the awkward meeting at The Lipkin, she immediately remembered all the things that she liked about him. He was warm and funny and attractive. He had a certain charisma that she’d never been able to find again since they broke up.
Megan had a right to be worried.
But June wasn’t in her twenties anymore. She had a daughter to think about and a heart to protect.
The closest beach to Houston was just a little less than an hour south in Galveston.
The beach was gorgeous, and a favorite of hers both as a teenager and an adult. It had a pavilion, a boardwalk, and a stage for entertainment where live music was hosted.
That day the beach was hosting its annual sandcastle competition.
There were crowds of people gathered to watch the talented artists sculpt their works of art. People who entered went all out, building replicas of the Taj Mahal, ancient cities, wild animals, and other famous monuments.
Ember was mesmerized by the sculptors and was determined to join their ranks, pulling out her plastic buckets and packing them with muddy sand.
She texted Bennett when they arrived, and it wasn’t long before he found her amidst the crowd.
“So glad you could join us!” Kennedy said as she began guiding Ember and June toward her little beach camp.
She’d clearly staked out a good spot. She had various umbrellas, a fort’s worth of blankets, and coolers as far as the eye could see full of drinks and snacks.
“Was the drive okay?” Bennett asked.
“A little busier than I expected, probably because of all this,” June said, gesturing to the throngs of people watching the sculptors. “I haven’t been here for the competition in forever!”
“The talent here is insane,” Bennett said as he took a spot on one of the soft blankets.
“Makes you wish they were actually doing something with their talent, right?” Kennedy snorted as she lay back in her sun chair.
“Says the girl who plans on spending all day tanning on the beach and doing nothing else,” Bennett scoffed.
“Blah, blah, blah,” Kennedy laughed. “Where’s your little cutie off to?”
June watched as Ember took a seat near the edge of their blanket village, just a few feet away from where they were sitting.
“She’s joining the masses,” June giggled and pointed to the sandcastle already in progress in Ember’s bucket.
“Hey, Ember, what are you building?” Bennett asked the little girl.
“I’m going to build a big castle with a mote. And I’m going to have towers and even a prince!” Ember said excitedly.
“Ambitious!” Kennedy laughed.
“What about the princess?” Bennett asked, studying the already growing structure. “Where’s she at?”
“Oh, well,” Ember looked up at him. She gave it a good think before concluding, “She’s out.”
Bennett looked up at June and grinned. “Out doing what?”
“She’s buying puppies,” her daughter responded.
“Puppies! Oh, okay, wow. That’s a pretty big responsibility,” Bennett played along. “And what’s the prince doing? He’s just excited for her to bring their new dogs home?”
“Yeah, he wants a Great Dane and,” she took a breath, “and a poodle!”
“What a pair!” Bennett said.
June saddled up next to where Bennett and Ember sat. She poured out some of the water from her bottle into the sand to make it more pliable for her daughter.
“Those are her two favorite dogs,” she explained. “She watches videos about them all the time, so I apologize in advance for the fun facts you are going to get throughout the day.”
“Did you know that there was a Great Dane who joined the...the navy?” Ember piped up.
June smiled with amusement at Bennett and said, “Like that one!”
“I did not know that,” he said.
“An-an-and a poodle’s fur never stops growing!”
He nodded. “Because it’s more like human hair than dog hair, right?”
Ember’s mouth went agape, and she looked at her mother in surprise. “Yeah! That’s right!”
“See? I know some things too,” he said proudly. “Hey, Ember, do you mind if I help you build your castle?”
“You can do the mote!” she instructed.
June watched as the two of them talked and played the afternoon away building castles and animals made of sand. She watched the careful way Bennett helped her craft intricate details into the castle walls. At first, she assumed her ex-boyfriend was just being nice by building with her, but she soon realized that Bennett was completely into it.
He must have been an amazing uncle because he didn’t seem one bit phased by Ember’s endless questions and silly jokes.
She always knew Bennett was a kid person, but she hadn’t realized exactly how sweet and lighthearted he could be.
The two played for hours, stopping only to eat lunch. Eventually, Kennedy marched up with her two girlfriends and asked if Ember could come to play in the water with them.
“Only in the shallows,” June said. “Where I can see her.”
“We have this big unicorn floatie. It’s like, boat sized. Can we go out in the water with her in it?” one of Kennedy’s friends asked.
June scrunched her face, unsure if she should be letting her daughter go out in the water with these girls.
“Oh, please, Mom! Please!” Ember begged.
“We won’t take her out far,” Kennedy reassured her. “We’ll just splash around a bit.”
She pursed her lips thoughtfully before turning to Kennedy. “Okay,” she said, “but she has to wear a life jacket.”
“Yay!” Kennedy cheered. She helped Ember into her little pink and yellow lifejacket before scooping her up in her arms and walking toward the water with her friends. “We’ll be back soon!” she called.
June watched the hesitantly and set her teeth together. She looked at Bennett and asked, “Did I just make a huge mistake?”
“Maybe,” he teased.
June stared off in the direction Kennedy had disappeared with her daughter, and Bennett started to laugh.
“Come on,” he said, taking her hand and walking her down to where the water met the sand. “You’re just going to worry if you can’t see her. We may as well go for a dip with them.”
She followed him down into the water and immediately felt better when she saw the unicorn floatie and heard her daughter’s giggles.
“She’s awesome,” Bennett said as he waded out into the water with June, pulling her deeper until they were chest-high in the warm tide.
“I think so, but I’m pretty biased.”
“You could have told me about her, you know,” he offered casually. “It wouldn’t have made a difference to me.”
June nodded as he spoke, but she sincerely doubted his words.
“I just didn’t know what to say,” she offered lamely. “I didn’t know if I would see you again or, you know, if it was worth it to get into the whole thing.”
“Right,” he mumbled, then repeated, “Right.”
Bennett watched her daughter as she joked around with his sister and her friends. Then he turned to June and said, “She can make friends with anyone!”
“She gets that from her dad,” she said. “Definitely not from me.”
“Hey, you’re friendly,” he defended, and June rolled her eyes.
“Is he still in the picture?” Bennett asked, nodding towards her daughter. “If you don’t mind my asking?”
“Lincoln?” she asked, and he nodded.
When she didn’t respond right away, Bennett pulled his hands up out of the water and said, “Don’t let me pry.”
“No, it’s fine,” she said softly. “We didn’t really plan for her, and we actually didn’t know if we were going to stay together once she was born, but he said as soon as he saw her, he, you know, wanted to make it work. Which, obviously, it didn’t work out.”
“He’s a good dad, though?” he asked.
“A great dad. Ember meant the world to him. She’s probably why we stayed together as long as we did. But you can only do that for so long.”
“That’s tough,” he sympathized.
“Especially for her. It’s hard enough going through a breakup, right? You’re with someone all the time, you have your routine, you rely on them, and then...”
Bennett watched her carefully, his eyes flicking back and forth from hers. “Right,” he said with a slow nod.
Then she realized that, of course, Bennett knew what she meant—they had each taken turns breaking up with the other with equally painful outcomes.
“I mean, it’s one thing when you’re dating someone and it doesn’t work out. That’s what dating is for,” she backtracked. “But when you’re married, you expect stability. You expect to fix whatever isn’t working between you.”
“I’m sorry. I can’t imagine what that’s like. I mean, I know breakups,” he said, gesturing toward her, “and as you know, I don’t handle them very well.”
“Does anyone?” she said with humor.
“You know my friend’s wedding the other day?” he recalled. “I was supposed to have a date that night.”
“Oh, no,” she winced.
“I had been dating a girl for a while,” he said.
“How long?”
“Eight months,” he said. “I know that doesn’t seem like a long time, but it felt like more. It was that kind of connection, you know? I thought she was the one.”
She pressed her lips thin. She knew that feeling all too well. “What happened?”
“I proposed, and she said no,” he laughed.
“Ouch,” she said. “Do you think it was just too soon for her?”
“I wondered that,” he said, rolling his shoulders. “She told me I was just getting serious faster than she was. She said she didn’t think we were exclusive.”
“After eight months?”
“Yep,” he said. “She said she’d been bored and was already seeing a couple of other guys.”
“A couple?” she repeated in surprise. “Oh, my goodness, talk about awful. Who needs her?”
“Ah, she was alright,” he shrugged. “What about your guy? What kind of lunatic leaves his wife and child like that?”
Her eyes went wide. He was opening a can of worms, asking a question like that.
“Let me put it this way,” she began quietly, making sure Ember was far enough away to get into it. “Most people get married because they want to settle down, right? That’s what I wanted. I wanted to buy a house, have more kids, and spend my life raising them. But for Lincoln, it was the opposite. He married me and seemed to get more unstable as the years went on. He wanted to go out and live his life. He wanted to party and gamble and stay out until two in the morning.”
“Yeesh!”
June nodded. “We didn’t get along near the end. We fought all the time, which wasn’t good for Ember. We tried not to bicker around her but sometimes it seeps in. And, you know, there was always this part of him that I could tell didn’t trust me.”
“I can’t imagine that,” he said sweetly.
The two of them continued talking about life and love and goals. They talked about music and shows they w
ere watching and recalled old memories, but June couldn’t get that last sentiment about Lincoln out of her mind.
Lincoln didn’t trust her, and although she wouldn’t say it out loud, she knew Bennett shouldn’t trust her either.
Chapter Seven
Bennett
It had been two weeks since June and Ember had entered into Bennett’s life.
At first, he had been thrown to learn she had a daughter, but as soon as he spent time with Ember, he was immediately sold on the idea of June being a package deal.
He had also been sold on only seeing June to catch up. He had told anyone who would listen that he had no underlying intentions for his former flame, but the more time went by, the less he believed it.
Being around June felt as it always had—it felt right.
He couldn’t help the easy way he seemed to flirt with her or the comfort he felt having her around. Even seeing Ember filled him with life. She was so easy to talk to and play with.
It was no surprise that, after weeks of spending time together, Shannon Brooks insisted that Bennett invite June and Ember over to the house for a meal.
It was a rare Sunday off for June, and she had agreed to come to the Brooks’ household.
She was a brave, brave girl.
Shannon made a giant brunch for everyone to share. It had everything: bacon, two kinds of sausage, grits, French toast, fruit salad, and a huge pan of fluffy scrambled eggs showered in cheese and pepper.
Kennedy was supposed to be in attendance at the family meal, but after a big fight with Mama Brooks, she had taken off for two days without letting anyone know where she was.
“I just don’t know what to do with that girl,” Shannon said after a long lament about her daughter. “I wish she had friends like you, June.”
“Mom,” Jaxon, Bennett’s youngest brother, said, rolling his eyes.
Jaxon still lived at home with his parents. He had just turned twenty-one and hadn’t yet been sent off to run a ranch.
In retrospect, Bennett realized this was a precious time in Jaxon’s life. He still had the freedom to study, to be with his friends, and to live in Texas.
“Well, look at her!” his mother continued. “She has her head on straight, and do you know why? June has always known that the most important thing in life...”