After all, it’s only surfing, for God’s sake.
Sydney grins knowingly and squeezes James’ shoulders with his hands, his chest puffed up with pride. He leans forward towards James’ face, then hesitates. James watches, fascinated as the thoughts play out across Sydney’s eyes. Desire, then hesitation, then realization, then relief on the heels of something like joy. Sydney sighs and leans the rest of the way in and plants a quick, dry kiss on James’ lips. James sways in his arms, and Sydney holds him steady.
“Go on, then,” Sydney says, turning James by the shoulders back to the beach. “They’re about to call your heat to prepare.”
James walks forward in a daze, guided by Sydney’s gentle shove against his back. He sets his shoulders, cracks his fingers, rivets his eyes to the incoming waves as if nothing else on earth exists.
He thinks of the time Rob and Lori ran out fully clothed into the water to hug him after he won his very first competition, entry paid for with Rob’s extra cash. He thinks of the look on Sydney’s face when he’d shot up from his hammock to find James standing there in the trees.
Sydney calls his name when he’s ten steps away, and James throws a glance over his shoulder, eyebrows raised.
Sydney’s eyes are sparkling, his entire body framed by a sea of white and yellow blooms. James wants to dive into the sight of it. Take a picture and ink it onto the skin of his own body.
“For Helen, yeah?” Sydney’s earnest eyes look incredibly full and young.
James’ own words catch in the back of his throat. Sydney nods his head at him to continue walking away, and all James can do is look at him for one beat more before turning back towards the competition, fresh determination in his step and a heavy warmth settling in the core of his chest.
~
The airhorn startles him, just like it always does.
James holds back his flinch and runs forward into the waves, throwing down his board into the shallows once he’s waist-deep, then leaping on top of the solid, familiar wood. His heart races in his chest, pumping the blood through his body so harshly he can feel it pulsing through the tips of each of his fingers.
He's flanked by Hamilton and Trent, both breathing hard as the three of them pull themselves out to sea, diving under the whitewater waves that come their way before they make it out safely past the breaking point. James relishes in the comfortable familiarity of paddling out at the start of any competition—slowly leaving behind the sounds of the crowd and the announcers with each stroke of his arms. The pleasant burn wakes up the muscles in his back and shoulders while the bright sun beats down onto this skin. He memorizes the rhythm of the waves as they rock against his body, and he controls his deep breaths through his nose.
He does exactly what Sydney had said to do—paddles out even after he senses Hamilton and Trent have both stopped until he’s out just far enough that only the largest waves will break before they reach him.
He’s nearly alone in the middle of the sea, and yet that knot around his chest is still there—that woven, unbreakable string that grounds him back to Sydney on the shore with each paddle he takes. James blinks hard as he realizes that, for the first time in his entire adult life, James truly wants the sea to push him back to shore. Wants her to thwart his efforts to keep swimming out towards the horizon and forbid him from disappearing into the deep.
He doesn’t have time now to think of how that might change everything, or nothing at all. And he definitely doesn’t have time to think about how much of that was Sydney’s doing, or his own.
Far off in the distance, James finally spots the deep roll of a huge wave rushing steadily in to the breaking point. In his gut, he already knows this one is his, as if his name was written across it in coral and foam.
Behind him, he can hear the sounds of Trent and Hamilton battling it out over the tighter barrels closer to shore, dropping one after another into the whitewater as the pipelines shoot them out too fast or close in over their heads.
Almost six minutes have gone by in the round. James knows that everyone on the shore thinks he must have lost it. That he’s chickened out or lost his nerve or caved under the pressure of going up against two surfers known for doing trick rides on smaller waves. Going up against two surfers actually known for something in the first place.
“Idiots,” the Sydney in his mind suddenly says.
James smiles despite himself as the wave continues to build, heaving up the water from the deep and forcing it towards the sky. He has to start paddling now or it’ll pass by right under him.
James grits his teeth, turns his board, and tenses his muscles, readying for the race of his life. He goes to place his first paddle, then he remembers.
“Mom,” he whispers into the surface of his board, feeling foolish and alive. He doesn’t even think he’s called out to her since he screamed for her to help him on the painful beach. A strange peace settles over his body in the following silence, covering him in a layer between the surface of his skin and the force of the baking sun.
He closes his eyes and savors the taste of the word on his tongue, and he licks the salt from his lips.
Then the hurling force of the wave is there with a roar, pushing him up towards the sky by the tail of his board. The crest of the wave starts to form just under his center of gravity.
And with a smile on his face, beautiful danger flying back through his hair, James Campbell pops up onto his shaking feet and soars down the face of the barrel.
Everything is forgotten. Everything but his legs and the water and the board. James surfs like a machine, barrel after barrel, ride after ride, chase after chase. He’s the only person out there in the water. The only person on the entire beach. The only person beneath the sun.
The towering waves push and shove against the bottom of his board, straining at the muscles in his legs and ripping at his core. They blast salty spray into his face and crush him in their whitewater—propel him faster than he’s ever moved on a board in his life and shove him back towards the shore again, and again, and again.
He doesn’t stop. The only sounds in the world are the hurling crash of the great walls of water around him and the echo of his breathing in the long tubes of the barrels. He gouges into the faces, rips cutbacks across the crests, soars up into the air, and crouches down low against his board.
When the airhorn finally echoes out to him across the water, it feels like he’s been surfing for either five minutes or five days.
James has absolutely no idea what just happened. Every muscle in his body aches, and his throat screams out for clear water, and his eyes burn and crackle under a thick sheen of salt. He paddles in on aching arms and body surfs on the whitewater of the shallower waves, having no idea how Hamilton and Trent just fared in the round. He doesn’t even know how many waves he himself caught, or if they really were as towering as they felt, or whether his two brief wipeouts left him looking embarrassing and clueless and small.
The crowd is roaring as he approaches. They’re on their feet and waving their arms and yelling. Cheering.
James paddles in to where he can stand and looks back over his shoulders for Hamilton and Trent, wanting to know what or whom the entire beach is erupting for. He scans the horizon, but the ocean behind him is empty. He turns quickly back to the shore and sees the two of them standing off to the side, panting with towels around their necks, applauding for him.
Applauding for him.
James gasps and drops his board into the shallows. He sees the entire beach before him like he did that day at Hermosa, exploding before his very eyes, every gaze locked on him. He catches the sound of his name coming from the announcers’ crackling loud speaker, and he gazes dumbstruck as a pack of smiling surfers jog down to meet him in the water.
Desperately, his eyes scan the crowd along the shore. He nearly moans when he finally spots a familiar head of dark curls standing in the center of the chaos, arms crossed over his chest and chin held high. He can clearly see the ou
tlines of his own reflection in the familiar black shades.
He watches Sydney Moore pull the aviators down off his eyes, send James a wink, and smile softly at the corner of his mouth.
And that’s when James Campbell drops to his knees in the wet sand of the foaming shallows, tears at the back of his eyes. When he witnesses the overwhelming scene before him for the second time in less than a goddamn month. Because he didn’t just embarrass himself, and hundreds of people are currently applauding him completely unaware of the scar hiding just beneath his wetsuit, and he’s moving on to the fucking finals of the Billabong Pipeline Masters.
And Sydney Moore is smiling freely at him, uncrossing his arms to clap.
17
Sydney wants to sprint towards James Campbell at full speed and tackle him down into the soft seafoam and kiss the disbelieving smile on his lips. Wants to clutch his shaking muscles and the clinging wetsuit with his palms and crush the rushing heartbeat in James’ chest against his own.
He physically grips the sand with his toes to force himself to stay put as James rises from his knees to stand and is quickly engulfed in a crowd of surfers gone running to congratulate him. They slap his back and tap his board and welcome him into their midst with open arms—the unexpected underdog no longer. He has proven his worth without leaving an inch of room for doubt, and they’ve gone running towards him like moths to a flame, leaving Sydney to stand in an empty patch of sand.
Nobody came running towards Danny Moore after he’d first ripped his way across the Banzai Pipeline.
Sydney shakes his head against the unwelcome thought and awkwardly grips his hands behind his back to stop them from clapping some more. James can’t see him now, anyways, not when he’s so surrounded. He steps back into the rest of the crowd behind him and wills himself to fade back into the masses, slipping down his aviators and silently thrilling that, for once, nobody is looking at him.
He tries to catch a glimpse of golden hair through the huddle by the water—a muscled, tan forearm, or a flash of stormy blue eyes. But all he can see is a thronging sea of bare backs and boardshorts and beards. Not the forehead he’d fallen asleep with his lips pressed against, or the hands that had gripped his curls and the bedsheets with strong fingers as Sydney settled between his thighs and kissed the most intimate part of his skin.
God, but James’ eyes had been beautiful when they’d locked onto Sydney’s just moments ago. Sydney had watched, rooted to the sand, as the thoughts passed so freely across James’ face. Exhaustion, followed by confusion and wariness, finally blotted out by sheer disbelief. By joy. And he’d sought out Sydney in the crowd as he stood there dripping wet, chest heaving on the shore, and he’d stared at him with a look that said you gave this to me.
Except that’s beyond ridiculous.
Sydney hasn’t give him anything at all. James did this for himself. For Helen. And with only the incredible strength and power of his own body and will. And his look at Sydney had simply been a reflection of his inner sense of well-earned accomplishment. It didn’t have anything at all to do with the fact that Sydney himself was standing on that shore amongst the crowd.
Did it?
Sydney huffs and grips his hands even tighter behind his back. It’s infuriating—experiencing such a wave of indecision on the beach where he’s always felt more confident than anywhere else in the world. He’s spent every day since he was fifteen cataloguing the world around him into a system that makes sense, a system that acknowledges Sydney Moore’s existence but does not particularly care too much that he’s there. And that’s been good. It’s been fine and perfect and left him peacefully alone and carried him through each hour until he can set foot back on his private stretch of sand at the end of the day and release the cold breath in his lungs.
And now, after just two days of being allowed to touch James Campbell’s skin, he’s walking around thinking that someone is thanking him. That someone is actually searching for his eyes in a crowd because they want to see that he’s there.
Stupid.
Is it?
The airhorn starting the next semi-final heat blares across the hot sand, and Sydney blinks out of his thoughts to see that the entire crowd around him has resumed their seats, leaving him standing alone among the sea of sunbathing skin and beach towels.
In an unfamiliar flash of panic, his eyes scan the beach for James, wishing for the first time in his life that someone, well, someone, was saving him a seat on one of those beach towels to watch the next set of surfing.
He finds James easily, as if his body subconsciously knew his exact location. He’s leaning back in the sand with a t-shirt pulled on and his wetsuit top hanging down by his hips, running a hand through his soaking wet golden hair and laughing like it’s the only way he knows how to breathe. Laughing surrounded by a group of other surfers, all loose and at ease.
The rush of jealousy Sydney experiences looking at James’ body so effortlessly surrounded by them is staggering. It’s as if the sunlight has been blocked forever in the spot directly above his head, as if his skin is doomed to remain dry and hot and prickly for all time despite the cool ocean spray blowing steadily at his back. A sense of betrayal niggles, unwelcome, in the back of his mind.
“You’ll be there?” James had asked.
And Sydney had answered yes, of course, always. Had crept along in the shade of the trees and called James over to him and assured him yes, I am here, can’t you see that it would physically hurt me to leave you? That the trails of kisses you left on my back would split open and bleed if I turned away? That I can’t ever go back?
God. He’s a fucking insecure teenager all over again. And James is James Campbell, who just advanced to the finals after nearly drowning a week before. Who survived the war.
And meanwhile, in his tiny, insignificant little slice of the world, Sydney wants to strut over to James Campbell and step on the hands and toes of all the other surfers and demand why, when they still have one precious day left together, James is already imposing their separation. Why, not even an hour after Sydney had kissed him in the shady cocoon of flowers and opened himself up to the entire beach’s scrutiny out on the waves just to make sure that James could win, James is now lounging back on his arm and acting like he doesn’t even know that Danny Moore is standing on the same shore. Why James is laughing with them and acting like those same smiling lips didn’t whisper the word “Sydney” over and over again in full view of the stars the night before.
And that’s when Sydney realizes he is the world’s biggest idiot.
Because his eyes suddenly focus, and the hazy fog of indignant hurt clears from his mind in the salty breeze, and he sees that James Campbell is not, in fact, lounging back on his hand and laughing like it’s the only way he knows how to breathe. Instead James’ entire body is tense, the smile on his lips is stale and fixed, and the hand pressing back into the warm sand is slowly, ever so slowly, pushing him up to stand.
Sydney watches with his heart in his throat as James nods along and slowly gets to his feet, waving a hand at presumed offers to stick around and watch with the group and instead looking straight at Sydney like he knew exactly where he was standing without even a second’s hesitation. James gives a slight nod of his head before walking swiftly and calmly up the sand towards the road, smiling and acknowledging the well-wishes thrown his way as he makes his way through the crowd.
On numb legs, Sydney follows at a careful distance, pointedly looking everywhere but at the broad line of shoulders carving muscled arcs into James’ shirt, or the smooth skin at the back of James’ still-dripping neck, or the way James’ thighs steadily carry him as if he didn’t just surf his ass off on an infamous pipeline. He watches his bare feet sink into the sand as they gradually leave the sounds of the competition farther behind them.
He continues to follow James through the maze of palm trees and cars, basking in the warm breeze on his skin as uncertain anticipation starts to spark in his chest.
/> James walks like a God—the men blessed by the sea Lahela used to tell him about when they stopped to watch the surfers between boring errands. The wetsuit clings to his calves and thighs, drips over the firm curve of his ass. A tiny sliver of pale skin peeks out between the bottom of Sydney’s old t-shirt James is wearing and the top of the folded-down wetsuit.
Sydney has the sudden, humiliating urge to run forward, drop to his knees, and press his tongue to that warm strip of skin, his arms around James’ firm waist. To taste the salt, and brush the fragile hairs on James’ body across his lips, and listen to the whispered shiver that would cascade down James’ spine.
James turns down a side street off the main road and glances casually to his right before turning again behind the back of an old surf shop, surrounded on three sides by the beginnings of a stretch of lush, rolling green hills. With a bewildered frown, Sydney turns the same corner, only to immediately be grabbed by his shoulders and slammed back into the wall.
Sydney barely has time to grunt in surprise before a hand comes up to rip the sunglasses from his face and throw them to the ground, and then James Campbell is kissing him fiercely, pressing him back into the wall with the whole force of his body and gripping at Sydney’s hair and shoulders as if Sydney will fall apart without the firm grasp of his hands.
James is already thick and hard against his hip.
The low heat that had been pooling in Sydney’s gut from the moment James popped up on his first wave of the day explodes into a fire of want, pulsing down his legs and grinding against the heat from James’ body. Sydney melts, surrendering, as James pants and groans into his mouth, forgets to breathe as James kisses every inch of his lips and steals the moans hovering at the tip of Sydney’s tongue. Sydney brings his hands up to clutch at James’ waist, helpless to do anything else but curl up against him and hold on.
And Sydney wants to laugh into James’ mouth, or turn his face up to the sky and laugh in the face of the sun. He wants to cry out that the man who just stunned an entire beach to their feet left it all behind so he could kiss Sydney up against the back wall of a surf shop. It’s more magnificent than every competition he’s ever won combined.
The Sea Ain't Mine Alone Page 29