Back to Shore (Meade Lake Series Book 1)

by Taylor Danae Colbert

  “Me, too,” Derrick says with a nod. Ryder’s grip tightens around me, and I swallow.

  “So, what’s the plan with you two?” Kirby asks, pointing from Ryder to me. My eyes widen, and I turn to Ryder slowly. God, please let him answer so I don’t have to.

  “What about us?” he asks. Ah, good. Deflection.

  “Don’t ‘what about us’ me,” Kirby says with a smirk. Derrick chuckles from behind her. “I mean, what’s the deal? You together, not together? Staying together if you are?”

  I feel the heat rising on my cheeks, and my palms start to get clammy in my pockets. There’s an awkward silence, then Chase clears his throat and jumps to his feet.

  “How cold does this water get at night?” he asks. Everyone turns to him, including me, and I want to hug him. I know what he’s doing. Saving me. Again.

  “Huh?”

  “Anyone up for a skinny dip?” he asks. I look around as everyone’s eyebrows shoot up. Chase strips his shirt off over his head and lets it drop in a ball at his feet. My brother is ripped, and judging by the looks on almost all of the female faces around me, he’s not hard to look at. He tugs his jeans down and sprints toward the dock in front of us in nothing but his boxers.

  Suddenly, the rest of the group is on their feet, and clothes start flying. Thankfully, no one goes full nude, but some of the undergarments leave little to the imagination. Then, like a herd of wild animals in heat, they take off down the shore, onto the dock, and into the black water.

  I look up at Ryder. He knows I won’t go. He knows I won’t take my clothes off or join the group. He smiles and takes my hand in his again.

  “Wanna go for a walk?” he asks. I wonder if I wasn’t here, if he would be in the water with them. Am I holding him back? His eyes trail out to them, swimming, splashing, screeching. He smiles then looks down at me. “I just want to be wherever you are.”

  My heart thuds against my chest. So much of what I’ve felt, been uncomfortable with, worried about over the last few weeks, Ryder has anticipated. He’s acted on it, finding ways to make me feel comfortable, finding ways to avoid situations that might not be the most natural for me. Just like Chase has always done for me.

  I’ve lived with anxiety my whole life. It’s not really a secret in our house. Everyone knows it. But my parents have sort of ignored it. Chase, though…he’s always been the one. He’s always been the one to protect me from my own illness, my own weakness.

  And in just two months, Ryder has picked up on it and doesn’t make me feel weird about it. When I don’t grab for a drink––when Teddy remembers to bring booze, that is––for fear of being caught, Ryder doesn’t even look that way. He doesn’t ask if I want to join certain scenarios—like jumping half-naked off a dock, for example—because he can feel I don’t want to.

  There’s something about it, something about the way he can feel the move I’m going to make before I do, that has my whole world trembling.

  “Sure,” I say, squeezing his hand and pulling him closer to me. It’s still summer, but it gets cooler here at night. I “accidentally” forgot a coat again, and it has nothing to do with the fact that Ryder always has one and always lends it to me.

  “So,” I say as we follow the path farther into the woods. A slow smile tugs at one corner of his lips.

  “So,” he says, “guess we have some questions to answer.”

  I nod as he turns to me. The water peeks through the trees at the edge of the woods behind us, and the moon lights up the earth like it’s trying to compensate for the deep mountain darkness.

  I look up at him. He tucks a stray strand of hair behind my ear.

  “Why does it feel like I’ve known you longer than just a summer?” I ask him. He chuckles.

  “Another life, I guess.” He shrugs. I smile and look down at the ground. He cups my face in his hands and lets his thumbs graze my cheeks.

  “I hope I know you in all my lives,” I whisper. He smiles down at me again, and then before I can prepare, he leans down and lets his lips land gently on mine. I reach up and grasp onto his wrists, letting him lead the way. He grips onto me tighter, wrapping one arm around my waist now. His thumb still strokes my cheek, and his fingers wrap gently into my hair. I don’t hear the lapping of the water against the docks. I don’t feel the cool mountain breeze that normally leaves chills across my skin. I don’t feel the weight of the unknown that I’ve been anxious about for the last few weeks. I don’t feel anything but him, right now, in this moment.

  We stand there, entwined in what I’m pretty sure is going to be an unbeatable kiss, before he slowly pulls back. He looks down at me and raises an eyebrow. I smile and press my lips together like I’m trying to stamp his kiss on me forever.

  “So…? How was that?” he asks. I laugh.

  “I won’t be forgetting that one anytime soon,” I say. He leans down and kisses me again, this time wrapping both arms around me and lifting my feet off the ground. When he lowers me gently, everything comes back down to Earth with me, including the uncertainty that I’ve been keeping at bay.

  He leans down and presses his forehead to mine, and it’s almost like he’s trying to take it away, trying to absorb it for me.

  “Mila?” he asks.

  “Hmm?” I ask without taking my head from his.

  “I really don’t care where you are. I just want you,” he says. I pull back and look up at him.

  “I want you, too,” I say, swallowing back the lump that’s forming in my throat.

  “Kelford is only two hours away, right?” he asks. I nod. “Piece of cake.”

  I nod again, forcing a smile. He nudges me.

  “Hey,” he says. I make myself look up at him, and those big blue eyes take my breath away again, just like they’ve done all summer. “This is just our beginning.”

  I smile and wrap my arms around his neck, burying my face into him.

  15

  “Earth to Mila,” Derrick says with a whistle, waving a hand in my face as I stare off the dock and into the water.

  “Oh, sorry,” I say, jumping to attention. “Did you need me?” It’s been a busy day on the water today. We’ve been completely sold out since ten this morning, on everything from pontoons to kayaks. I’m just sitting on the dock, waiting for the last straggling renters to make their way back in. It’s just Derrick and me today, though. It’s Ryder’s day off, and he’s home with Annabelle.

  “Nah,” he says, shaking his head and sitting down next to me on the dock. “Things are dying down ‘cause it’s starting to get dark.”

  I nod and lean back against the shed. I feel him next to me as we both look off in silence, both with the same weight laying heavy on our minds.

  “So, he told you the rest?” he asks. I look at him and nod. “I told ya. He’s been through a lot.”

  I nod again.

  “How bad was it the first time?” I ask.

  Derrick lets out a sigh and lets his head rest back against the shed.

  “Well, it was bad enough that I had to go with him to have his will written up,” he says, and my breath catches in my throat. All these times, all these years, I’ve cursed Ryder’s name, his very existence. Wished he were dead instead of my brother.

  But hearing about the will he had drafted suddenly makes all those wishes feel heavy around me. And it makes me sick.

  “But then the treatment finally started to work, and within just a few weeks, the tumor was almost completely gone,” he goes on. His big brown eyes look out across the water. “I always thought it was such bullshit, the way he had to go through all that and then lose her so soon after.”

  My eyes drop.

  “You know what he told me after Maura passed?” he asks. I look over to him. “We scattered her ashes up on the mountain, and when the urn was empty, he put it down and looked at me. Told me it was karma. He told me all of it, everything, was because of what he’d done.”

  My eyes are wide, and I can feel my breath quickening. I wr
ap my arms around myself and stare out over the water.

  “What...what did you say?” I whisper.

  Derrick pushes off the dock as we see three red kayaks in the distance headed for us. He turns back to me.

  “I told him I didn’t believe in karma, and like every other storm, we’d get through it. We just had a pretty angel looking over us for the rest of our journey,” Derrick says. A sad smile flutters across my lips as my eyes slowly look to the clouds. I wonder about Maura, who she was, what she was like. How she loved Ryder. I’ve thought about her a lot since I learned about her. Wondering if she loved him the way I did. Not in terms of competition, just in terms of how. Did she feel like the ground beneath her shifted when he was around? Like bridges were built to help her navigate the rest of her life just because he was in it?

  Probably. Loving Ryder was magical that way.

  I help Derrick collect the last of the life vests and drag the kayaks up the hill and across the street to the shop. We rack them at the back of the store, put away the last of the forms, and start to close everything up and turn everything off. He holds the door for me at the front of the store as I pull my hair out from under my sweat jacket.

  “Derrick?” I ask him just before he ducks into his truck.

  “Hmm?”

  “Do you really not believe in karma?” I ask.

  A smile creeps across his lips, and he flashes those perfect teeth.

  “Ya know, I really, truly didn’t,” he says. “Thought it was all a bunch of bull. But I guess I kind of do now.”

  “Why now?” I ask.

  “Because you showed back up right when he needed you around. That has to be good karma,” he says with a shrug. “And if ever there was someone who deserved some good karma, it’s Ryder Casey.” Then, he throws his truck in reverse and speeds off.

  I turn onto Joan’s Way and head toward our house when I see him perched on the porch, fiddling with his keys. He pops up when he hears my tires over the gravel.

  “Ryder?” I say as I get out. “What are you doing here?”

  He doesn’t answer; he just smiles and walks toward me. I freeze. That smile still does things to me.

  “Do you wanna meet my kid?” he asks, stopping mere inches in front of me. I swallow.

  “Wha…what? I thought you––”

  “Yeah, I did,” he says with a shrug, “but I figure if you’re voluntarily coming with me to hear my fate tomorrow, the least I could do is introduce you.” He chuckles but freezes immediately when he sees the look on my face.

  “Hey,” he says, nudging me. “I’m fine, okay? I have to say, though, it’s nice to know you’re worried about me.”

  He flashes this devilish smile, one I haven’t seen in over a decade, and for the first time since I’ve been back in Meade Lake, I’m...ahem...awakened.

  “Who says I’m worried?” I ask, sticking out a hip and crossing my arms over my chest. He smiles again.

  “I may have missed a lot, but I still know you, Mila,” he says. I bite my lip to keep from smiling, and I feel the heat on my cheeks.

  “Well, anyway,” I say, “I would love to meet her.”

  “Great,” he says with that grin. “How’s tomorrow sound? After the appointment?”

  I smile and nod.

  “That sounds great. I’ll pick you up tomorrow around three, we can go get the results, and then head home and have an early dinner. I promised her she could swim, so bring a bathing suit.”

  My eyes give me away.

  “It’s okay if you don’t have one; we sell them at the store. You can grab one tomorrow morning, if you want.”

  I smile and nod. It’s not the fact that I didn’t bring one; it’s the idea of being in front of Ryder in nothing but a bathing suit after all these years.

  It’s the idea of seeing him in a bathing suit after all these years. Because if there’s one thing that doesn’t seem to have changed, it’s his physique. He somehow seems even more youthful than he did in his, well, youth.

  His t-shirts always cling to his muscles. They bulge out of his arms when he lifts the kayaks from the water. And that quick little glimpse I got in the shed that day I fell in...whoo. I might need to bring a fan with me tomorrow.

  Shit.

  The next morning, I’m up with the sun in this huge-ass lake house all by myself. I wonder if my dad is missing the rental income he’s currently not making off this house because of his almost-thirty-year-old daughter who is currently squatting in it. But one thing at a time.

  That thing is supposed to be forgiving Ryder. Figuring out why I’m such a shitshow. Figuring out why, since my brother left me, I’m destined to fuck up anything and everything in my life.

  But the longer I’m here, the harder it’s getting to remember how or why I could ever hate Ryder so much to begin with. And that’s fucking terrifying.

  I make a cup of coffee and sit out on the back deck, lounging on one of the huge chaises that points out toward the water. We were really lucky little shits, growing up coming here all those years. Having it all to ourselves when they would leave us.

  Looking back on it now, though, that was when Chase and I were the happiest. When we were away from my parents.

  It’s a hard thing to put into words, the resentment I feel toward them. I guess because of the financial aspect—we had everything we could ever need, and then some, so who were we to complain?

  But it didn’t change the fact that Chase and I relied on each other for that connection that we were missing from them. And as I got older, I realized we were missing it from them because they were missing it from each other.

  When I discovered the affair that year I met Ryder, it felt like my world was crumbling. My parents bickered a lot, Mom being dragged to all the parties with him, plastering on the perfect-wife smile. It wasn’t a secret that they weren’t happy. But knowing that there was so much wrong with their marriage that he had to find what he was looking for somewhere else was devastating.

  But the worst of it was the silence.

  That, still to this day, neither of them have uttered a word to me about it. It’s as if it didn’t happen. They’re still unhappy, but they coexist well.

  The ultimate betrayal wasn’t that my dad cheated. It was that he cheated, she found out about it, and then left us in the dark.

  When I met Ryder, that was when my world was opened up to the possibilities of a functional relationship. Of actually being happy with the person you were with...what a freakin’ concept.

  But then everything happened, and it just reaffirmed what I had grown to know. Nothing lasts, except for the bad.

  Even if, at one point in time, that something felt so, so good.

  After a little while longer on the deck, I remember that I have a swimming date and no bathing suit. I hop in my car and head up into town toward the shop. I see Derrick out by the boats, and I smile because that means that someone else is probably inside. I park my car and hop out, ready to see his smiling face at the counter. But as I’m passing the door to the coffee shop, I freeze when I come mere inches from a big, heaving chest covered in dark navy. A badge glistens in the sun, and I read the name on his lapel: M. Trout.

  I freeze, my whole body locking up.

  “Oh, excuse me, ma’am,” he says with a warm smile. He slides to the side of the walkway to let me through, and at first, I don’t think he remembers me.

  But then he does a double take.

  “Do I...do I know you?” he asks, his eyebrows knit together and his head cocked to one side. I swallow what feels like knives.

  I can see the red and blue flashing lights; I can hear the sirens.

  I can hear Officer Trout shouting for backup as he pumps my brother’s chest.

  And then I can feel his hands on me, his arms around me, carrying me away from the scene when he realizes it’s all over.

  “I...uh, my name is––” I start to say and pause to clear my throat, trying to find the right words. You tried, and
failed, to save my brother’s life twelve years ago. “I don’t think so,” I finally say. “I’m from out of town. Just visiting.”

  He tilts his head back some, purses his lips, then nods his head.

  “Well, welcome to Meade Lake. Hope you enjoy your stay,” he says with a tip of an imaginary hat as he walks away.

  I look up, and my eyes meet Ryder’s from across the lot.

  I know he’s thinking what I’m thinking. I know he’s flooded with the memories. I know his feelings mirror mine.

  And I can’t take it.

  I take in a deep breath and turn back to my car, driving off to the house. He doesn’t call after me; he doesn’t follow. He knows.

  Whatever is happening here, whatever shit we’re stirring up from the past, it can’t undo what happened. As hard as it’s getting to remember, it’s a dangerous game I’m playing.

  I cannot fall back in love with him. Because as Officer Trout just reminded me, history cannot be rewritten.

  I’m sitting on the back deck again with that same book, flipping through the pages idly when I hear tires over the gravel out front. I hop up from the chaise and start to head inside, but I hear footsteps coming from around the side of the house.

  “Hey,” he says, a sheepish, worried look in his eye as he stuffs his hands into his jean pockets.

  “Hey,” I say, turning toward him and wrapping my arms around myself.

  “I wasn’t sure if you still wanted to, uh, to come today,” he says, jutting a thumb toward his truck. I swallow. With the blast from the past at the shop, I almost forgot that I was supposed to be spending the day with him. Meet his daughter.

  “I, uh…” I start. His eyes drop to the ground.

  “I’m sorry, Mila,” he says. I stare at him. “I know you remembered Trout from the night of the accident.”

  I stare, trying to even out my breathing. He goes on.

  “I know it has to be hard being here in general. I know you probably see him everywhere.”

  I just keep staring.