With This Heart (13 page)

I nodded infinitesimally. “I think a lot.”

“
I know,” he said, stepping away from me. I wanted to protest. “Do you want to nap for a little bit before the bonfire?”

“
Sure, I feel like I could go to sleep now and not wake up until tomorrow morning,” I said, stretching my sore muscles. The swimming and surfing had been more physical activity than I’d done…ever.

He shook his head. “Not an option. I’ve never been to a beach bonfire before.”

I smiled. “Neither have I.”

…

I’d stepped out onto our hotel’s balcony to call my mom while Beck showered. My parents were becoming suspicious. I had never gone this long without seeing them, but I played it off by telling my mom that I needed some space. I don’t think she suspected that I’d left town at that point. It was just so out of character for me, being so distant, and I hoped she’d just assume I was camped out with Caroline or something.

“
Sweetie, I understand that you need some distance from your father and me. I just want you happy and healthy.”

The ocean breeze whipped through the phone so that I could barely hear her. I know she could probably hear it through the speaker. Was it windy in Dallas?

“
Mom, I promise everything is okay.”

Silence.

“
Alright, well are you feeling alright?” she asked. I’d taken my temperature that morning and it was normal. I took all of my medications, and other than feeling tired from surfing and swimming, I knew my body was doing okay.

“
Yes, Mom. I feel great actually.”

She sighed into the phone and I felt terrible for making her worry. “Caroline isn’t doing so well,” I admitted. Caroline hadn’t picked up the phone the past two times I’d tried to call, but I told myself she was napping and couldn’t hear the phone ringing.

“
Yes. I spoke with her mom today.” Her tone said it all, it encompassed the immense sadness and I couldn’t bear to listen to another word. I knew it in my heart of hearts anyway.

“
Mom, I have to go.”

“
Already?”

I couldn’t take it. Talking to her was reminding me of everything I’d needed two weeks away from. Just then, Beck walked back into the hotel room wearing his low-slung towel and nothing else. Perfect time to end the call.

“
Yeah, Mom. I need to shower and stuff,” I said, trying to inconspicuously watch Beck through the tinted glass on our balcony. He was leaning down to grab clothes and I watched the muscles on his back pull and stretch. He’d developed a healthy tan from being in the ocean all day and looked even sexier than before. I, on the other hand, developed a red hue on my cheeks, but other than that I had stayed as pale as ever.

I stepped closer to the tinted window so that I could see him more clearly. I hadn’t realized I’d pressed my face against the glass until Beck looked up with a bemused smile. My eyes bulged and I quickly jolted into action, pretending that I was cleaning something off the window. Yup. Just a smudge on the window. I shrugged and gave him what I hoped was a nonchalant expression.

“
Okay, I love you,” my mom said with a defeated tone. Oops, I’d forgotten I was still on the phone.

“
Love you, too.”

Maybe the two weeks apart was good for both of us. We would both get to stretch our wings a little bit.

I slid the glass door open and Beck swiveled around to look at me. His damp hair looked even darker than usual and I just stood there in the threshold of the hotel room watching him for a moment. Each second I lingered there, the smile on his face widened until we were both perfectly clear about my obvious attraction to him.

“
Shower’s free,” he noted with amusement.

“
Perfect,” I replied, finally realizing that my limbs did in fact still work. I tossed my phone onto the bed and breezed past him, not taking my change of clothes with me. We’ll see how much
he
likes it when I come out in nothing but a towel.

The entire time I was soaping up and shaving and rinsing my hair, my heart was going a mile a minute. I wanted him to feel as affected by me as I was around him, but what if he didn’t even bat an eyelash? One eyelash, people, that’s all that I asked for.

The moment I turned the shower off, I heard muffled chatter from the other side of the door. I wrung out my hair and then pulled it up into a towel before pressing my ear to the door to listen for other voices. If he wasn’t alone, my plan of seduction would come crashing down around me. I wasn’t going to prance around in a towel for multiple people. One hot guy was enough for me.

With my ear pressed against the door, I realized that I could only hear his muffled speech. He must have been on the phone. Good, maybe I’d distract him and he’d drool onto the screen or something.

I unwrapped the towel from my hair and then wrapped it around my body. It hit a few inches below my ass. A glance in the mirror reflected my long strawberry blonde locks still damp and flung sexily (or so I hoped) around my face and down my back. I still had a healthy glow from the sun. My scar was peeking out from the top of the towel, but I tried to ignore it. He could take it or leave it. That scar wasn’t going anywhere.

As I creaked the bathroom door open, I heard him laugh into the phone, but as I rounded the corner, his laugh cut off suddenly.

Success. I was indeed a siren. An unstoppable, sexy minx. My baby toe hit the edge of his suitcase and I howled. Motherfucker. Stubbing your baby toe is the face of true pain.

I glanced over to him quickly, hoping my mishap hadn’t ruined the moment completely. His smile froze and then his features slid into a shocked gape.

“
Oh yeah,” he nodded into the phone, never looking away from me. “That recipe is good, but my grandmother makes one with pineapple in it as well.”

Silence filled the air as the person on the other end picked up the conversation. Why was he giving someone recipe advice? What guy even knew a recipe by heart? His eyes drifted down my body in a lazy manner, taking in my neck and chest, then drifting down the towel to the few inches of my creamy thighs exposed at the very bottom.

“
No, not the whole can. I’ll have her send you the recipe. She’s right here actually; do you want to talk to her?”

Why would he ask that? Why would I want to talk to whoever was on the other end of the phone?

“
Oh, okay. I’ll tell her. Bye. Nice talking to you, too,” he said before hanging up.

That’s when I realized that the phone in his hand wasn’t his. It was mine. God damn technology companies. Did we all need to have the same rectangular black phone? What happened to being unique individuals?

I stepped closer to him without even considering the fact that I was practically naked. “Who was that?” I demanded.

“
Your mom,” he answered casually before standing up. His height towered over mine and I clutched the towel tighter.

“
What?! Why were you talking to my mom?” I reached around him and grabbed my phone.

He didn’t move away. There was barely an inch between our bodies and I could feel his warm breath on my bare shoulder.

“
She called back twice while you were in the shower. I didn’t want her to worry, so I answered.” I know it didn’t seem like a big deal to him, but it was. My parents were already suspicious of me.

“
Beck! I’ve never introduced them to a guy before OR even mentioned a guy to them for that matter!”

I hated that there was amusement flashing across his heavenly features. Why wasn’t he taking this as seriously as I was?

“
You should give your mom more credit. I explained that I was your friend and that you were in the bathroom. She was confused at first, but then I introduced myself and we started chatting. I think she likes me.”

I didn’t have anything to say to that, so I wiped a hand down my face and stared up at him. If anyone could charm my mom, it was Beck.

“
Were you giving her a
recipe
at the end?”

His lips unfolded into a confident grin. “It was for my Grammy’s banana bread. Your mom wants you to send it to her.”

I couldn’t help but smile then. He took me by surprise at every turn. There was no limit to Beck Prescott; he couldn’t be pushed into a mold. Of course he would talk to my mom about banana bread, because why the hell not?

“
So how did you meet this girl?” I asked as we made out our way out of the hotel lobby toward the beach. The sun had set an hour ago so the bonfire was most likely in full swing. I’d thrown on a cotton striped dress that hugged my meager chest and waist before loosening out into a mini-skirt. On any other girl, it would’ve look sexy and short, but on me it just looked like a sweet dress a toddler could pull off.

“
She bumped into me on the way out of the hotel earlier, after my run,” he answered, scanning his eyes down my outfit. I instinctively reached up to run a hand through my hair. It was falling in loose waves down my back. There was no point in trying to do anything else with it while we were standing out in the salty night air.

“
Physically
bumped into you?” I asked, trying to clarify the encounter.

He laughed and narrowed his eyes on me playfully. “Yes, she was walking next to me and tripped or something.”

I stopped walking and gawked up at him. “Oh my god, you’ve got to be kidding me.”

He paused and stared back at me. It wasn’t the safest place for us to stop, considering we were walking across the street that separated the beach from the hotel, but there weren’t any cars in sight.

“
What?” he asked, scanning for traffic. “Do you have to stand in the road right now?”

“
She did it on purpose! She was flirting with you.” The thought annoyed me because he told me he liked me, he yelled it in fact, so the universe should have listened and turned all the other pretty girls away. I couldn’t compete with them.

“
So what if she was? Girls have flirted with me before,” he answered with a strange tone.

I grunted and walked past him. If only I could have said,
guys have flirted with me before as well. ALL THE TIME IN FACT.
But since that would have been a big ol’ lie, I walked past him and headed toward the giant fire now burning a few yards away on the beach. I couldn’t hear his footsteps in the sand behind me, but I assumed he was following me. If not, he’d stayed out on the road and had probably been run over by now. I told myself I didn’t care either way.

The bonfire was blazing and crackling through the dark night. It was the centerpiece of the party with groups mingling all around it. Off to the side there was a grill and a few coolers lined up. As I stepped closer, I tried to inspect the scene quickly and decide which area looked the least intimidating. There were more people there than I had expected, at least twenty or thirty. They all looked around my age or a little older.

“
Beck! You made it!” the girl from earlier called. I never did catch her name, so I dubbed her She Who Shall Not Be Named in honor of the Dark Lord. I’m sure they had a lot in common. I knew Beck was a few feet behind me, so instead of waiting for her to make her way over and tackle him into the sand, I headed over to the drinks. I couldn’t have alcohol because of my transplant, which sort of sucked in that moment. It would have been nice to take the nervous edge off a tiny bit, not to mention everyone would assume I was fifteen if I walked around all night with a coke can in my hand.

As I was reaching in the cooler for a bottled water, a shadow fell behind me and blocked the fire’s light. I twisted around to find Jason, the surfing instructor from earlier, standing behind me. He looked surprised to see me, but definitely happy about the coincidence.
Huh.

“
Abby, right?” he asked, reaching past me to grab a bottled water and a beer. He handed me the water and then popped open the can of his beer so that it echoed through the night.

“
Yup. Jason?”

He smiled wide and motioned for us to move so other people could grab their drinks. I followed him a few feet away, trying to take in more of his appearance. He was really cute in a slacker way: kind eyes, easy smile, messy hair. He had on board shorts and a surfing competition shirt. I tried to guess his age, but I had no clue. He was somewhere between 15 and 45.

“
I didn’t realize you’d be here,” he offered, taking a sip of his beer and then tilting his head to the side.

“
I wasn’t
really
invited. Beck was invited and he brought me along,” I admitted.

“
Ah. Are you guys together or just friends?” he asked over the brim of his beer. His posture hinted that he might have hoped it was the latter.

What an interesting question. I glanced over to where Beck was standing with She Who Shall Not Be Named. He wasn’t smiling, but he nodded at whatever she was saying.

“
We’re just friends on a road trip,” I answered truthfully, I think.

I didn’t miss the smile that took over his features. “That’s great.”

“
How old are you, Jason?”

I think my direct question surprised him. “Twenty-three.” Not too old.

“
How long have you been surfing?” I asked before he could ask me my age. I didn’t want to admit to being nineteen.

“
My whole life. I grew up on the beach in California and then moved here to go to school for marine biology.”

So he wasn’t
really
a slacker, just looked like one.

“
That’s so cool!” I answered, because I instantly pictured him befriending dolphins. Oh wait, I think that’s only people who work at Sea World. Alright, I had no clue what marine biologists actually did.