I hand it over. I’ve got a thick bakery polo on underneath. And truth be told, I’d handle a few hours of cold so she could stay warm while we hang out. My cinnamon scent still lingers onthe fabric even when it mingles with her honey scent as she pulls on the hoodie. She tucks herself into it, hair falling loose around her shoulders. The sight of her in my clothes does something complicated to my chest. There’s nothing possessive about it, just the way she looks softer, a little less breakable.
We walk a little more, but she’s losing steam.
Finally, I stop and gesture at the village lights. “Should I walk you home?”
Her cheeks flush instantly. “If you don’t mind. This was a wonderful time, though.” She chuckles some and shakes her head. “You know, I could get used to this. Hanging out with you and Lucas and Zane after work.”
I try not to get too hopeful. She’s leaving after summer, after all. But I return the smile. “I could, too.”
She holds my gaze for a long moment before rocking up onto her tiptoes and kissing me thoroughly. My breath hitches as our lips meet. She tilts her head to deepen the kiss. By the time we pull back, we’re both breathless. And she’s shivering harder.
“We have to get you back,” I press, although I’d do anything to stand right here and kiss her for the rest of the night.
“Y-You’re r-right.”
“Oh, yeah, definitely need to get you warm.”
On the way back, she asks me about the bakery and what it’s like growing up in Seamuse. I tell her about hiding in the flour bins as a kid and about the time I almost burned down the bakery with a careless toss of a dishtowel.
Mostly I describe how in a small town like this, nothing ever really changes. That it’s not necessarily a bad thing to find something so steady.
She listens, head tilted, like she’s memorizing every word.
We reach her rental. I can see Zane’s silhouette walking around the living room inside.
She stops at the stoop and fumbles for her key. “Thank you for tonight.”
I shift my weight. “Anytime. Seriously. Let’s hang out more often, even doing simple stuff.”
Her face lights up. “I’d love that.”
Then she disappears inside, a rustle of black hair and borrowed hoodie. I stand there a full minute after the door closes, wondering how many more nights I may be able to spend with this wonderful woman.
And if even forever might not be enough.
CHAPTER 17
Lucas
Wind howlsdown from the headlands and slams itself into the surf like it’s trying to erase the whole coast. If you spend enough time on these beaches, you get a sixth sense for the ways a day can go wrong.
All mine are ringing right now.
I’m stationed in the lifeguard hut on the north end of Seamuse Village Beach. My shirt’s already plastered to me, and my hair is doing its best impression of a tumbleweed. The water’s churning white like someone dropped a grenade in it.
Ten meters out, the chop alone would eat a rubber raft for breakfast, let alone any tourist dumb enough to swim beyond the flags. There’s supposed to be a supervisor who makes the final call on closing the beach, but he’s on some “training course” in Penzance and left me the keys to the entire operation. There’s a perverse satisfaction in that. Trust, or desperation, depending on how you read it.
It’s not even half-eight, and I’m already running triage. I scan the wet sand. Families with pastel towels and jelly sandals are dotted along the shore, along with couples holding hands and a dozen local kids doing whatever it is feral children do before the ice cream van starts up.
“Bit gnarly, isn’t it?” says a dad in the world’s loudest board shorts, gesturing at the horizon. He’s got a little girl on each arm, both with matching braids and gap-toothed grins.
I give him the safety talk—flags, currents—but he’s already clocked the crazy in the surf.
Good. A parent with functioning threat perception.
I should probably just shut it down now. Still, I have this thing about following the chain of command, probably because the one time I didn’t, it ended in a two-week HR purgatory and mandatory “assertive communication” class. No one wants to be that guy, until you have to be.
I’m debating whether the risk is worth the paperwork when I spot him—a kid, maybe six or seven—absolutely eating it in the shallows three meters beyond where the waves are starting to stack. I see the parent, too, a mum wrapped in a towel and deep in a phone call, facing the wrong direction. The kid is wearing inflatable shark fins on his arms that are starting to flail.
