Besides, I know how to keep my hands to myself and behave in public. The older woman wouldn’t be invited to the after-hours activities, but up until we tucked her in, no problem.
I wanted to tell her that I would help take care of Gran. Whatever she needed whenever I wasn’t on shift. A ride to a doctor appointment? Old Betty would love to have her. Bingo with her friends? I’ll grab an extra dabber and be the wildest one in the joint yelling Bingo. If she needed to go shopping, I’d be the first one pointing out all the stores they should be going into at the mall.
It wouldn’t matter what we were doing, with Gran or without her. I would happily do it with Bryn by my side.
Staring at the spot Bryn’s car was long after she’s gone, I sigh and finally look away when another car takes the spot and turn back to the ocean.
I wish I could have said all of that to her, but she wouldn’t have heard it. Not today.
Scrubbing my hands over my face, I pull my hat off and turn it around so the brim shields my eyes from the sun beating down on me. I can understand why there aren’t more surfers at this spot as the waves break against the rocks. They’re intense. Definitely not a place for inexperienced surfers.
The one out there is good. I think. Considering I’m a small-town guy from landlocked Montana, I guess I wouldn’t really know, but he’s caught a couple of waves already and looked good doing it. I watched him before Bryn got here. Now he just sits in the water, back to me, watching the horizon. Lonely, surrounded by nothing but the vast ocean, and I feel the depth of that in this moment.
My phone vibrates in my pocket, and I yank it out, nearly dropping it in my haste. Hope seizes my heart thinking it might be Bryn changing her mind, but Boone’s name flashes on my screen with a text.
Boone:They’re gonna kill each other, man. I swear.
Me:No, they aren’t.
Boone:They are.
I sigh. Boone always worries harder than Beau and me when it comes to Gage and my dad. He always hated it the most when they’d fight growing up—and as adults, for that matter.
Boone:It’s gotten worse since you’ve been gone.
Me:Yeah, I’m no longer there to be a second punching bag. Gage should learn the same.
Boone:You know he won’t do that.
Me:Then he deserves what he gets.
He doesn’t. I know he doesn’t, and I regret the words immediately, but I don’t correct them. None of us deserve my dad flying off the handle whenever he’s pissed off about something—usually something none of us can control. Heaven forbid it’s something that’s actually our fault, because then we’re just a waste of space.
It wasn’t always like this. When I was younger, he was patient. He showed us how to do things. He had a temper, sure, but he didn’t immediately go from zero to sixty in the blink of an eye.
Boone doesn’t respond, which tells me I was as much of an asshole as I thought. Right now, I don’t care. Let them kill each other. I’m not there. I don’t need to deal with it. And if any one of them were smart, they’d get the hell out of dodge, too.
“What are you doing here?” a deep voice asks from my left, and I look up to find a towering figure walking towards me, his shadow moving across the rock, dirt, and grass.
Brody.
Water drips off him and the yellow surfboard under his arm. His wetsuit is half off, no longer covering his torso, but peeled away and slung around his hips. The thing looks way too difficult to get on and off for my liking.
Ignoring his question, I nod at the ocean. “Was that you out there?”
He glances in the direction like he doesn’t know what I’m talking about. “Yeah.”
“Where the fuck did you come from?” I ask, looking around for a way to get up here.
He points at a small path off the side of what I assumed was a cliff, but when I get up to investigate, it’s not so much cliff as it is a steep climb down a bunch of huge boulders. I can see how it would be like a staircase for a giant like him. Hell, even I could do it. Bryn would have a lot harder of a time, and now it clicks that she told me about this on our date. Most people paddle from the beach we were at, but Brody goes down this way.
“So, you go up against these rocks and then you go up against the ocean, and you think that’s fun?” I ask, turning back to him.
He shrugs, setting the edge of his board on the dirt laced with wilting grass. “You ride horses. We all have a thing.”
What I wouldn’t give to jump on the back of Rosie to go flying through some fields right now to clear my head and let thewind whip at my face. It brings on a pang of homesickness. Not for my family, but for the beautiful mare I left behind.
Brody stares at me. I stare back. When his eyebrows lift, so do mine. I’ve learned that he won’t break ahead of anyone, being the strong, silent type, which is not in my DNA, so I cave first.
