chapter one
Summer
I’d rather sit down for dinner with the Devil himself than answer my stepbrother’s phone call. I punch my thumb down on the red Decline button. Droplets of salt water sprinkle on the screen as I toss the phone on my beach towel. Nerves dance in my belly.
“Summer! You need to get back out here. It’s golden hour,” my best friend, Savannah, calls over the sound of the waves.
“Coming!” I flip my long, dripping wet hair over my shoulder and grab my camera. It’s already in the underwater housing that protects it from water damage, ready to capture the moments of the surfers cruising over the waves as the sun dips behind the horizon.
My heart thunders inside my chest as I walk toward the shore, looping my camera strap around my neck.
Why would Dayton be calling me?
We haven’t spoken in ten years. The last time we saw each other, I swore on my father’s grave to never be in his presence again unless it was for a funeral we both couldn’t miss.
“You seeing this, babe? I need you!” My boyfriend, Axel, calls out to me.
He’s paddling to catch a wave.
Axel is an award-winning surfer. He’s fearless in the water. His favorite time of year is hurricane season.
I grab my surfboard and toss it down onto the surface. “Coming!” I reply.
I shove the mysterious phone call out of my mind. Maybe Dayton dialed my number by mistake. Hopefully, he was trying to reach his therapist. Maybe our names are right next to each other in his Contacts.
Ha, as if he even has your number saved.
His is saved under his full legal name—Russell Dayton Copeland II (Satan).
Dayton’s dad and my mom met on a singles cruise to the Virgin Islands when I was fourteen and he was fifteen. They dated long distance for a year before my mother declared that we’d be moving from the home I had been raised in—the only home I ever knew my real father in—to the East Coast.
It’s not that I was upset about living on an island south of the sunny state of Florida, but I’m a California girl. The West Coast is where I was born and raised. It’s where I will always callhome, even if I’m forced to live somewhere else. Moving back here was a no-brainer.
When she listed our little yellow house for sale, I tried to run away. All my childhood memories were in that house. My father passed away when I was ten, and that house was where we’d celebrated every birthday, every Christmas, every first day of school since I could remember.
She did it all for a guy she’d met on a cruise ship and his asshole of a son.
“You’resoslow, Sum! Hurry up!” Savannah is twenty yards ahead of me.
Paddling out to sea is the hardest part, but it keeps my arms toned. That and the yoga classes I teach five days a week.
“I’m coming!” I pant. No matter how good of shape I get into, this part winds me.
I spot a wave in the distance that looks like a winner. Axel is headed straight toward it. Usually, the best shots are when he’s up and riding already, so I decide to plant myself a few yards behind where I think the peak of the wave will be. I lift my camera, looking through the lens at where he should be in the next twenty seconds.
The sun is setting, creating a glow and illuminating the inside of the wave in a rainbow of greens and aqua blues. Axel’s fit, toned body is up on the board as he soars over the water.
A grin splits his face, and he hollers out, “Hell yeah, baby!”
I snap the photo, the one I know is going to be money. Axel is trying to become a surfing influencer. He already has twenty thousand followers, so he’s doing pretty well so far.
I brace myself as the wave crashes over me; I manage to dive into it and avoid being turned over on my board.
Once I make it back to shore, he’s laughing with a few of his buddies and telling them about the ride.
“Baby! Let me see that picture. Damn, that was fucking amazing.”
He’s holding up the small action camera that he had mounted on the front of his board, scrolling through the footage from the ride. I hold out my camera, showing him the picture. His blue eyes light up.
