But I’d never been able to block her out.
She called out to me through miles of ocean and never once asked me to be the person the whole world had seen. She had wanted Chase Perez, shark and all, and had called me home.
Hers.
Mine.
The same water, steeped in ancient magic, magic old enough to maybe even turn a corporate frat boy shill into someone who fought for what was right.
I hung in the deep and let the wrongness tick against me until I knew I’d never be able to ignore it again. Then I turned back for the shore.
The noise, for the first time in memory, was gone.
Not outrun.
Gone.
I knew now there was a difference between quiet because you’re moving too fast to hear it and quiet because you finally know what to do.
It was time to be Chase Perez again.
And he was very good at destroying things.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Selena
The lab had sentme the report that night. It was confirmed. Highly problematic levels of microplastics in the water. The little red graphs proved it.
I’d sent the lab report to Chase with no message attached, because there was nothing left to say that I hadn’t already said.
Now it was up to him.
But…I wasn’t a woman without a backup plan.
I’d emailed the reporter who had written up my tournament and sent the report to the coastal commission. But it all felt too small.
He didn’t respond.So I stopped checking and did what I did best. I focused on the task at hand—running my tournament.
And fuck if it wasn’t the best one yet.
The sign-up sheet had blown up after the video of me and Elliot versus Chase and Tanner had gone viral. It had put us on the map, and then half the tour had followed, and we’d raised more for Elliot’s rescue in one weekend than in the last three years combined. I thought I’d seen him crying over the numbers, and honestly, I had too.
I double—okay, triple—checked the net at sunrise on Saturday. Whatever else fell apart, I’d built this, and it was good, and it certainly wasn’t small.
I looked up the beach at the RipTide compound. The wrongness in the sand hummed beneath my bare feet, and I remembered that good wasn’t the same as finished. I had a fight ahead, no matter what happened today.
The surf broadcast started at ten.
The giant LED screen showed the live broadcast on the boardwalk. It was currently running the pre-show: drone shots of the swell covered by the RipTide logo dissolving into spray, a bunch of air horn sounds playing over it with too many flashing lights.
I watched it from my net because I couldn’t not watch it.
Some divorced-dad rock started playing over the speakers, and the RipTide logo dissolved into the WSL logo. Then the screen cut to Tanner.
He was grinning, his long, wet hair hanging into his eyes as he gestured with his hands, talking about the waves. “Best barrels ever, dude. Whoopah! You just drop in, ride the barrel, and get pitted.?*”
Somewhere I knew my mother was glowing, because the conditions were hers and everyone was about to say so on national television. The announcer thanked local consultant Marina Torres, whose forecasting made the weekend possible.
