The first set of the match we took at a sprint. The second, they adjusted, clawed back, made us work for it, and that was better, because somewhere in the grind I stopped thinking entirely andjust played. I let my body do the thinking and played feral and grinning, with sand in my hair. By the third set, the other team knew the writing was on the wall. Match point came clean off my palm, arcing over two outstretched pairs of hands to land untouched in the back corner.
Samantha screamed. The crowd came up off the bleachers. And I turned to the stands, searching for one face, and Chase was already halfway down the bleachers before I’d even found him, with that ridiculous shirt, the real smile, and his arms outstretched.
He caught me at the bottom of the stands and spun me around just like he had on the beach a year ago, and sand flew everywhere.
“Olympian,” he said into my hair.
“Don’t jinx it.”
“It’s in the bag. I’ve already bought our plane tickets.”
“Chase…”
“No way I’m going without you.”
Because of course he had made the first-ever official Team USA surfing cohort. I’d never ever had any doubt, because this last year had been the greatest season of his career.
He’d come to me about a month after the RipTide fiasco. He and the dolphin boys had stayed in Crescent Cove, surfing casually and pressuring RipTide on social media to pay for a cleanup of the beach. They’d given in because the PR hit was worse than the cost.
Tempest and I had managed a temporary spell to help the baby turtles enter a plastic-free sea, but even with every witch in town, we couldn’t hold it back forever. Tempest had even confided in me that my mother’s magic had made it worse, churning up the ocean floor so the plastic was buried layers deep. But we had fought, and as we watched cutting-edge machines clean out the beach sand and filter the ocean on RipTide’s dime, Chase had pulled out his phone, that shy grin in place.
It was a logo I didn’t recognize for a small company that made surfboards out of recycled fishing nets and ocean plastic. “New sponsor. They came to me, after—” He gesturedto the beach. “Turns out blowing up the biggest greenwasher in the industry on live TV is a decent résumé for sponsors who actually want to do good.”
“Are they the real deal?”
“Oh yeah.” His voice dropped, and his grin softened, and I knew he’d been waiting for the right moment to tell me. “I did my homework this time, met the founders, the whole thing. Turns out the company’s privately funding clinics up and down the coast.” He met my gaze. “Like the one my sister is at. This isn’t isolated. Tons of shifters are popping up with new diseases. The pollution’s making our people ill, and nobody’s studying it because you can’t exactly bring a half-shifted teenager into a regular hospital.” A pause. “Mai and Marcus connected me.”
I smiled at him. “You found a sponsor that pays you to surfandsecretly funds shifter medicine.”
“I found one who lets me be the real Chase Perez.” He shrugged, but his ears had gone a little red. “Took me twenty-six years and a witch yelling at me, but I figured out what I’m really meant to do.”
“When do you start?”
“Social media, right now. But it’s nearly the off-season, so I guess you and me are just going to have to keep up our training here at home until the spring.”
Home. I loved hearing that word come out of his mouth. I leaned in and kissed him, the clean Crescent Cove sand beneath us. We’d spent the last year working our—well, some of our—literal tails off. Sure, Chase had been keeping my magicfullycharged, but the volleyball had always come down to sweat and just a few tears, and my magic mattered less and less. Hard work had led to this moment: both of us on our way to the summer 2028Olympics.
“Come on, come on.”
I leaned over the guard railing at Lower Trestles, as Chase waited for the perfect wave. My bronze medal weighed heavily around my neck, although I had it tucked into my jacket because I wasn’t a complete pendeja. From a nobody to a bronze medalist is just over two years—to say I was on cloud nine was an understatement.
But I’d had my moment. This was Chase’s. I watched him choose the perfect wave, and Marcus’ fists tightened on the railing beside me.
“Go, Chase!” Mai shouted as he dropped in, and he rode the wave like he was the king of the entire ocean. It wasn’t even a competition, and I knew the gold was his before he even cut back up, leaving a long arc of white across the entire face of the water.
Later, on the podium, after the anthems, he held up his golden prize and winked at the camera. “This one is for the most beautiful girl on the beach. You know who you are.”
At our celebration dinner that night, he’d been insufferable.
“Chaaassse, let me see it. Just for a second,” Mai whined.
“No way. You’ll dent it. It’s solid gold, you know.”
“Yes, I know. You’ve said it about one thousand times,” Mai said as she pawed at the medal, which he held out of her reach.
“Let him live, Mai. You’ve got your own gold anyway,” Tanner quipped from across the table. “Congratulations, by the way.”
Mai beamed as she held out her engagement ring from Marcus for also about the one thousandth time. Like brother, like sister.
