“I won’t be here.”
“I will.”
She didn’t look back, but I felt it. A small surge of that warm electric current, and I stood there like an idiot, watching until she disappeared into the darkness.
I waited another full minute before diving back into the ocean, needing the cold water to clear my head. I swam in human form, just in case any other locals were lingering late at night.
I was so completely,utterly fucked.
Long legs and perfect lips were a distraction; I had waves to learn and sponsors to please.
Even if this distraction felt electric, made me want more like nothing had in years.
CHAPTER SIX
Selena
You needto cut that shit out right now.
I was smiling. Grinning from ear to ear like an idiot.
Why?
Because I’d flirted with some tourist on the beach. A very, very hot tourist. It had been dark, but even just the faint candlelight had highlighted every single one of his numerous abs and how thick his pecs were, and the line where his hips disappeared into his board shorts…
Cut. It. Out.
He was a tourist. A tourist who’d stumbled onto my private ritual spot, seen me covered in sand and tears like some kind of beach gremlin, and had still grinned at me like he was hungry for a lot more than conversation. Which either meant he was blind or incredibly desperate, and honestly, in Crescent Cove during peak season, it was probably both. I wasn’t in my early twenties anymore; I knew better than to mess around with tourists. They could be fun, but they always left, just like everyone always did. Everyone but me.
The walk home was short. My mother had bought up a ton of houses near the beach in the ’80s, which was made very clear by how heavily glass block was featured in the design. My dad had fixed them up, and half of them were Airbnbs now, generating a steadystream of tourist income that funded family gatherings and property taxes in equal measure. The other half were saved for la familia.
I shared a small, updated one with my favorite cousin, Lupe.
The lights were on when I got home. Lupe was doing her own new moon ritual, and that meant the house smelled like heaven, because she was cooking. I opened the front door to a rush of dried chiles and slow-braised beef and the warmth that was the unique feeling of Lupe’s magic at work.
Lupe was at the stove, her dark hair twisted into a knot loosely held together on top of her head, wearing an apron that looked like a sexy man’s body—which we’d acquired as a joke from one of the boardwalk stores—over a tank top and pajama shorts. Her hands were covered in masa, and I watched her grab another handful and spread it thin on a corn husk before folding in the beef filling from her other pot.
Every tamale she made carried a small enchantment. Not the flashy kind, but the kind that settled into your bones and knit together whatever was frayed—sore muscles, bruised ribs, the low-grade exhaustion that came from existing in our world.
She heard the door, turning to me with her signature warm smile. Then her eyes narrowed.
“You’re smiling,” she said suspiciously.
“It happens occasionally.”
“Not with you it doesn’t.”
Her eyes narrowed further, tracking from my sand-caked feet and legs to my wind-wrecked hair to whatever expression I was apparently still failing to control. Her mouth dropped open.
“No mames! You finally got laid.”
“I didnotget laid.”
“Your face says otherwise.”
“That’s just what I look like.”
“You haven’t looked like that since Jason Gutierrez kissed you behind the bleachers junior year.”
