At least, that’s what I told myself, but his sad smile kept creeping back into my mind.
No, he was a talented athlete who had everything that maybe I could have had if only I’d been brave enough to take it…
I blockedthatout by thinking about the motel instead.
He had enjoyed it. Obviously. But he’d enjoyed holding that power over me. He was an asshole. A talented asshole who was thorough in bed and?—
Nope.
He was a sponsored asshole. End of sentence.
He had charged my magic higher than ever before, and I’d spent it carefully. But after days of sabotage, I was already low. And now, here in daylight, with normie Greg as a witness, I could already feel the hollow ache in my chest. And to recharge?—
No.
There had been am exchange. Business concluded. Even if he had lied to me about his motives on the beach last night, giving me his fake smile that made my heart ache…which was exactly what this arrangement was designed to prevent.
So, no. Today I worked alone.
“Whatever you’re deciding,” Lupe drawled, “your face is telling me an entire story.”
“Keep an eye on the shack, will you?”
She saluted me, all sarcasm.
I ran up the nearby dune, my Crescent Cove beach bag stuffed with a towel, a paperback I’d picked up from Ebb & Flow that I hadn’t even cracked, sunglasses that had already lived a life as an extra on a telenovela, and a hat big and floppy enough to act as a disguise.
Forty yards downslope, Greg pushed his evil lawnmower along his first lane, eyes on the screen.
I put one hand flat in the sand and got to work.
Keep it small, Torres. We have to work all day.
The sand under his cones migrated, so his lanes drifted crooked and he kept having to re-grid. A pocket of dry sand went to soup under his left wheel, bogging the device. His ugly neon green bottle of RipTide—sitting on his tailgate—tipped over justas he reached for it, getting the nasty, sticky substance all over him.
By eleven I’d cost him two hours and most of his mood, and I was sweating through the back of my shirt, the hollow feeling taking over my whole chest.
By noon he’d adapted, his billable hours going through the roof. He was a third of the way up the north stretch, and I was out of magic.
“Working hard?”
Of course he was here to see me as a sweaty mess.
Chase stood over me in board shorts and a RipTide tee, sweating like he’d come from training, holding two smoothies. He looked tan and infuriating.
“You’re blocking my sun.”
“And you’re surveilling a county contractor.” He sat down beside me without invitation—he kept doing that—and planted both smoothies in the sand like delicious orange flags. “Mango-banana. Lupe told me your order.”
“Lupe is on thin ice. Why are you here?”
“Beach is public.”
“Chase.”
“Derek wants drone footage of the survey for a ‘transparency reel.’” He said it with air quotes and a deadpan expression. “I came to tell you the timeline moved. Greg’s only booked through three. They want the north stretch done today.”
I looked at Greg. A third done, significantly delayed, but the warning light of a tank on empty rattled in my skull. Chase surveyed me, and I knew he knew.
