When Dr. Lieu broke the news to me that my dad’s cancer was too advanced to qualify for experimental treatment, I wanted to punch the fucking wall of his pristine office. I wanted to topple the bookcases behind his desk and tell him if he had read any of those fucking books he’d know that this was all his fault. If he’d caught my dad’s cancer sooner, I wouldn’t be sitting in this fucking office, listening to him tell me my dad has two to four weeks left to live.

But as another wave crashes over me, tossing me in the tumbling whitewash, pounding me against the sand, I know this is my fault. It’s my fault my dad is dying. If I hadn’t left for three years, I would have seen the signs. I wouldn’t have let him put off going to the doctor. This is my fault, just like every fucking horrible thing that has ever happened to every person I’ve ever loved.

I’m a fucking curse. A pestilence infecting everything and everyone I touch. I deserve to be pummeled by these merciless waves. I deserve every fucking bad thing that’s ever happened to me.

But as I rise to my feet, shaking off the stinging saltwater from my face as I yank the leash on my surfboard to pull it back, prepared to accept another round of big blue punishment, I spot a silhouette standing at the top of the sand dunes. I recognize the shape of Charley’s hips and shoulders like a computer recognizes a fingerprint. Charley’s curves are imprinted in my memory. Her voice is the music I hear in my head when my soul is quiet, which isn’t very often lately.

I unhook the leash from my ankle and carry my board out to meet Charley on the warm sand, ignoring the overweight paparazzo who pops up out of the seagrass in the dunes. It’s the same one with the greasy ponytail who never seems to be more than four steps behind me since I arrived in Bodega Bay. If I didn’t know better, I’d wonder if perhaps he’s working for Jordan. Keeping tabs on me to make sure I haven’t told Charley or anyone else anything incriminating.

I drop the surfboard on the sand and take Charley’s face in my hands to kiss her before she has a chance to say anything. Her mouth tastes sweet and lemony, and the way it mixes with the saltwater on my lips makes my dick twitch in my shorts. I kiss her hungrily, nipping at those gorgeous lips, drawing out those fucking glorious moans that make me want to bury myself inside her right there. When I finally pull back, still holding her face as we breathe into each other, her fingers are digging into my forearms as she looks like she might pass out.

“You okay?” I ask.

She nods. “Yeah, I just… Didn’t expect such an enthusiastic greeting.”

I kiss her forehead and let her go. “You don’t know how fucking relieved I am to see you.”

Her eyebrows scrunch together as she looks up at me with those beautiful hazel eyes. “I just had lunch with your dad.”

I’m silent for a moment, then I nod. “I can’t believe I thought I could fix this. I thought if I came back right away, I could get him some treatment that would… I don’t know, give him more time. I thought we had more time. I fucked up.”

She narrows her eyes at me. “I can’t even pretend to know what it’s . But you have to know you didn’t fuck up. This isn’t your fault.”

I roll my eyes. “Yeah, I know that’s what you’re supposed to say. But I know none of this would have happened if I hadn’t abandoned you and my dad. And I’ll just have to figure out how to live with that. I need a fucking drink. Wanna go grab a beer?”

“No!” she replies, landing a hard shove on my bare chest. “I do not wanna grab a beer. I want you to stop blaming yourself for something that has nothing to do with you.”

I force myself to smile as I shake my head. “I’m sorry, Char, but you have no fucking idea what you’re talking about right now.”

“Then tell me!” she shouts. “Tell me what it is I don’t understand. Or, wait, let me guess. You can’t tell me because you’re trying to protect me again? God, I’m so fucking tired of you thinking you need to protect me.”

“You do need to be protected. And so do I,” I reply, taking a step toward her. “I can’t risk losing you again, so as much as it hurts you that I can’t tell you everything right now, you’ll thank me when you do find out the truth. I promise.”

Her nostrils flare as she glares at me. “Why does your dad keep saying he wasn’t the best dad to you? What is he talking about? Does it have to do with his drinking after your mom died? Tell me, Ben. Please. I promise I won’t tell anyone.”

I glance at the paparazzo standing on the top of the sand dune, watching us through his long lens, and I shake my head. “I can’t. I need you to trust me.”

She looks over her shoulder at the pap and rolls her eyes. “I don’t know how they live with themselves.”

I shrug. “They’re trying to make a living.”

She cocks an eyebrow. “Uh, you’re talking to a photographer who makes a living without stalking people and invading their privacy.”

I smile as I reach up swipe my finger across the soft skin below her left eye, coming away with a smudge of black makeup on the pad of my thumb. “Kinda hard to have privacy when you wear your heart on your face. You were crying?”

She sighs. “They were telling really awful dad-jokes.”

I laugh and shake my head. “You poor thing. Come here,” I say, pulling her into my arms and squeezing her tightly. “Fuck. There is nothing that feels this good.”

“Nothing?” she replies, and we both laugh.

“Come with me tomorrow. I have to take my dad to the hospice in Hayes Valley. I think I’m… I’m gonna stay nearby there in a hotel for the next few weeks.”

She doesn’t respond right away, and I worry she’s losing her faith in me already. “Of course I’ll go. But you have to promise me one thing.”

My gaze wanders over her delicate features. “How could I deny you anything?”

She chortles. “You kinda just cock-blocked me on the truth, but I’ll let it slide for now,” she says, rolling her eyes. “Do you think you can…post a pic of the wedding we went to and tag my Instagram account?”

I cock an eyebrow. “I thought you nuked your account.”

“I did. With good reason,” she replies with a look that dares me to challenge her. “But I decided to make one for the business. @winters_weddings. Make sure to include the underscore.”

I laugh. “Where’s your phone?”

She pulls it out of her pocket and readily hands it to me.

I try to unlock it with the old passcode and I’m not at all surprised when it works. “Take a selfie of us with your magic fingers,” I say, opening up her camera app and handing the phone back to her.

“I can’t believe you remember my passcode,” she says, accepting the phone. “Why do you want a selfie? Looking to boost your followers?”

“This selfie will net you 10,000 followers easily.”

“You want to post a picture of me?”

“Of us,” I correct her. “And what did you expect? You want me to post a picture of myself alone at a wedding and tag your business and people will just magically follow you, sight unseen? They need to know who they’re following. This will be great for your business. Trust me.”

The muscles in her neck visibly tense up. “I don’t know. Your fans can be real assholes. I mean, I’m sure you’re fully aware of the fact that…they think you’re too good for me.”

I’m stunned into silence by this ugly admission, but I know I have to react quickly or she might see my silence as complicity. “As much as I wish your words weren’t true, you’re right. Many of my fans are capital-C cunts. But the ones who think I’m too good for you aren’t just cunts. They’re plain fucking delusional.”

She shakes her head and opens her mouth to disagree, but I place a finger on her lips to silence her.

“Listen to me, Char,” I say, slowly removing my finger from her mouth and leaning forward to place a soft kiss on the tip of her nose, the one feature I know she obsesses over. “I know right now you don’t believe me when I tell you you’re the most beautiful person I’ve ever known. I accept that. But I’m never going to stop saying it. And when you finally believe me, because one of these days you will, I’m still going to keep saying it.”

She shakes her head. “Saying it doesn’t make it true.”

“Disbelieving it doesn’t make it false,” I reply, relishing the frustration in her eyes. “I talked to a guy a couple years ago. I remember I was pretty stoned, but I was having the best time chatting with one of my sound techs who used to be a youth counselor. What a fucking career move, I remember telling him. And he told me, he said our default setting is truth. Humans have to work very hard to disbelieve something.”

Charley laughs. “Well, you made me disbelieve in your love very easily.”

I shake my head. “No, kitten. You were waiting for a reason to disbelieve. Just like you’re dying for someone to say something that proves I’m too good for you. But neither of those are true. I never stopped loving you and I’ve never been better than you.” I lean forward and plant a tender kiss on her forehead. “The fans have missed you almost as much as I have. Trust me.”

She pouts for a moment then sighs. “How do you know they’ve missed me?”

“I still get hate-mail three years later.”

This makes her laugh a bit too loudly. “But you more than tripled your following since we broke up.”

“Yeah, but I haven’t been in the top one hundred Instagram accounts in almost two years. I don’t think that’s a coincidence,” I reply, grabbing my board so we can head home. “This new movie was supposed to undo the negative backlash. Jordan was counting on it all going away.”

“Fuck Jordan. I always hated him,” she replies.

“Why do you say that? Did he do something to you?” I ask, my pulse pounding in my skull.

She chuckles as I stop walking. “Geez, you look like you’d murder him if I asked you to. No, he hasn’t done anything to me. He just always seemed like a creep who wanted you all to himself.”

I let out a deep sigh of relief and continue trudging through the sand. “Man, he hated you, too. He’s the only person I’ve ever known to truly hate you.”

“Really? Why did he hate me?”

I shrug. “I don’t know. I think he thought you were holding me back or something, because you weren’t famous. You didn’t ‘elevate my star power’ or some bullshit. I’m dumping him soon.”

As soon as these words come out of my mouth, I regret them. Glancing at the paparazzo whose lens follows us up the sand dune, I wonder if he can hear me. No, he’s too far away. He can’t hear me over the sound of the waves crashing. Can he?

“Hey, I have a lunch meeting with the producers the day after tomorrow, so I’ll be pretty busy. But I was kind of hoping you could stay the night in San Francisco with me tomorrow night.”

It’s not a lie. I do have a lunch scheduled with the Avengers producers the day after tomorrow. But it’s not the whole truth. I also have a meeting rescheduled with Katie, since I wasn’t able to talk to her while I was at the wedding with Charley on Saturday.

I know I’m still on shaky ground with Charley, and I will be until I tell her the truth about why I broke up with her. Unfortunately, I can’t tell her until I’m certain that Katie will back me up. I need to know Katie will corroborate my story that we were both violated that night ten years ago. I need to know she’s willing to use a DNA test to prove the nine-year-old boy she’s been raising alone is not mine. Only then will Charley know I’m not the one who took that video of her losing her virginity to me. Only then can I tell my kitten the truth.

But right now, I need her near me.

She chuckles as we stop at the top of the sand dune. “Are you trying to get me alone so you can have sex with me, Ben?”

“Can you fucking blame me? Look at you,” I say, wrapping my free arm around her shoulder. “Take the selfie here, with the ocean in the background.”

“The sun doesn’t set for at least another four hours,” she says. “Maybe we should come back then?”

I shake my head. “That’s the scheming photographer I fell in love with,” I reply, starting down the other side of the sand dune toward Beach Avenue. “Want to come in the house or do you want to meet me on the sand dune at sunset.”

The most gorgeous fucking grin I’ve ever seen spreads across her face. “I’ll meet you at sunset.”

She plants a loud kiss on my cheek then runs away, giggling as she disappears through the front door of her house. I stand in my driveway for a moment, remembering the sensation of her puckered lips on my cheek before I head inside. I fucking love that girl with everything I am. I really hope I don’t hurt her again.