Chapter Nine

 

* LOGAN *

 

I was the only car on the road. The rain didn’t seem to have dampened the party spirit at the Summer Fair too much, because no one else had been leaving when I drove off. Everyone just crowded into the tents. About ten minutes into my drive, I lost my cell signal. The cell signal wasn’t always terribly reliable out here, and the storm seemed to be messing with it somehow. I gritted my teeth and slowed down a bit, trying to see through the darkness whether there were any signs for “Barnacle Beach,” or if I could catch a glimpse of Julia’s car anywhere.

No such luck. I had driven fifteen more minutes, and was sure I must have passed it. I pulled off the road on a gravel path, intending to turn around, when I realized that my headlights were pointing straight ahead onto a vehicle that I recognized as Julia’s beat up old coupe. So this must be Barnacle Beach! It had taken me longer than I would have thought to get here, but I’d made it.

I drove right up next to Julia’s car, hoping that she was inside of it safe and warm, and was just waiting out the rain so she didn’t have to drive in the worst of this storm. But when I parked beside it, Julia’s car looked empty. I felt fear grip my heart. Was she out on the beach still? She hadn’t been swimming during this rain, had she? Surely she wasn’t that foolish.

I jumped out of my car without a second thought, and went to peer in the windows of Julia’s car. There was definitely no one in there. With panic rising in my chest, I started running toward the beach. The darkness was overwhelming, but the lightning gave me glimpses here and there of the rolling sand. I squinted out at the water each time the lightning flashed, terrified that I was going to see Julia out there, struggling against the waves. To my relief, there was no one out there. Hopefully that meant that she was at least on dry land. If you could even call the land “dry” at this point. The rain was continuing to pour down.

I started scanning the beach, looking for any sign of her. It took a few more flashes of lightning, but I eventually spotted her. She was up ahead and a little to my left, and it looked like Decaf was with her. They were sitting huddled together on the sand, not attempting to move forward at all. Something was wrong. There was no way anyone who wasn’t in some kind of trouble would just be hanging out in this kind of rain when a dry car was available a few minutes’ walk away.

“Julia!” I yelled, even though I was too far for her to hear me over the noise of the storm. I kicked off my expensive leather loafers, which were probably totally ruined at this point anyway, and started running toward her.

“Julia!” I called again, and again. I was almost to her when she finally heard me and looked up. It was hard to tell in the flashing, irregular illumination of the lightning, but it looked to me like her face was red and puffy from crying. She looked relieved to see me, which was at least an improvement over our last interaction. Decaf’s fur was matted to his skin and his eyes had never looked so sad, but he managed to give me a half-hearted tail wag anyway. I gave him a reassuring pat on the head before turning back to Julia.

“Are you okay?” I yelled. “Are you hurt or something?”

“I’m alright, but I can’t get Decaf to move. He insisted on following me out here, but I couldn’t get him to walk back, even when the rain started. He’d take a few steps and flop down. I think he’s in a lot of pain.”

She sounded like she was going to break out into sobs at any moment, and I didn’t blame her. Decaf’s predicament was heartbreaking. It hurt my own heart quite a bit to see Julia, refusing to leave her pup and trying to cover him from the rain. Without another moment’s hesitation, I bent down and lifted Decaf up into my arms.

“Come on, boy,” I said in his ear. “I got you. Let’s get out of this storm.”

Julia followed me as I trudged across the sand, her head bent against the wind and her soaked clothes plastered to her body. The trek wasn’t an easy one. My feet sank deep into the sand with every step, and Decaf felt heavier than ever with his water-soaked fur. But I wasn’t going to leave him out here alone, especially since I knew Julia wasn’t going to leave him alone either. Step by step, I moved forward until finally we reached Julia’s car. She opened the back door and I gingerly set Decaf down on the backseat. He wagged his tail at me appreciatively as Julia climbed in behind him, crooning soothing words in his ear.

I wasn’t sure what to do. I didn’t want to just climb into Julia’s car without an invitation, but she was too preoccupied with Decaf to realize that I was standing out in the middle of the rain. I wasn’t about to leave her alone out here, though, so I went back to my car and sat inside of it, waiting to see what she would do. I at least wanted to follow her back into town to make sure she made it okay on these slippery roads.

After a few more minutes, the rain seemed like it had let up just a little bit. It was still a steady downpour, but it wasn’t the same lashing, violent rage that it had been. Every now and then, I tried to peer over at Julia’s car to see how she and Decaf were doing, but in the dark and the rain it was too hard to really see anything. So I waited. And waited.

After about ten minutes, I was suddenly startled by a sharp rap on the passenger window. I jumped, and then looked over to see Julia motioning to ask whether she could come in. Hurriedly, I unlocked the doors and reached over to help her open the passenger door. She quickly climbed in, getting a ton of water all over the leather passenger seat. Oh well. Now it would match the water-stained driver’s seat, which was soaked from my sitting in it. I was going to be reimbursing the car company for a lot of damage, but it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that I had found Julia and been able to help her.

“Are you alright?” I asked.

She nodded, her soaking ringlets dropping even more water as she bounced her head. “I’m fine. I just…it’s just…Decaf.”

“Is he alright?”

“For the moment. I wrapped him in his blanket and he’s sleeping. I think his hips have gotten so bad that he just can’t walk anymore at all. I was hoping to win the cake contest but now, I don’t know…”

As she trailed off she burst into tears. Her emerald green eyes were rimmed with red, and I had a feeling she’d been crying long before the storm even started.

“Hey,” I said, reaching over and gently grasping her chin in my fingers I turned her face toward me. She met my eyes, but looked conflicted, like she didn’t know whether to thank me or hate me. “I think you’re going to win that cake contest. Don’t worry about that.”

She sniffed and wiped at her eyes. “But how? Did you pull out of the contest?”

I laughed. “No. I entered, but I made my own cake. And trust me: your cake sculpting skills are much better than mine.”

She looked confused. “But I thought—”

“That I was just trying to sabotage the contest and make you lose? I know. Megan told me. But that was never my intent. I was only trying to figure out a way to see you without going to your café and having the cops called on me. And I wanted to show you that I do care about the locals here on Driftwood Island. I thought that maybe participating in the Summer Fair would show you that.”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“Say you’re at least going to let me visit your café again? It’s the only decent place on this island to get a coffee.”

“Oh, come on. Your resort has coffee.”

“And it’s god awful. Seriously. I’ve tried to get Zach to change the type of coffee we use or something but he says it’s good enough and that no one really cares about how their coffee tastes, anyway.”

“Is he insane?”

“A little bit. But enough about him. This is about me. Can I come back to your café now?”

Julia sighed. “Yes. Of course. In fact you can have free coffee whenever you want it, after what you did for Decaf tonight. How did you even know I was out here?”

“Megan told me. She was pretty mad at me until she saw the cake I baked. Trust me, it’s awful. There’s no mistaking the fact that I definitely didn’t pay anyone to do that for me.”

Julia looked down. “I guess I owe you an apology. I’ve treated you like crap since the moment I met you. I never even gave you a chance, but it seems I was wrong about you. You’re not just out for yourself.”

“No. I’m not. But I guess I don’t blame you for thinking that way. My resort doesn’t exactly have the best track record here with the locals. But I promise you, I’m going to try to change that. Do you think you could at least give me a chance to do that?”

I didn’t dare ask for more. Julia was talking to me, and admitting that I possibly wasn’t horrible enough to call the cops on just for existing. As much as I wanted to kiss her, and to rip off her soaking wet clothes and mine so that only skin remained between us, I wasn’t going to push things too quickly and ruin them. If I could just get her talking to me, that was a start. I could work with that.

But then, she did the unthinkable. She smiled at me, and instead of answering me with words, she leaned in and put her mouth on mine. I instantly thought I’d died and gone to heaven.

And that was it. That was all the invitation I needed. I was going to make her mine tonight, and I didn’t give a damn how badly we messed up these leather car seats.

“Come here, you,” I growled, and pulled her closer to me using a handful of her glorious, soaking wet curls. The lightning flashed around us and the thunder clapped, but I didn’t notice it anymore.

Now, and forevermore, there was only her.