I wake up at the slightest sign of daylight in the morning. Today is the big day.

Creaking Lacy’s door open just a tad, I see her sleeping peacefully, and I smile.

She looks so innocent, good and pure. She’s perfectly on her back, her chest rising and falling slightly, each of her breaths soft, calm, and soothing.

The same sound I used to hear last summer when I slept like a baby every night.

I leave the door open a crack, and head out the door and onto the beach.

The sun hasn’t fully risen in the sky yet, and has the beautiful pink and blue hues of a Bob Ross painting.

I dig my feet into the sand as I walk along the shore. A few surfers pepper the early morning waves.

Something about the early morning has always calmed me, though I don’t get up early very often any more. Since I moved to the city, I’ve become less of an early riser and more of a late partier.

I miss the days of getting up early in a small town to the sounds of silence.

One wave crashes hard and splashes well past my feet. The salty water is the perfect temperature, just cool enough to be refreshing.

I hear a little boy and a girl shriek in the water, and look out instantly. The adrenaline ceases when I see a small boy and girl and their father out in the water. The dad is teaching the little ones to surf on the little waves.

I’ll put that on the ‘things I never did with my dad’ list.

Not that I cared at the time. I made up for it in a myriad of ways. Hanging out extra time with my friends. With Lacy. It seemed comforting to think he was dead. A dead man has no choice when it comes to spending time with his kids. An alive man, however, very much…

Inhaling a deep breath of the fresh, salt-tinted air, I think about what it is I came all this way for.

I’ve lived almost twenty-eight years without seeing the man. So why seek him out now? What good will it do me? I don’t want him in my life, based on the little I know about him. I suppose it’s possible something he says could change that, but I doubt it. So what is going to change in my life with this meeting?

As the sun comes up, a few of the beachside restaurants start setting up their tables and chairs for the breakfast rush.

A man whistles a tune as he puts the chairs down, and I recognize it instantly: Somewhere Over the Rainbow. An odd song to be humming, but that’s when it hits me:

Meeting my father feels something like I’m meeting the Wizard of Oz.

A man who has pulled the strings that drastically affected—created my life—yet I’ve never seen or talked to him.

Well, I want to talk to him, if only to find out he’s as much of a wreck as the Wizard was.

I give the whistling man a wave, silently thanking him for queuing my insight. He waves back with a huge smile.

Back in the cottage, I check my phone’s messages. The Wi-Fi isn’t working, so I restart the router. Once it comes on, I see I have messages from Chandler and Gates.

He accompanies his text with a middle finger emoji. I chuckle as I reply back that of course I will.

Lacy stirs, moaning a little. I hear her feet on the ground, and then she comes out the door, sleepy eyed, wearing short shorts and a tank top. Her hair is a beautiful mess.

My heart pounds harder than it was a second ago.

“Good Morning Sleepyhead,” I say.

“Morning,” she says, rubbing her eyes. “You look awake.”

“I woke up early.”

“Tough mattress?”

I shrug. “Not really. My mind was just all over the place last night, so it was a little hard to sleep.”

“Could have been the wine,” she suggests.

“Or the company,” I say.

“Are you saying I kept you up all night?”

“No, definitely not. I could have kept you up all night though. If you know what I mean.”

I wink, and run my hungry eyes run over Lacy. Even though I’ve promised her we can be just friends, there’s no getting around the fact that she looks damn sexy right now in her shorts and tank top.

And she has a first hand experience with just how long I can keep her up at night.

She furrows her brow, but doesn’t say anything, seeming a little caught off-guard by my comment. I can’t read her mind, but her extra long silence makes me wonder what she’s thinking about.

“Sorry,” I say, feeling my heart hammering extra hard. “Bad joke. We’re just friends, still. I haven’t forgotten.”

She puts her hand over her heart, and clears her throat. “I appreciate that,” she says in a soft voice. All of a sudden, I’m remembering all the ways she used to moan under me in that same voice.

“Anyways, I’m hungry,” I say, standing up. “And you won’t let me eat...what I want to eat. So how about we get some breakfast beachside.”

The innuendo comes out before I can stop it.

“I won’t let you eat what you want to eat? I don’t get it,” she says.

Tonguing the inside of my cheek, I can’t help the smirk that forms on my face.

Might as well finish the joke.

“My bad. I’m making non-friend jokes about how I want to eat...you.”

She clears her throat. “Yeah no, that’s not happening.”

“Right. It’s not happening. So let’s get out of here.”

Still, some kind of invisible magnetism draws me toward Lacy.

If she knew how close I was to tearing her clothes off right now, she would not be standing here with me.

Something about being out of the city and in a small coastal town brings out my animal instincts. I feel my cock twitch as I hold steady, just out of arm’s reach from her.

Taking a step toward me, she runs her eyes over my body, and extends a hand out, running it slowly down my bare arm.

I get goosebumps. “What are you doing?” I ask.

“I’m not sure,” she says, pulling her hand away.

“The cool thing about breakfast here is no shirt no shoes and you still get service,” I say, a little flabbergasted at the way she just broke her own rule.

“Good to know.” She brings her eyes to mine. Our gazes hold each other, and I know there is some subtext to her words.

“I want to kiss you right now,” I blurt out. “I know,” she says, running her tongue along her lips.

“But I think that’s a very bad idea and goes against everything we’ve discussed. We made it one night, so we can make it one more.”

“You’re right,” she says, her voice throaty-sounding. “We’re not kissing.”

“I saw this cool local place that says they make the best cappuccinos in town. Well, I suppose technically they’re called cafés con leche here. They’re the best.”

She smiles from her eyes. “Cappuccinos. Why would I care about that?”

“Aren’t those your favorite?”

“I like them, yes. Why do you think they’re my favorite, though?”

“It’s what you had when I first saw you last summer.”

“Back when you still hated me. You’re pretty good at remembering things about someone you hate.”

My heart fills with warmth at the memory. “Hate and love are close cousins, you know.”

“Well I appreciate you remembering,” she says. “Hate isn’t the opposite of love, anyway. Indifference is. And as much as upset as I’ve been with you for the past year, I can’t say I’ve ever been indifferent.”

“Same.”

Still holding my gaze, she extends her arm and holds out one finger, presses it into my breastplate, and then runs it all the way down the middle of my chest and abs. She takes her time, going so slowly, chills of arousal have the time to work all the way through my entire body. I wonder if she sees my cock twitch as she pulls her finger away from my stomach a few inches below my belly button.

“I’ve always wanted to do that,” she says.

“Okay, what’s happening here?” I ask.

“Let’s get some breakfast,” she says, ignoring me.

“Dos desayunos Tica,” the rainbow whistler says as he drops our plates of eggs, rice, and beans in front of us.

“Que los disfruten,” the man winks. We bite in.

“According to the information my detective gave me, if I walk a couple of miles south from here on the beach, I’ll run into his mansion.

“You can just walk there in a straight shot?”

I nod. “Yes. Costa Rica has a law stating one-hundred feet from the shoreline belongs to the people. So you could literally walk the whole coast, if you wanted to.”

“Cool.”

“So I’m going to head there after breakfast.”

“Perfect. I’ve got a book, I’m going to tan on the beach today.”

She reaches a hand across the table and holds mine. “I’ll be here when you get back. Sound good?”

“Sounds great.”

“And Carter.”

I raise an eyebrow.

“Sorry about touching you like I did today.”

“Twice. You touched me twice,” I say.

“You’re right. But that’s not how friends touch each other.”

“You know I want to be more than friends, but I’m getting a little confused here. Well, more than a little.”

She takes a deep breath, frowning a little. “I know. That was wrong of me, but I was thinking about it last night, and part of me still doesn’t trust that you can ever fully commit. Once burned, twice cautious.”

Nodding, I take a slow sip of my café con leche.

“What do I have to do to get your trust back?” I ask, point blank.

She heaves a sigh. “That’s the problem. I don’t know.”

I run my hand over my face, feeling the slight prickle of my two-day old beard.

“Since the day you left for New York, I’ve done a ton of thinking,” I say.

“Oh, you mean the day you fucked me on the kitchen island, then let me leave in tears, without saying a word?” she spits back.

“Yes. That day,” I admit somberly.

“Okay. So what have you been thinking?” she asks.

“I don’t care what you’ve been up to since then. Dating Josh, and whoever else you’ve been dating. That’s none of my business. Truly. But I’m running out of bullets here, Lacy, so I’m just going to be honest with you. I still like you. More than ‘like’ you. I’ve been on one date—one—since you left, and I ended it early. I haven’t kissed anyone else. Do you want to know why?”

“Why?” she says, her voice a whisper.

“Because it’s not fair to them. What, am I going to kiss a girl? Hook up with a girl, and accidentally call them Lacy while we’re doing it?”

That gets a giggle.

“I want to be with you, and no one else.”

She purses her lips, and I let the words hang in the air, but she doesn’t respond.

“Let’s get through this weekend, first,” she finally says.

After we pay the bill, we meander on the beach for a few minutes.

“Good luck,” she says. “I hope you find from him what you’re looking for.”

“Me too,” I say.

“I’ll be here when you get back.”

She gives me a kiss on the cheek.

“Thanks, Laces.”

I take a few steps away, then turn and watch her leave.

Like a creep, I watch her until she turns and walks into our beach house.

It’s late morning as I walk along the road parallel to the shore, a line of palm trees shielding me from the sun.

I hear him before I see him.

His laugh is haunting. I still remember it from our very brief phone call when I was a teenager.

My heart thumps as I peer through the painted white bars of his fence.

He’s bald, and well fed. I pull up the picture on my phone that Gates sent me.

That’s him, alright.

I stand motionless in front of the fence, just staring at the man as he paces on his patio. The house is magnificent. Colored green, with a hot tub in the front yard.

He sees me standing in front of the yard, and finally his gaze holds on me. Hanging up his phone, he ambles toward me across the grass.

“Hey buddy, what’s the deal? This is private property,” he says, but I don’t budge.

“My name is Carter Flynn,” I say, gripping the cold metal bars of the fence. “I’m your son.”