“Walk with me?” I asked.
Nervously she raked her teeth over her bottom lip, contemplating, before she peeked up at me and gave me a timid nod. “I’d like that.”
We both turned, heading down the boardwalk from the restaurant where we’d shared dinner. We’d eaten in this strange, awkward comfort. Like we were giving time to catch up to the fact that we were here.
Together.
Our conversation had seemed both easy and guarded. Our laughter only ringing with the safe stories we told. Ones that weren’t hard and didn’t point out our failures or fears.
Now we walked in silence, both of us caught up in that strange intensity.
Neither of us quite sure where we stood.
No doubt, both of us were traversing uneven ground.
Didn’t mean my entire body didn’t itch with her gliding along at my side, her arm just brushing mine.
My fingers twitched.
Fuck it.
I reached out and took Edie’s hand.
In surprise, she jumped, before she peeked up at me again then looked down to watch like she was a little bit in awe as I threaded her trembling fingers through mine.
Shivers rolled through her. Head to toe.
The breath I was holding left me on a gush of relief while my heart flipped with an erratic beat.
A goddamned stampede in my chest.
I had no idea what her reaction to me touching her would be. If she’d push me away. Or maybe run.
Because the girl had every right to tell me to go straight to hell. Right where I belonged.
Instead she seemed to contemplate, chewed at that lip before she gave in and nestled into my side.
God, she felt so damned good.
We strolled along the boardwalk like we were just another couple lost in the mix. Strands of twinkling lights were strung up around us. Tonight, the old worn wooden planks were packed with people, the night air perpetually cool as it rode in on the waves, the hint of a storm just making itself known in the distance.
Edie snuggled even closer and released a deep, deep breath. Like maybe she’d been holding it in forever. It swirled around me, filling up my senses with all that sweet and warmth.
Unable to resist, I released her hand and wound my arm around her shoulders. Pulled her tight against my body that was about five seconds from coming completely unhinged.
And Edie…Edie just curled into me, her opposite hand coming to rest on my abdomen.
“This feels so nice.” Her confession was tentative. Maybe insecure.
I pressed my lips to the top of her head. “It feels like the best thing in the world.”
“It feels crazy. Impossible,” she whispered, almost as if to herself, like she couldn’t believe she was here.
“Perfect,” I said in return.
And then those arms were winding around my waist. Hugging me tight from the side. Clinging and holding and tugging at everything inside of me.
In silence, we wandered off the boardwalk, wound down and around, veering for the beach.
Like we were both completely in sync.
Drawn.
And I wished upon every damned star in the sky for a second chance.
For something I could do to truly make it right when I’d done her so fucking wrong.
To be good enough for this girl who was obviously created for me.
Inhaling, she lifted that stunning face to the sky I’d just been wishing on.
It took about all I had not to bury my face in the slender column of her delicious neck, to feel the beat and thrum of the pulse I knew raced underneath all that snowy flesh.
Desire belted me right in the gut, lust hitting me hard and fast.
I wanted her so damned bad.
And that was the problem.
I always had.
Wait.
It seemed patience hadn’t always been my strong suit.
When we hit the beach, our feet sank into the soft sand. We both slipped off our shoes, carrying them as we trudged across the shore. Further and farther until we were alone in a secluded cove, darkness pressing down and the sky opening up where it went on forever.
Waves crashed where they toiled, an inciting calm, a crazy sense of solitude riding in on the breeze.
A tremor of his presence rolled over me.
The way it always did when I got this close.
Dangerous, murky waters calling me to the same depths where I’d condemned him.
Edie unwound herself from me, turned to look out over the sea, crossed her arms over her chest. Her loose-fitted, thin sweater draped around her tight little body just right, caressing every curve, one delicate shoulder exposed, and those long, slender legs were on display in the short frayed jean shorts she wore.
I sank onto the damp sand, toes dug in deep, arms wrapped around my knees as I watched my girl from behind.
“It’s gorgeous out here,” Edie said reverently, that striking face lifted toward the heavens.
In the distance, a flicker of lightning flashed with the building clouds, and a gust of wind blew through the basin, a misty fog gathering low.
“Sometimes I can’t believe how peaceful it is out here. Makes you feel so damned small.”
Peace and torment.
Peace and torment.
I fought the tightening of my chest.
She edged forward until her feet were consumed by the slow crawl of the tide.
Taking one step deeper, she turned to look at me from over her shoulder. “Do you want to wade with me?”
She’d laced caution into the question, her head tipped to the side as she searched me.
I could barely croak it out, throat tight and mouth dry. “No, Edie. I don’t.”
Pain lashed across her distinct features. White, white hair whipped around her, striking in the glow of the full moon shining down.
Firelight.
She looked away, gathering herself, before she was staring back at me in compassion, in this overwhelming affection as she leaned down and let her fingertips travel across the crest of a small wave that rose to brush the middle of her calves. “Is this where you feel closest to him?”
I glanced to the ground, to the glittering pebbles of white sand, forcing out the words. “Yeah. The sea always makes me feel close to him.”
She said nothing, solemn as she waited for me to continue.
I roughed an agitated hand through my windblown hair. “It’s like I can’t get too close…but he never lets me get too far away.”
Understanding flickered through her expression. “Which is why you’ve been traveling the coast.”
It wasn’t a question.
She was just reading me.
Getting to know me again after the years that had passed between us.
The girl wondering if I’d changed. If I’d healed or was still lost to the grief that would haunt all my days.
I hugged my knees a little tighter. “Crazy…because it doesn’t matter what ocean I land up against. He’s always there. I felt just as tied to him on the Atlantic when I was staying back in Savannah where Sebastian met his wife. Second I get landlocked? Feel like I’m gonna crawl out of my skin if I don’t get back to the sea.”
Low laughter rocked from me. Completely lacking humor or amusement. “Then I just fucking freeze at the edge of it. Never able to touch because I can’t ever really touch what’s always going to be missing.”
Right then, I wanted to confess everything. Lay it all out. Let her hold my secret the way she’d allowed me to hold hers.
I knew Edie wouldn’t waste it.
Wouldn’t toss it aside like it meant nothing the way I had.
Instead, I shook my head in disgust. “I’m not sure I’m any different than the kid from that room back in L.A.”
I repeated her affirmation.
A warning.
A plea.
My eyes traced the long stretch of her legs. Cut and toned. Her shoulders firm.
Her exterior had grown so strong. Kinda like me. Youth scraped away by the years.
Yet I knew the inside still harbored all those broken pieces.
My mirror.
Edie began to edge back out of the water.
She watched me carefully as she slowly moved up the beach in my direction.
Hair a halo of ripping flames.
Like a white witch who’d cast her spell.
Mesmerizing.
Entrancing.
I gulped around the heaviness. Around the hold she had over me. My heart went wild with the need to bury myself in all the comfort she gave.
She stopped two feet away.
Looking down like she could see straight inside of me, the way I swore I could see inside of her.
And I was again regressing back to that helpless kid.
Wishing for my damned hoodie so I could rock in the shadows.
I knew she knew it.
Knew she felt it.
Edie didn’t even know all the details and she was still the only one who really got it.
She dropped to her knees in front of me. That sweet, pouty mouth twisted in stark compassion, in her own vivid confusion. “How do you both break my heart and heal it at the same time?”
I reached up and cupped her cheek.
“I don’t want to break you.”
She blinked at me through misty, aqua eyes, the words thick with emotion. “You broke me a long time ago.”
“I’m so fucking sorry, Edie. I know I wrecked it. That I wrecked us. For the last four years, I’ve woken up every single day regretting it. I went to sleep wishing I could take it back. But right here…with me…this is where you’re supposed to be. Where you’ve always belonged.”
Fate.
I felt us spinning around it like it was the sun and we were in orbit.
Sadness climbed into her expression. “I used to think that…from the first night you crawled into my bed, I believed wherever you were, that was where I was supposed to be. Something about it just felt…right. You made me feel like no one else in the world could understand me the way you did. Like you saw me.”
Wetness gathered in her eyes. A glimmer of diamond in the night. Priceless and precious. Her voice dipped in sorrow. “I believed it right up until the night you threw me to the wolves.”
And those wolves had jumped right in with the intent to destroy.
Regret shimmered in my consciousness. Suffocating. Doing its all to squeeze out the glimmers of hope.
“And now?” I asked, because I was a masochist like that.
I watched the trembling roll of her throat as she swallowed. “And now…I feel more confused…more conflicted…than I’ve ever felt in all my life.”
She averted her gaze, before she turned her admission back on me. “When I first saw you on that stage? I knew I had to run. To get as far away from you as possible.”
Her tongue darted out to wet her lips, and a harsh gust of wind barreled down upon us.
Whipping.
Stirring.
Inciting.
“And here I just turned around and ran right back to you.”
Her words struck me like an arrow to the chest. One of those lovesick kinds. The kind where my pulse pounded through my body like the vibration of a drum and I had zero thoughts except to make her mine.
It was unavoidable.
Inevitable.
Because Edie and me? We were always gonna be.
I weaved my fingers through the length of her hair.
So damned soft.
I tugged her closer.
Her mouth parted on a sigh.
I inhaled it.
The subtle hint of orange.
Sunshine and innocence and something so deliciously sweet.
Light. Light. Light.
Intoxicating.
She blinked as if she were trying to make sense of it all. “How is it possible you have this hold over me?” she murmured quietly.
“We never even…” She trailed off, leaving the idea of it hanging in the air like a tease.
But Edie had it all wrong.
It was her who had me enchanted.
Bewitched by the best kind of spell.
I dipped my mouth close to her ear. “Just because we’ve never actually had sex doesn’t mean we weren’t lovers.”
She gasped and pulled back a fraction, her gaze heated and hot.
God. I couldn’t take it a second longer, and I leaned in closer.
Closer.
Edie did the same.
My heart damned near beat out of my chest.
At the last second, fear took her over and her eyes grew wide. She tipped down her chin while still falling forward.
My lips landed on her forehead.
I lingered there.
Breathing in the girl.
The sweet and the pure.
Refusing to count it a disappointment.
She collapsed against me and let me wrap her in my arms.
We stayed that way for what could have been minutes or hours.
Finally, I whispered into her hair, “Do you feel that, Edie Evans?”
“What?” she mumbled, her face tucked against my chest, like she was speaking directly to my heart.
“Me.”