Present Day

 

“Her what?” Jay asked the douche in the suit. He knew he was speaking abnormally loudly, but that was on account of the ringing in his ears.

The douche looked back and forth between Jay and Mari, the crease between his eyebrows furrowing even further. “Her fiancé,” he said again.

Yeah. Still wasn’t computing.

Jay lifted his eyebrows into his hairline and turned to look Mari in the eye. She stared right back at him. Still watery from the crying jag, but just as tough as he remembered. And just as unashamed.

“Fiancé,” Jay repeated in a dumbfounded voice, as if he needed evidence that the word even existed.

“That’s what the man said,” Marcus said from over Jay’s shoulder. “Marcus Marinos.” He held his hand out to this guy, Linc, and then to Mari. “Nice to meet you. And this is Jay Brady.”

Jay’s eyes were drawn to Mari’s like magnets when Marcus said his name.

“Brady,” Mari mouthed his name and then sucked her lips into her mouth like she wanted to savor the sound of it.

It was the first time she’d ever heard his last name. Jay wondered if that little piece of information had tortured her as much as it had tortured him.

“Nice to meet you,” Linc said, tossing a casual arm over Mari’s shoulders.

Jay stiffened and took half a step forward, but he felt Marcus’s strong hand at his back. Be cool, man. After all their years as friends, he could practically hear Marcus’s voice in his head.

“So,” Linc continued, looking back and forth between Mari and Jay still. “How do you two know each other?”

Jay raised an eyebrow at Mari, ducking his head to show her that this was on her to explain.

Mari cleared her throat. “We met in the Bahamas. About five years ago.”

Jay’s eyebrow rose even further. He noted Linc’s bland expression and surmised that she must not have explained anything about the hurricane to him. He obviously thought she’d been there on vacation or something.

However, Jay could feel Marcus and Eli exchanging looks behind his back. Both of them knew all too well what had happened to Jay in the Bahamas five years ago. They knew about the hurricane. About his leg. Shit, they’d been there through the year of rehab it had taken for him to be able to walk on it, and then surf on it. They knew everything about his time in the Bahamas five years ago.

Except for Mari.

He’d never breathed a word to anyone about Mari. She’d stayed locked up tight in his heart. Sometimes even thinking about her had caused searing pain. He’d known better than to risk talking about her.

The only person he’d so much as whispered her name to was the private investigator he’d hired to find her. The one who hadn’t found her.

Jay scrubbed a hand over his eyes for a second. Suddenly he was completely overwhelmed. As soon as his eyes closed, he realized that he could still taste her in his mouth. She’d kissed him back. That much was clear.

Regardless of whose hand she was holding right now, Mari’s fingers had ripped at his hair. She’d dragged him to the ground. Smashed her mouth against his. Jay’s dress shirt was wet from her tears.

He didn’t give a flying fuck who Linc Cavanaugh was. He didn’t care that Mari thought she was engaged. Honestly, he wouldn’t have cared if he’d found out she’d been a porn star for the last five years.

All he wanted was to take her by the hand and lead her off of this balcony. All he wanted was to bring her home. Right now.

He opened his eyes again, immediately searching her gaze. Inwardly, he sighed. Obviously, that was not gonna happen.

She was staring at him, into him, as if she were trying to excavate the thoughts from his brain. He stared right back, trying to implant his thoughts into her skull.

Dump this idiot! Right now! Leave here with me! Let me take you home and do everything to your body that I’ve dreamed about for half a decade! Let me erase these five years between us!

She looked away, up to Linc, apparently the suit was talking to her. Jay hadn’t noticed.

“Cavanaugh, you said?” Eli said as he stepped up to Jay’s elbow.

“That’s right.”

“Any chance you’re associated with Cavanaugh’s Kids?”

A smile spread over Linc’s face. “Yes, of course, that’s the charity that I head.”

Oh. Great. A do-gooder.

“Great! I’d love to talk to you about an idea I had for an after-school center.” Eli took Cavanaugh by the elbow and steered him away from Jay.

Jay had never been more grateful for his friend than he was in that moment. Cavanaugh might not realize, but Eli had probably just saved him from a fist in the face.

Jay was reaching his limit.

“Little advice,” Marcus said in Jay’s ear. “Go slow. Long game, man. Long game.”

And then Marcus was disappearing back into the party, closing the balcony door behind him.

Jay and Mari stared at each other, alone again.

A wintry breeze kicked up and had Mari gripping her elbows against the chill in the air.

Jay shook his head from side to side. “It’s so weird to see you shiver.”

A small smile bloomed over her face. “Yeah, I guess you’ve only seen me when I was sweating my ass off.”

Jay took a step forward. “You’re pretty when you sweat your ass off.” He took a chance and slid a lock of her hair through his fingers. “But you’re pretty now too. All dolled up.”

Mari scoffed and looked down at her simple dress. “You have a low standard for dolled up. I look like I’m going to the gym compared to some of the women in there.”
“I was already comparing you to the women in there,” Jay answered without thinking. “Before I even saw you standing in there, I was already comparing them to you. And they were already underwhelming me.”

Mari’s brow furrowed in confusion. “You were thinking of me before you saw me tonight?”

Jay let out a humorless chuckle. He knew he was supposed to be going easy. But he found that he simply had no brakes to pump. He’d been waiting five years to say anything like this and he couldn’t pull up short now. “I think of you every day. A hundred times a day.”

Mari pursed her lips, her startling green eyes were worrying back and forth between his. Assessing him for honesty, he knew.

He went for broke. “And you were thinking of me too. Right before you saw me.” He took another step forward. There was barely three inches of chilly air between them. “I know you were thinking of me because you heard the foghorn out on the water. And that means you were either thinking of the first morning we kissed, or when we made love up on the roof.”

Mari’s eyes darted up to his and he knew he’d hit the nail on the head. She’d been thinking of him.

She didn’t step back from him. It was clear that she wasn’t able to put space between them any more than he was. But she did speak.

“I’m engaged, Jay.”

Hearing that dumbass in the suit call himself her fiancé had been shocking, and it certainly hadn’t felt good. But it was also fairly easy for him to dismiss it.

Hearing Mari say it to his face was another issue entirely.

Jay felt a phantom stab of pain in his thigh. It happened now and again. Most of his nerve endings were fairly numb down there. But every once in a while the damn thing started screaming like it was a fresh wound.

Jay cleared his throat. Found that he had absolutely nothing to say to that.

“I, uh, need a breather,” Mari said and finally took a step away from him. She paused, as if it were painful to put distance between them, Jay sure as hell felt like it was. She turned halfway back, as if she couldn’t quite bring herself to look at him. “Just, don’t leave, okay? I need a second, but don’t leave the party.”

Jay almost laughed at how ridiculous that was. She thought there was any chance in hell that he’d just leave it at that?

“I won’t leave you, Mari,” he said in a voice so deep and gravelly he barely recognized it as his own.

He watched her slip into the party and disappear into the crowd in the direction of the bathroom. He had no desire to enter the glittery, drunken fray, but he found that his heart wouldn’t let him maintain distance between the two of them. He followed her through the party.

She disappeared into the women’s restroom and Jay leaned against the wall opposite. He took a long, slow breath and let it out on a string.

The door swung open and he straightened, only to slump back down when he saw it was just Laura, Eli’s almost sister-in-law.

Jay and Laura had made out once, about a decade ago. Not a love connection. But he’d always liked her. And about half a year ago, she’d dragged the tiniest bit of info about Mari out of him.

Now, Laura took one look at his face and made straight for him. “You alright?”

She put one hand on his shoulder, as if he wasn’t steady on his feet.

“No,” he answered honestly, looking down at her. “Actually I’m losing my fucking mind.”

Laura leaned against the wall behind him, concern lining her face. “What’s going on?”

“She’s here.”

Laura continued to look at him in confusion until she obviously remembered their conversation over the summer. “Your mystery girl? She popped up again? The one you’ve been pining over? Holy SHIT!”

Jay clamped a hand over her mouth to keep her from notifying the entire party of the situation. Laura wasn’t exactly known for being discreet.

“Wait,” Laura pulled her face free from Jay’s hand. “Was she the little black-haired bombshell I just walked past in there?”

Jay nodded, noting Laura’s word choice. He never would have classified Mari as a bombshell. There was something about her that was so much more… interesting than just bombshell. But after seeing her tonight, her hair all shiny and her dress so perfect, Jay had to admit that she’d grown very beautiful.

“She has a fiancé,” Jay spit the words out of his mouth like they were made of gravel.

Laura’s jaw dropped. “Oh. Hells. No.”

Finally! A reasonable reaction to that piece of news. Jay felt a newfound kinship for Laura.              

“So,” she leaned forward conspiratorially. “What are you gonna do about that?”

***

Mari ran cold water over her hand and slapped it to the back of her neck. She didn’t care if it got her dress wet. She didn’t care about this dress. She didn’t care about how she looked. And she certainly didn’t care about this dumb-ass NFL party that Linc had wanted to go to so badly.

“You gotta think big picture,” he’d insisted to her. “There’s going to be a lot of very rich people at this party, Mari. Lots of potential donors.”

Linc had it in his head that he had to teach Mari how to be rich. Now that they were getting married, she was bound to be rich at some point.

Linc had more money than God.

Somewhere, in the less charitable part of her brain, she wondered if Linc wanted her to learn how to hit up other rich people so she’d stop asking him to donate to her non-profit.

She knew it wasn’t great to treat her boyfriend like her organization’s personal piggy bank. But again, more money than God. And he gave so much money to charity! Why couldn’t he give it to her charity?

But right now, in this very moment, she didn’t give a damn about fundraising opportunities. She didn’t even give a damn about her organization. The only thing that she gave a damn about was standing somewhere in a loud, self-aggrandizing party. And he looked good as hell.

Mari slumped forward and covered her eyes with the heels of her hands. Damn. Five years had been good to Jay. He’d never been baby faced, but all boyishness was gone now. He had the sharp lines and shadows of a grown-ass man. And those Sinatra blues hadn’t gotten any less devastating.

She took a long, low breath and tried to convince herself that she wasn’t dreaming. What she needed to do was leave this bathroom, find Linc, and get the hell out of here. She needed to gather her thoughts, have some time alone.

But she knew there wasn’t a chance in hell she was going to be able to leave Jay behind like that.

Mari also knew that she needed to tread extremely carefully. Just seeing Jay had stirred something in her chest that she’d thought had died. And hugging and kissing and crying all over him had stirred it even more. But Mari had laid that part of herself to rest with very good reason. It only brought pain. First with the loss of her parents and then with the loss of Jay.

Just because Jay hadn’t stayed lost didn’t mean that that part of her should be resurrected. Mari had spent the last five years carefully cultivating the kind of life she could stand to live. One where her daily fuel was her professional goals. She had a passion for conservation and she’d helped grow her organization tenfold. And on the personal side of things, she’d sought companionship. And steadiness. Someone who could make her smile and who treated her well.

She’d found all of that a million times over in Linc. He was handsome and kind and had been one of the only things that had helped pull her out of her depression after the hurricane. They’d been together for three years and engaged for two months.

Just thinking about Linc had her breath coming easier, calmer. He was a rock in the storm. Thinking about Jay had her white knuckling the sink.

Mari eyed herself in the mirror. She wasn’t thrilled with what she saw, tear tracks, a shocked expression, her lips raw from where she’d smashed them against Jay’s. But she wasn’t surprised either. This had been a hell of a last twenty minutes.

She took another deep breath. She was human. Everybody in this situation was just going to have to go ahead and accept that. She wasn’t going to be able to figure out any of this tonight. Even if her head and heart hadn’t been spinning off into a million directions all at once, it was still way too short of notice to figure anything out. She needed time. And calm. And space and quiet.

And Jay’s goddamn phone number.             

Mari ran her fingers through her hair, tossing it back, and turned to march out of the bathroom. She came up short when she saw Jay standing at the wall opposite of her.

A pretty little brunette was whispering fiercely into his ear. Jay’s eyes focused on nothing, obviously listening hard.

His eyes flicked up as Mari made her way toward them and he put a hand on the brunette’s shoulder to quiet her.

Mari’s gaze flicked to his hand touching this woman’s bare skin. She’d never seen him touch another woman before. She didn’t care for it.

Did he have a girlfriend? A fiancée too? Oh god. Was he married? He hadn’t worn a ring on the island, nor did he wear one now. But that didn’t mean anything. Lots of people were married without rings.

Mari herself couldn’t for the life of her picture wearing a wedding band. Linc had had to force the diamond solitaire engagement ring onto her finger and more days than not, Mari forgot to even put it on.

Mari watched as the little woman at Jay’s side gave her one dazzling smile, a small wave, and then darted down the hallway. Her eyes went automatically back to Jay.

He eyed her, his back leaned up against the wall, his eyes so hard to read. They stared at one another just like that for a few seconds before Jay’s hand darted out.

He tugged Mari forward so that she tumbled into his chest. His arms came around her back with that same, too tight pressure that he always used. Mari pressed her cheek into his chest and allowed herself to be held. All the racing, tumbling feelings in her gut just kind of settled right down. She felt safe.

She was being held by a man who’d held her through the scariest six hours of her life. And the part of that memory that had survived wasn’t the fear of the hurricane, it was the safety she’d found in Jay’s arms.

“I’ve really missed you, baby,” Jay said quietly, his voice gruff and low.

Her stomach flipped at the endearment, but she didn’t address it. Finally, her arms came around his back, she held him just as tight. “I missed you too.”

Mari took a deep breath and stepped back from him. Enough to put a few inches of space between them. Jay immediately reached forward and took a section of her hair between his fingers, like he couldn’t help but touch her.

“Can I have your phone number?” Mari asked, a small smile crossing her mouth.

Jay tipped his head back and laughed. “Give me your phone.”

Mari dug it out of the pocket of her dress and handed it over. Jay put in his contact information and then called his own phone with hers so he’d have her number.

Mari took her phone back and gaped at what he’d typed in. Under the name Jay Brady were many lines of information. Her eyes went wide. “You included your home address, your email, your license plate number, make and model of your car, and is that your social security number?”
Jay shrugged. “I really, really want you to be able to find me.” His brow furrowed. “Take a screenshot of that and email it to yourself, in case you lose your phone.” He paused again. “Also it wouldn’t kill you to memorize my phone number.”

Mari threw her head back and laughed. “I don’t think we run the risk of losing each other again.”

Jay shrugged, halfway laughing, halfway dead serious. “Better safe than sorry.”

Mari held up her phone and shook it side to side. “So this means that it’s safe to leave the party now. We can officially go our separate ways and meet up again.”

Jay’s expression was drawn, as if what she’d just described was the opposite of what he wanted to do. But he nodded. “Tomorrow.”

Mari sucked her lips into her mouth. “You wanna meet up tomorrow?”

Jay scrubbed a hand over his stubble. No, I wanna go home with you tonight and wake up with you tomorrow. But he bit back the words, cleared his throat. “Yeah.”

Mari frowned, but she held his eyes still. “Tomorrow is a work day, and my shit list is a mile high. But—“

“How about before work? We could surf.”

Mari’s expression was unreadable. “You still surf? Even after everything that happened?” Her eyes flicked down to his leg.             

“Hell yeah.” Jay didn’t include that he spent so much time on the ocean because it felt like his only connection to Mari.

She cleared her throat. “I haven’t surfed here yet. Not since I moved from Boston two months ago.”

Boston. She’d lived in Boston. Jay clung to the new piece of information like it was a bucket in a well. God. He’d been to Boston in the last five years. Shit, he’d surfed in Boston in the last five years. He might have been within a mile of her and didn’t even know it. He shook his head to clear it. Thoughts like that would eat him alive.

“I can show you a good spot. If you come tomorrow.”

Mari bit her lip in a rare show of indecision. “I’m not sure. Let me text you when I get home tonight, okay?”

Jay refused to ask her if “home” was with that douche in the suit. “Fair enough.”

Mari took Jay’s hand in hers for another second. “I’m gonna go now. But I’ll text you tonight.”

Jay nodded. It was going to have to be enough. He was greedy. He’d gone five years not even knowing what had happened to her. And now he wanted her to just, what, be his wife? He was being too intense. Marcus was right. He needed to go slow. He pulled her in for a quick hug.

“Buenos noches, Mari,” Jay whispered in her ear.

Mari grinned at his blonde hair, his horrible accent. “Good night, Jay.”

She was halfway down the hallway before Jay called out to her. “Mari.”

She stopped and turned.

“Will you tell me your last name?”

It was the exact same way he’d asked her to tell him her first name. He might not remember that, but Mari sure did. Her heart clenched like a fist in her chest. He was unbelievably handsome in his casual suit. His hair was just a little bit long, still sun bleached, even in winter. His light tan told her that he must have just gotten back from someplace warm. Probably a surfing trip, if she knew him.

Her body screamed at her to go back, to wrap him up in her arms again. But she didn’t, she couldn’t. Her heart didn’t know what it wanted. And Mari had learned to tread carefully in moments like that.

“You’re never going to believe it,” she responded to his question.

He cocked his head one side, a smile still on his face. “Why?”

She grinned, one brilliant smile before she walked away. “It’s Brady.”

She laughed, hard, at his dumbfounded expression, and then disappeared back into the party.