Page 30 of Every Heartbeat After

She slips from my grasp and takes a step backward. Away from me. “Couldn’t visit your parents?”

My flinch is involuntary and hopefully imperceptible. “Too busy.”

Her brow lifts. “Siblings?”

“Just the one, and definitely not.”

She throws her arms wide. “Friends?”

I suck air through my teeth, and she pinches her lips closed. Pink lights up her cheeks in an instant. Apparently we’re both embarrassed for me.

“Wow. I don’t know how you did it, but nowIfeel bad foryou.” She crosses her arms and shakes her head. Drops of salt water spill from her waterlogged hair down her torso, and it takes everything in me not to trace their path—with my gazeormy tongue.

I lick the salt from my lips instead, not missing the fact that she watches me do it. “What an honor. If you’re done, can we return to my original offer?”

For a moment all I can hear is the rush of waves and my own rapidly beating heart. She has no reason to say yes, and after the way she’s reacted to me the last twenty-four hours, I don’t expect her to. But hope is a stubborn bastard. He’s hanging on for dear life, even though I’m starting to wonder if we should’ve given up already.

Her gaze is low, settled on the ground behind me, when something in her expression softens. “Okay.”

My stomach leaps into my throat. “Okay?”

Tess lifts a brow, gaze darting to mine, as though daring me to keep questioning this olive branch.

Right. “Okay.” I dust my sand-covered hands off on my sopping wet gym shorts and grimace. “Should we change first?”

“That depends. What are we going to do?”

Of course. I need a plan. Something that will get her out, get her living, so that hopefully the changes happening here will hurt a bit less. It’s what works for me, anyway.

Something I saw on my jog flashes in my mind, and I grasp onto it like the life rope it is without a second thought.

“How about parasailing?”

ChapterTwelve

Tess

Thirty minuteslater we’re loaded into the back of a ski boat by a guy named Jimmy and his teenaged son. The sun is blistering overhead, and with every wave the boat hits, Kit and I rock into one another, bouncing like pendulum balls. Sticky skin meets sticky skin. His black board shorts brush my exposed thigh, and I jerk away. He glances toward me, smirking, but I avoid his gaze.

Being here was my one concession. He’s not off the hook just yet.

My mind drifts to the sand dollar sitting on the desk in my room back at the Carmen. A perfectly whole one, with nary a crack and a smooth, water-worn surface to boot. I spotted it in the soft sand just past Kit as he asked me for a chance to make things right. It was too much of a coincidence not to be a sign, like Dad himself was sending me some kind of message. So I agreed to spend the day with the guy, because it seemed like I should. And because it’s the least I could do after he broke my fall with his own body, saving me from a face-plant of epic proportions. I can’t say I’d have been as kind had the situations been reversed.

I hope you know what you’re doing, Dad.

Sand dollars were our thing. Mom was never an early riser, but he and I always woke up at the crack of dawn, even on vacation. It was as if someone had injected our veins with espresso while we slept. We’d spend those early mornings strolling the beach together in search of cool shells to show Mom. Once every few years, a whole sand dollar would appear like magic, and our entire day would be better because of it. The weather perfect, the food extra delicious. Dad called them our lucky charms, and he kept every single one. I still have his stash in a box back home, including a shell no bigger than a quarter that he found the year they discovered they were pregnant with me.

Every year since they passed, I’ve scoured the beach, but not a single one has made an appearance. It was as if Dad took them all with him when he went.

I smile softly. If spending time with Kit brings the sand dollars back, then so be it.

A particularly rough wave knocks our shoulders together. I pull back, attempting to rub the sore spot, though my life jacket makes it difficult. Kit studies me, gaze roaming from the crown of my head to the tip of my lavender-painted toes. Somewhere in the middle, his face falls a bit. “You changed.”

“You’re just now noticing?” I glance down at my black one-piece—a little sturdier than a bikini, should things get squirrely up there—and denim shorts, all covered by a bright red life jacket. Then I narrow my eyes at Kit. “What? Are you disappointed?”

He inflates his cheeks, then slowly lets the air out while shaking his head. “Nope. You look amazing in blue, that's all.”

I choose to ignore the butterflies taking flight in my abdomen. They’ve been hanging around since he appeared on the shoreline this morning, skin slick with sweat and face flushed from exertion. I can’t think about it too much without things turning into a frenzy.

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