Page 6 of Malibu Rising

“That’s even more to my point,” Ashley said as she walked out of the Airstream, her feet hitting the sand, the sun hitting her eyes. Hud was one step behind her. “I don’t want a spectacle. Your family …”

“Attracts a lot of attention?” Hud offered.

“Exactly. And I don’t want to be one more problem for Nina.”

It was this kind of thoughtfulness for his sister, despite having met her only a few times, that Hud had found so enchanting about Ashley from the beginning.

“I know but … we have to tell them,” Hud said, pulling Ashley toward him. He put his arms over her shoulders, tucked her head underneath his. He kissed her hair. She smelled like tanning oil—fake coconuts and bananas. “We have to tell Jay,” he clarified.

“I know,” Ashley said. She rested her head on Hud’s chest. “I just don’t want to be this person.”

“What person?”

“The bitch, you know? That comes between brothers.”

“Hey,” Hud said. “Me falling in love with you is my fault. Not yours. And it was the best thing I ever did.”

Fate trips up sometimes. That’s the conclusion Hud had come to. It’s how he made sense of a lot of things that had happened in his life. Whatever hand was guiding him—guiding everyone—toward a certain future … there’s no way it could work without error.

Sometimes the wrong brother meets the girl first. It doesn’t have to be any more complicated than that. Hud and Ashley … they were simply correcting fate.

“It doesn’t even make sense I was with Jay,” Ashley said, pulling back from him except for where her hands interlaced with his.

“That’s what I thought the first time I saw you,” Hud said. “I thought,That girl doesn’t belong with Jay.”

“Did you think I belonged with you?”

Hud shook his head. “No, you’re far too good for me.”

“Well, at least you recognize it.”

Ashley pulled far away this time, sinking her heels into the sand, letting Hud’s grip on her be the only thing keeping her from falling down. Hud let her hang for a moment and then pulled her back to him.

“You should come tonight,” he said. “And we will tell Jay and it will all be OK.”

There was an unspoken pact between them that what they were going to “tell Jay” was going to be a lie. A half-truth.

They were going to tell Jay they were together. They were not going to tell him they had started sleeping together one night sixmonths ago, when they ran into each other on the Venice Boardwalk. Back when Ashley and Jay were still together.

Ashley had been wearing a denim jacket over a coral dress that was floating up with the breeze. Hud was in white shorts and a blue short-sleeved button-down, a pair of old Topsiders on his feet.

Each had been out drinking with friends when they found themselves passing each other just outside a tourist shop, selling tank tops with cheesy catchphrases and cheap sunglasses.

They stopped to say hi and told their friends they would catch up in a moment. But “a moment” seemed to get longer and longer until they realized they weren’t going to catch up with their friends at all.

They kept talking as they slowly started walking together down the boulevard, going into shops and bars. Hud tried on a straw cowboy hat and Ashley laughed. Ashley jokingly grabbed a Wonder Woman lasso and pretended to twirl it in the air. And Hud could tell, the way Ashley smiled at him, that the night was becoming something bigger than either of them intended.

Hours later, after a few too many drinks, they crammed themselves into one of the bathroom stalls of a bar called Mad Dogs. Ashley whispered into Hud’s ear, “I always wanted you. I always wanted you instead.”She’d always wanted him instead.

A second after she’d said it, Hud had kissed her and grabbed her legs, pulling her up around his waist and against the wall. She smelled like a flower he couldn’t name. Her hair felt fine and soft in his fingers. No one had ever felt as good against him as she did that night.

When it was over, they both felt exhilarated and satiated and light as air, until the anvil of guilt settled in their stomachs.

Hud liked thinking of himself as a good guy. And yet … sleeping with your brother’s girlfriend was exactly the sort of thing a good guy would never do.

Certainly not more than once.

But there was that night and then another. Then dinner in a restaurant four towns up the coast. And then a few discussions of how, exactly, Ashley should break up with Jay.

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