Page 57 of A Beach House Beginning

Wes moved a few steps away from the blanket in case of fizzing and opened the bottle of root beer, carefully pouring out half into the water bottle.

As he returned to the blanket and handed the soda bottle to Brie and the pink water bottle to Addie, Wes couldn’t help thinking about the time one of the guys in his block, a particularly nasty guy named Victor, had shivved a guy at lunch over a peanut butter cookie.

He remembered the scream and the blood and the shouting guards as if it happened that morning.

Would memories of that dark time always taint his future happiness? He didn’t want it to. He wanted to be able to completely put it behind him, but he wasn’t sure that would ever be possible.

He could not pretend it had never happened. Those three years were part of him, just like the time he had spent in the Army and the years of his childhood when he had lived on that breathtaking Colorado farm.

He had to hope that eventually moments like these, pure and perfect, would overwhelm the darkness.

“Thank you for everything,” Jenna said as the girls sipped at their respective root beers. “This was so fun going tide pooling with you girls and having you show us all the creatures you learned about at camp.”

That had been one of Wes’s favorite parts of the evening. Jenna had orders from the doctor to keep her hand dry, so Wes had set up a beach chair for her on the sand just above the surf. She watched, the dog at her side, while he and the girls scrambled carefully over the rocks looking at starfish, sea urchins and anemones of every color.

Addie and Brie used Wes’s cell phone to snap pictures of what they found for Jenna, so she could enjoy the experience, too.

While he had set up their picnic dinner of fried chicken, pasta salad and kettle chips, Jenna had scrolled through the photos, asking the girls questions about their discoveries.

After dinner, the girls had begged to take a walk on one of the lush trails around the state park. With the girls racing ahead, he and Jenna had walked together, chatting about places they had visited and bucket list destinations they would like to see.

Finally, they had returned here to watch the sunset.

“We should probably head back soon,” Jenna told the girls as they finished their soda.

“I wish we could stay here all night,” Addie said, lying back on the blanket and gazing up at the few pale stars beginning to appear.

“I’m afraid there’s no camping allowed at this park,” Jenna said. “But maybe one weekend this summer we could borrow a tent from Rosa and Wyatt and camp at one of the other places along the coast.”

“Can we come?” Brie asked.

Wes gave an inward wince at his daughter’s forwardness.

“That would be so fun!” Addie exclaimed. “Can we go camping together, Mom?”

That lovely pink rose on her cheeks as she sent Wes a quick look. “I’m not sure Rosa and Wyatt have a tent that would fit the four of us.”

“We could bring our own tent!” Brie said. “You have one, don’t you, Dad? If not, Mom and Ron do.”

“I do have a tent. But maybe Jenna and Addie wanted to have their own trip together.”

“It would be so fun to have you come, wouldn’t it, Mom?”

Jenna lifted her gaze to his again. Heat surged between them. “Sure,” she finally said. “We can probably make that work. We’ll have to see.”

He would love nothing more than spending a weekend camping with Jenna and their daughters. He had visions of talking by the fire until the early hours of the morning, gazing up at the stars, kissing her again until they were both shaking with need...

Wes sighed. He would be smarter to come up with excuses to stay away from Jenna, instead of letting his mind run wild, imagining mythical future outings together.

Though he didn’t want this particular evening to end, he turned his energy toward loading up his pickup truck with all the things they had brought and making sure they carried away everything from their picnic site.

“Dad, can we stop and have gelato before we go home?” Brielle asked him when they were all finally loaded into the truck and he was about to drive out of the parking area.

His gaze met Jenna’s and she shrugged. “Fine with me. I love gelato.”

Wes pulled out onto the road back to Cannon Beach, feeling as if he had been handed a reprieve.

Maybe Jenna didn’t want the evening to end, either.

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