Page 38 of Secrets at Seaside
Amy winced. “Sorry, Tony. I never said he was my boyfriend, Jenna.”
Jenna shrugged. “I just assumed.”
“So did I.” Tony held the box out toward Amy. “Should I not?”
Bella tapped his waistband. “Any man inked with a pet name is allowed to be called a boyfriend.”
“Is everyone out to embarrass me?” Amy rose on her knees, skipping the croissant Tony offered. Instead she reached for his arm and tugged him toward her. “Do you really want to be my boyfriend? Just because we slept together doesn’t mean you have to.”Please say yes. Please, please say yes.
“You’re right. Sex doesn’t equate to boyfriend-girlfriend, but when you tell each other you’re madly in love, that should count for something.” He stared into her eyes with a serious look on his face.
Amy glanced nervously around the room. Her friends’ eyes were as wide as she was sure hers were.
“I’m going to look really stupid in about three seconds if you don’t acknowledge me in some way,” he whispered.
“Yes. It counts for everything.”
There was a collectiveawwas the girls filed out of the room.
“Bonfire at Cahoon tonight. Be there or we’ll assume you’reriding the pipe,” Bella yelled on her way out.
Tony arched a brow. “Riding the pipe?”
“Don’t ask.”
Tony set the box down and pulled her into his arms. “You had me scared for a minute there, but I figured it was love when I saw your key chain.” He held up her keys. The surfboard key chain she’d bought at the Wellfleet Market dangled from the silver ring. “Unless there’s another surfer in your life?”
“That’s a big leap to make over a key chain.” She smiled at the devilish grin on his lips. “I think there’s a rule about surfers in the girl handbook.Only one surfer per lifetime. You’re stuck with me if you want me.”
“Kitten, it’s never a question ofif.”
She pressed her hands to his chest, thinking about the job with Duke, how her friends had handled her admission, and Tony.Oh, Tony. Could they really do this? Long-term? The nagging question left her lungs before she had a chance to check it.
“Do you think we’re rushing things?” After coming clean with the girls, she felt like a weight had been lifted from her shoulders. She felt more confident, stronger, like she could handle just about anything. She wasreadyto rush, but she knew that she and Tony still had a lot of healing and rebuilding to do, and the job in Australia weighed heavily on her mind. They couldn’t heal and rebuild if she was in Australia. She had to know what he was thinking before she made any final decisions about the job.
“Fourteen yearsisa little fast, isn’t it?” He lowered his mouth so his lips brushed hers when he spoke. “Maybe we should rethink this wholeclaim our feelingsthing.”
“I’m still emotionally fragile. I think I need you to prove your love to me again.” She kissed him. “And again.”
Chapter Thirteen
AMY SAT ON her deck working through the notes she’d taken during her meeting with Duke. It was midafternoon, and Tony had gone to catch the waves at high tide with a few surfing buddies. She sat back and kicked her feet up on another deck chair. The Seaside complex was quiet.
She glanced at Leanna’s empty cottage. She and Kurt had gone to stay at Kurt’s home on the bay side, which was only a few miles from Seaside. Caden and Bella were renovating their house in Wellfleet, and they were spending the afternoon painting the living room and dining room with Evan and his friends. Pete was working on refinishing a boat at his bay-side house with his father, and Jenna and Sky were hanging out there for the day. Blue was meeting them to go to the bonfire later. Jamie and Jessica were still on their honeymoon. They were bringing Jamie’s grandmother, Vera, who raised him after his parents were killed when he was six, up to the Cape with them when they returned in two weeks.
Amy’s eyes drifted to Tony’s cottage. She was meeting him at his cottage later, and they were going to the bonfire together to meet the others. She put her notebook on the table and leaned forward, looking down at the woods beyond the pool. Her pulse sped up as she rose to her feet and stepped off her deck.
The gravel crunched beneath her flip-flops, reminding her of the nights long ago when she and Tony had snuck out together. She’d been so scared back then. Scared of everything, it seemed. Pleasing her father, who adored her but had high expectations, nonetheless. Scared of the emotions that felt as if they owned her. She physically ached when she thought of Tony, and that first night they’d made love, she’d been trembling so badly that Tony had nearly backed out. He’d thought she was too scared of it hurting, when in reality, she’d been even more scared of feeling as much as she did for him.
When her feet left the gravel and met the thick lawn, Amy slowed her pace and drank in the sparse woods. The trees had grown much taller, raising their full branches higher and stealing the camouflage that had made her feel safe from prying eyes. She turned and glanced up the hill at the cottages, thinking about how naive they’d been. Anyone could have heard them sneaking out, or caught them in the woods. She remembered the heady anticipation, the threat of being caught in the back of her mind, and the way she’d blocked it out as strongly as she’d blocked out that terrible night.
But she’d never blocked out her love for Tony.
She wound through the woods to the spot between the two pitch pine trees that grew closer together than other neighboring trees.Our spot.
She lowered herself down to her back and stared up at slices of the light blue sky through the canopy of trees.
Do you think I’m doing the wrong thing?Tony’s twenty-year-old voice wrapped around her. That summer, they’d often spent an hour or more talking after making love, sometimes until the first feathers of dawn spread their wings.
