Deeper
Megan Hart

www.spice-books.co.uk

This book is for a black light, a bottom bunk and a hug,

For a doorway, a pair of kicked-off shoes

and the width of a kitchen table,

And as ever and always, for a blue bathrobe,

a million miles of legs and a whole lot of hair.

Everything that came before you is a memory,

but you are the real and constant thing.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Special thanks must go to the artists whose music kept me going while

telling this story. I could write without the songs, but it sure makes it

a lot more fun when I have the right ones to sing along with while

I’m typing: “Without You” by Jason Manns, “Ocean-Size Love”

by Leigh Nash, “Wish” by Kevin Steinman and “Reach You”

by Justin King. And further thanks must go to

Jennifer Blackwell Yale, who was kind enough to provide me

with an accurate rune reading.

Chapter
01

Now

The sea remained the same. The sound and smell of it wasn’t different, nor the push and pull of its waves. Twenty years ago, Bess Walsh had stood on this beach and looked forward to the rest of her life, and now…

Now she wasn’t sure she was ready for what lay ahead.

Now she stood with cold sand scraping her toes and the salt-scented air tangling her hair. She breathed deep. She shut out the night with the darkness behind her eyelids and lost herself in the past so she didn’t have to think about the future.

The night air in late May still held a chill, especially this close to the water, and her thin T-shirt and denim skirt didn’t provide much warmth. Her nipples peaked, and she crossed her arms to hug some heat into herself. It seemed appropriate to shiver, remembering that long-ago summer. Remembering him. For twenty years she’d tried to forget, yet here she was, back again, and unable to forget any more than she ever had.

Bess tipped her face to the breeze that pushed her hair from her face. She opened her mouth to drink it in, to eat it like some sweet candy. The smell filled her nose and coated her tongue. It took her back more effectively than mere memory could. Transported her.

Silly. She was too old to entertain fairy tales. Time travel didn’t exist. There was no way to go back. No way, even, to stay where she was. Her only option, anybody’s only option, was to move forward.

Thinking this, she did move forward. One step, then another. Her feet sank into the sand and she cast a glance over her shoulder to the safety of her deck and the single candle burning there. The wind pushed the flame into flickers and she waited for it to go out, but it stayed lit within the protection of its glass container.

Back then, that house had stood apart. Now neighbors flanked it, close enough to hit if you spat in the right direction, as her grandma would have said. The house behind, four stories of million-dollar architecture, loomed over hers. Now seagrass-dotted dunes that hadn’t been there twenty years ago swelled between the houses and the beach, and though a few lights shone in windows farther down the sand, closer to the main square of Bethany Beach, this early in the season most of the houses near hers were dark.

The water would be too cold for swimming. Great whites could be lurking. The undertow would be strong. Bess went to the water anyway, drawn by memory and desire.

The ocean had always made her more aware of her body and its cycles. The push and pull of the tide had seemed such a feminine thing, tied as it was to the moon. She never swam in it, but being around the sea always made Bess feel more sensual and alive, like a cat wanting to rub up against a friendly hand. The warm waters of the Bahamas, the cold Atlantic waves of Maine, the smooth, rippling Gulf of Mexico, the gorgeous blue waters of the Pacific, had all called to her, but none of them so strongly as this patch of water and sand. This place.

Twenty years later, it was stronger than ever.

Her feet found the hard-packed sand the last wave had left behind. She curled her toes into the chill. Now and then a glimmer of white foam appeared, but nothing touched her yet. She took a dragging step, letting her feet guide her so she didn’t come down unexpectedly on a sharp stone or shell. Another step forward led her to even wetter sand. Squishy again. The rush and roar of the water threw up spray into the breeze, and she opened her mouth for it the way she had the scent.

The water, when at last it touched her feet, wasn’t cold. The warmth was more shocking than a chill would’ve been, and Bess gasped. Before she took another step, another wave came. Warmth swirled around her ankles and splashed up her bare legs. It pulled away, leaving her feet buried. She went deeper without thinking. Step by step, until the water, as warm as a bath, as warm as a kiss, bathed her thighs. It soaked the hem of her skirt and splashed onto her shirt.

Laughing, Bess bent to let the water flow over her hands, her wrists. Elbows. It rolled under her touch, evading her grasp. She knelt, soaking herself in the waves.

They touched her like a thousand kisses all over her at once. Like tongues licking. Splashing higher, wetting her panties. Water covered her to the waist when she sat. Moved up over her throat when she lay back. It covered her face and she held her breath, waiting for it to retreat.

Her hair came loose, but Bess thought nothing of losing the clip that had bound it. Like seaweed, her hair swirled, tickling her bare arms and covering her face, only to be washed away by the next wave. Salt and the grit of sand painted her lips when she licked them, opened them as if for a lover’s kiss. She spread out her arms, but the water wouldn’t be held. Salt stung her eyes, but not from the sea. From her tears, sliding unbidden across her cheeks. They tasted bitter, not like the fish-sand-salt sweetness of the ocean.

Bess opened herself up to the water and the waves. To the past. Every time the surge came she held her breath, wondering if this next time would be the one to take her by surprise and fill her lungs with water. Or to pull her deeper, under. And she wondered what she would do if that happened. If she would care. If she would fight or let the sea take her away, if she would give up and be lost in it the way she had once been lost in him.

They’d made love on this beach with the sound of the ocean masking their cries. He’d used his mouth and hands to make her writhe. She’d slid his cock inside her to anchor their bodies, but no matter how many times they’d fucked, it hadn’t worked. Pleasure didn’t last. Everything ended.

Her own hands were a poor substitute, but Bess used them anyway. Sand rasped her fingertips as she slid them beneath her shirt to cup her breasts, remembering how his mouth had felt. Lower, how his hands had moved between her thighs. She parted her legs, letting the sea stroke her the way he once had. Her hips lifted, pushing against something that didn’t push back. The water retreated, swirling, exposing her to the night-chilled air.

More waves came to embrace her as she caressed herself. It had been a long time since she’d taken this pleasure, done this alone. She hadn’t made love to herself in so long her hands felt like someone else’s.

He hadn’t been her first lover or the first boy to give her an orgasm. He hadn’t even been the first she’d loved. He’d been the first to turn her inside out with something as simple as a smile. The first to make her doubt herself. He’d taken her deeper than anyone ever had, and yet she hadn’t drowned.

The affair had been short. A page in the book of her life, barely a chapter. Only one verse of the song. She’d spent more years without him than she had with him. None of that mattered, either.

When Bess touched herself, it was his smile she imagined. His voice, murmuring her name. His fingers linked with hers. His body. His touch. His name.

“Nick.” The single word slipped off her tongue for the first time in twenty years, unlocked by the sea. This sea. This sand. This beach. This place.

Nick.

The hand that closed over her ankle was as warm as the water, and for a moment Bess thought a hank of seaweed had wrapped itself around her. A moment later another hand touched her other foot. Both slid up her legs, to her thighs. The weight and heat of a body, solid and not like the water, covered her. She’d opened her mouth to the sea as if accepting a lover, but now a real kiss claimed her. Real lips, real hands, a real tongue plunged into her mouth and stroked hers.

She should have screamed at this invasion. At this dark stranger’s sudden violation. Yet this was no stranger’s touch. She knew it better than she knew her own. The weight of his hands. The shape of his cock. The taste of him.

It was fantasy, memory. It was wishful thinking. Bess didn’t care. She opened herself to him the way she had to the water. Tomorrow when the sun rose and her skin chafed from the sand’s abuse she would call herself a fool, but here and now her desire was too strong to deny. She didn’t want to deny it. She’d tossed caution aside then, and she did so now.

His hand went beneath her head to cradle it. His mouth covered hers, nibbling, before his tongue plunged again into her mouth. His moan vibrated her lips. His fingers threaded through her hair.

“Bess,” he said, and then more. The sorts of things lovers said in the heat of their passion, words that didn’t hold up under scrutiny.

She didn’t care. Bess slid her hands down Nick’s back to the familiar rounded curves of his ass. He wore denim and she pushed it down until he was naked, his skin hot. She traced the ditch of his spine with her fingers as his kiss claimed her. Water splashed and retreated, no longer rising high enough to cover them.

His hand slid between her legs and pulled at her panties. The thin material gave way at once. He pushed her skirt up to her hips. Her shirt was so thin and so wet it was as though she wore nothing. When his mouth clamped over one turgid nipple, Bess cried out and arched. His fingers found the heat between her legs. He rubbed, and her body jerked. She was ready.

“Bess,” Nick said into her ear. “What is this?”

“Don’t ask,” she told him. She pulled his mouth back to hers. Beneath her, wet sand cradled them. She dug her heels into it and opened her thighs. She reached between them to grab his cock, the thick heat of it as familiar as everything else. “Don’t ask, Nick, or it might all go away.”

She stroked him gently, too mindful of the salt and sand to urge him to enter her. Not even in fantasy could she forget the agony of sand in places it didn’t belong. The memory of it, of how they’d both walked bowlegged from it, made her laugh aloud.

Bess laughed again as Nick’s mouth fastened on her throat. His hands roamed. The two of them writhed together, rolling in the wet sand. He laughed in turn, tipping back his head. In the faint starlight he looked no different than he ever had.

His hand moved slowly between her legs, but it was enough. Bess tensed, her fingers digging into the smooth muscles of his back. She bit back her cry as a climax filled her. Nick grunted, hips thrusting forward against her. Heat spurted against her belly, bared by his touch, and the sea smell grew briefly stronger.

Nick bent his face to her shoulder, holding her tight. The water tickled her feet but came no higher. His body, naked and smooth, covered her.

The sea had brought him to her, a fact Bess accepted without question. Without hesitation. None of this would be real in the daylight. It wouldn’t be real even the moment she left the water and stumbled, soaking, to her bed. None of this was real, but all of it was, and she didn’t question it for fear it would all go away.

Chapter
02

Then

“Sure you don’t want a hit?” Missy waved the joint in Bess’s direction, sending a cloud of fragrant smoke to tickle her nostrils. “C’mon, Bessie. It’s a party.”

“Bessie is a cow’s name.” Bess flipped the other girl the finger and cracked the top on a can of soda. “And, no, I don’t need your weed, thanks.”

“Suit yourself.” She drew deep and coughed, destroying her carefully wrought illusion that she was some sort of druggie queen. “That’s some good shit!”

Bess rolled her eyes and eyed the bowl of potato chips on Missy’s coffee table. “How long have those been there?” She coughed again. “I just put them out, bitch. Right before you got here.”

Bess pulled the bowl closer and checked them carefully. Missy’s trailer was consistently filthy. Seeing no bugs or garbage even when she tipped the bowl from side to side, Bess took a chance. She was starving.

“Christ, I could go for a pizza.” Missy flopped onto the battered armchair and hung her legs over the side. The bottoms of her feet were dark with dirt. Her skirt rode up, flashing a hint of hot-pink lace. “Let’s get a pizza.”

“I have exactly two dollars to last me until payday.” Bess crunched chips and swallowed them down with store-brand cola that had already lost its fizz.

Missy waved a languorous hand. “So I’ll call some guys. Make them bring the pizza.”

Before Bess had time to protest, Missy sat up with a grin and tossed her bleached-blond hair over her shoulder. The motion caused one unfettered breast to surge out of her tank top. Missy was built like a brick shit house, as she was fond of saying, and didn’t mind showing it off.

“C’mon,” she said, as if Bess was protesting, though she hadn’t even opened her mouth. “It’ll be a party. Who doesn’t like a party? Well, besides you.”

“I like parties.” Bess leaned back against the couch Missy had stolen from outside the Salvation Army. “But I have to work tomorrow.”

“Shit. So do I. So what? Let’s have a fucking party, okay?” Missy jumped off the chair and settled her joint in the over-flowing ashtray. “It’ll be fun. You need some fun in you, Bess.”

“I have fun!”

Missy rolled her eyes. “I know what kind of fun you have. I’m talking about some real fun. Get some color in those cheeks. And I don’t mean the ones on your face.”

“Nice.” Bess laughed, even though Missy’s assessment of her wasn’t entirely flattering. How could she not? Missy had a way about her that didn’t allow Bess to take her too seriously. “So you’re going to call some boys and tell them to bring pizza. And they’ll just do it.”

Missy lifted the hem of her teensy-weensy skirt and flashed her tiny pink panties. “Of course they will.”

“I’m not screwing some guy for pizza, no matter how hungry I am.” Bess put her feet up on the coffee table without taking off her flip-flops. She would never have done that at home, God no, even in bare feet. Missy didn’t seem to care. Or notice.

“What do I care who you screw?” She was already dialing the phone as she rummaged in the fridge for a beer. “I mean, do you even—Baby, hi!”

Bess listened, fascinated, as Missy finagled her way into free food. She made a couple calls and hung up, then turned back with a triumphant look on her face.

“Done. Ryan and Nick will be here in half an hour with the pizza. I told Seth and Brad to bring some beer. Heather and Kelly are coming, too. You know them, right?”

Bess nodded. She knew Ryan and had met the other girls a few times. They waitressed with Missy at the Fishnet. The other guys she didn’t know, but she didn’t really have to. She knew Missy. They’d either be frat boys slumming, or townies with bleached hair and permanent suntans. “Yeah.”

“Don’t sound so thrilled. Not everyone can live in a house on the beach, bitch.”

Missy’s “bitch” wasn’t meant as an insult, and Bess didn’t take it that way. “I didn’t say anything.”

“Oh, you don’t have to. Your face says it all.” Missy demonstrated, wrinkling her nose and thinning her lips.

“I don’t look like that.” Bess laughed again to cover up her embarrassment at knowing she probably did.

“Sure, right. Whatever.” Missy waved a hand and returned for her joint, which she sucked greedily, coughing some more. “Poor little rich girl. Can’t your grammy and grampy fork you over some dough?”

Bess finished her soda and got up to put the can in the garbage, even though Missy would hardly have noticed if she’d tossed it onto the living room floor. “They’re letting me live without rent for the summer. What more could I ask for?”

“An allowance.” Missy, still puffing, went to the dresser just outside the hallway to the bedrooms and pulled out a makeup bag from the top drawer. From the bag came more jars and tubes and brushes than Bess had ever seen in any woman’s arsenal. Missy already wore a full coating of cosmetics, but apparently her “at home” face wasn’t presentable enough for company other than Bess.

“I’m twenty years old. I’m past the point of getting an allowance.” Bess didn’t point out that though her weekly paychecks were less than what Missy pulled in with her tips, Bess was saving for college and Missy was just…living.

Missy painted on a fresh set of arched eyebrows and turned her face from side to side to stare at her reflection. “I’m going to dye my hair black.”

“What?” Bess was used to her non sequiturs by now, but this was a little out there. “Why?”

Missy shrugged, then adjusted her tank top to expose more cleavage. She swiped her eyelids with shadow and spoke with pursed lips as she used a brush to paint them. “Just because. C’mon, Bess, haven’t you ever wanted to do something different?”

“Not really.”

She turned to look at her full on. “Not ever?”

Bess chewed the inside of her cheek before remembering it was a bad habit, and stopped. “Different like how?”

Missy swaggered close enough to pluck at the collar of Bess’s Izod shirt. “I could lend you something to wear before the guys get here, if you want.”

Bess glanced at her khaki skirt, bare legs and flip-flops before looking at Missy’s denim mini and tiny top. “What’s the matter with what I have on?”

Missy shrugged and went back to her face. “Nothing…for you. I guess.”

Girls have a language in which the words have nothing to do with the meaning. Bess flushed, looking again at her clothes. She touched her hair, bound on top of her head with a spring clip. She’d showered after work and used some powder and gloss, but nothing more than that. She’d figured they’d watch TV or something, not have a party.

“I think I look fine.” She sounded defensive. “I told you, I’m not planning to get screwed.”

“Of course you’re not.” Missy sounded so patronizing and sympathetic, Bess erupted.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” She strode to the mirror, pushing Missy aside to stare at her reflection before turning away to glare. “Anyway, anyone who doesn’t like me the way I am can just…suck it!”

Missy’s drawn-on brows rose at Bess’s exclamation. “Cool it down, sugar-tits. Jesus! Fine, don’t get laid. Save yourself for your lame-ass boyfriend back home.”

“I’m not saving myself for anyone,” Bess said. “Just because you don’t comprehend the concept of being faithful doesn’t mean nobody else does. And he’s not lame.”

And he might not be her boyfriend anymore.

Missy rolled her eyes. “Whatever. Do I care?”

“I don’t know. Do you? You sure as hell keep bringing it up.” Bess put her hands on her hips.

Missy glared. Bess glared back. After a second, though, Missy’s lips twitched. A second after that, both of them were guffawing.

“You are such a drama queen.” Missy pushed Bess aside in order to put away her makeup.

“Screw you, Missy.”

“I didn’t know you swang that way, sugar-tits.” She fluttered her heavily mascaraed eyelashes.

Bess, as usual, had nothing wittier to counter with, and settled for trying to tidy up the disaster of Missy’s living room. She’d only managed to clear piles of magazines and newspapers off the couch and chairs before the door opened and Heather arrived with Kelly in tow. Both looked pretty drunk already.

“Hey, girl!”

“Lookit you, bitch! What the hell? Who did your hair?”

“Where’s the fucking pizza?”

Bess watched the interchange and wondered what it would be like to have a house where people came in without knocking and tossed themselves onto the furniture as if they lived there. She was pretty sure she’d hate it. She nodded when Kelly waved at her, but Heather, typically, ignored her. Heather didn’t like Bess. The feeling was mutual, because Bess knew Heather thought she was a stuck-up princess.

People arrived for the next hour, many more than Missy had actually invited, but news of a party always spread fast. The trailer, not even a double-wide, soon became a haze of smoke, body heat and music. Bess, stomach growling, kept hoping someone would show up with the promised pizza. Bags of chips and pretzels appeared along with forties of malt liquor and bottles of every other kind of booze. At least Missy’s friends brought their own with enough to share.

Bess wasn’t the only one underage, but she was probably the only one not drinking. Nobody cared, assuming as long as she had a cup in her hand she was getting as wasted as the rest of them. Missy would have known, but was so busy drifting from lap to lap she couldn’t be bothered with Bess.

A cheer went up when the pizza arrived, finally. Bess had met Ryan before. He fucked Missy once in a while, when they were both drunk or stoned or bored. He held the pizza boxes high, shouting out, “Two bucks, two bucks,” to everyone he passed.

Two bucks. All she had in her pocket. For two bucks she could have gone and bought her own slice and a drink, but at the party she’d be able to eat as much as she wanted or could snag before it all disappeared. Ryan clearly knew what he was doing, though, because he’d brought four pizzas. The guy behind him, his face shadowed by a ball cap pulled low over his eyes, carried another three.

“Bess.” Ryan winked at her as she moved aside the empty cans and paper plates already stained from previous pizzas to make room for the boxes. “How you doin’, baby?”

“Good.” She brushed off her hands. The table was sticky, but it wasn’t worth the effort to clean it. She turned in Missy’s tiny kitchen to grab some paper plates from the cupboard and set them down. Already hands were digging into the boxes and carrying away slices. She wanted to get hers.

“This is my buddy, Nick.” Ryan jerked a thumb over his shoulder as his friend set down the other boxes.

Concentrating on sliding the steaming slices onto her plate, Bess did little more than flick a glance in his direction. Her stomach had sprouted the pins and needles preceding the shakes of low blood sugar, and though there’d be more than one person passed out here by the end of the night, she didn’t intend to be the first. When she looked up, Nick was gone, swallowed by the mass of writhing, dancing bodies.

Ryan leaned across her to grab a napkin from the counter behind her. His arm brushed her breast. His breath wafted over her throat and cheek. Pinned between the table and the counter with no place to go, Bess flushed at the intimacy, especially when Ryan grinned and winked. His glance fell to the front of her shirt before he looked at her face again.

“Nice party,” he said, and turned away to load his plate with pizza.

It wasn’t the first time Ryan had flirted with her, and it wasn’t even that Bess minded. Whatever arrangement he and Missy had didn’t seem to be exclusive for either of them. Ryan was cute and knew it. It didn’t make her feel special. Just a little off balance. It had been so long since she’d paid attention to any sort of male interest, she wasn’t sure how to react.

“What are you drinking?” This came from a guy Bess didn’t know by name, though she’d seen him around. He held up a bottle of tequila. “Margarita?”

Bess looked for a blender and saw none. “Umm…no, thanks.”

“Okay.” The guy shrugged and turned to the girl next to him, who waited with open mouth. He took the bottles of tequila and margarita mix and poured both into her mouth at the same time, stopping when the liquid started overflowing. She swallowed and choked, coughing, waving her hands, and they laughed.

Bess tried hard not to make that face, the one Missy had mimicked, but…ew. Gross. Not to mention a good way to end up in the hospital. Shielding her pizza with her body, she eased through the throng, but found no place to sit in the living room. She leaned instead against the wall in a corner. People were playing quarters already. Someone else had set up a beer bong. Bess concentrated on eating.

The problem was, once finished, she was thirsty again, which meant a return trip through the party jungle to the kitchen. She had to stop to dance a little along the way with Brian, who worked with her at Sugarland, because he snagged her wrist and wouldn’t let her pass without a bit of bump and grind. Brian liked boys, but was fond of reminding Bess frottage didn’t need a gender.

“You look pretty tonight!” He shouted over the heavy bass thumping of “Rump Shaker.” “Zooma zoom, baby!”

Bess rolled her eyes as he grabbed her ass and ground against her. “Thanks, Brian. You like guys, remember?”

“Honey,” he said into her ear, with a lick that made her giggle and squirm, “that makes it even more of a compliment.”

She could hardly deny that, so she let him feel her up and down for a few minutes while they danced.

“So, who’ve you got your eye on?” she shouted into his ear.

“Oh, boys, boys, boys,” Brian said with a shake of his highlighted bangs. “Boys all over, honey, but sadly, most of them are straight. How ’bout you? Still remaining true to your Prince Charming?”

Bess kept herself from making a face at Brian’s assessment of her love life. He didn’t need to know about her problems with Andy. He’d either commiserate, which she didn’t want, or give her advice, which she didn’t need.

“Dish!” Brian ordered, twirling her. “Mr. Right’s Mr. Wrong, all of a sudden?”

If she’d been able to get in touch with Andy more than once in the past three weeks, maybe she’d know. Bess shook her head and eased herself out of Brian’s grasp. “I didn’t say that.”

“You didn’t have to,” he shouted in her ear, and she winced. “What did that bastard do?”

“Nothing!” Bess tugged her hands out of his.

Brian didn’t let her go easily. “I don’t believe you!”

“I’m going to get a drink.”

“You have to work tomorrow!” He pretended to be scandalized, but his easy grin gave him away.

Bess laughed, shaking her head. “So do you. See you later, Brian.”

Before he could protest, she kissed him quickly on the cheek and disengaged from his octopus hands so she could finish her quest for something to drink. She pushed away and through the crowd, toward the kitchen. She didn’t want to talk about Andy to Brian. Or to Missy. She didn’t really want to talk or think about Andy at all, because once she started, she might very well have to admit that things were going suddenly, desperately sour.

The sodas had all disappeared from the fridge, and she wasn’t about to trust the open two-liter bottles littered all over the counter and table. The pizza had been completely devoured, with nothing but a few strings of cheese and some splotches of sauce left on the boxes to prove it had ever been there at all. Bess gathered up the empty cardboard and shoved it beneath the table, then searched for a plastic cup that didn’t look as if it had been used. She filled it with tap water and the last couple of ice cubes, then refilled the ice-cube trays and put them back in the freezer.

“It wouldn’t be a party without you, Mommy.” Missy draped herself over Bess’s shoulder and kissed her loudly on the cheek. “There. Now you can’t say you didn’t get any action tonight.”

“Too late. Brian beat you to it.” Bess wiped off Missy’s kiss and looked out over the room. She wouldn’t have been surprised if they rocked the trailer right off its blocks. Or set the place on fire from spontaneous combustion.

Missy babbled something, slurring, but Bess wasn’t listening. Across the room, standing along the back wall next to the hall, stood a boy. She recognized the faded T-shirt after a second. Ryan’s friend. He’d taken off his ball cap.

He wasn’t doing anything notable, just tipping a bottle of beer to his lips, but he turned to look toward her just as she noticed him. Their eyes met, or she thought they did, though it was impossible to tell if he was looking at her.

That moment stamped itself into her mind forever. The smell of weed and beer, the lingering taste of pizza, the warmth of Missy’s hand on her arm. The splash of cold on her calf as someone spilled a drink at that moment.

The first moment she really looked at him.

“Missy. Who is that?”

Missy, busy making fun of the guy who’d lost his cup, didn’t look up at first. In the half minute it took for her to answer, Bess had already imagined herself walking across the room and taking the beer out of his hands. Putting it to her mouth. Putting him to her mouth.

“Who?”

Bess pointed, not caring if he saw.

“Oh, that’s Nick the Prick. Dude! Wipe it the fuck up!”

Missy, no longer amused by her guest’s fumbling fingers, punched him in the arm. “This isn’t a fucking bar!”

Bess ignored them both, just moved out of the way to let the guy get on the floor to wipe up the spill. Nick was no longer looking at her, and she was glad, because that meant she could stare all she wanted. She imprinted his profile on her mind. From this distance she had to imagine the length of his lashes, the depth of his dimple. The way he’d smell…

“Bess!” Missy shook her arm.

“Does he have a girlfriend?”

Missy gaped. She looked at Bess, then toward Nick and back again. “You’re shitting me. Nick?”

Bess nodded. She’d forgotten her ice water and grabbed it up now, needing to quench the sudden dryness in her throat. She’s going to say he has a girlfriend, she thought. She’s going to tell me he’s in love with some girl with big tits and bigger hair. Or worse, she fucked him. Missy fucked him…

Missy blew upward to move her bangs off her forehead. She shook her head. “Why do you want to know?”

Blaming the booze and weed for the stupid question, Bess shot her a look Missy couldn’t possibly misunderstand. She gaped again, then laughed. “Nick? You have a boyfriend, remember, sugar-tits?”

Bess hadn’t forgotten. Then again, it was sort of up in the air whether or not she still had one. She looked at Missy. “If I didn’t have a boyfriend, I would be on him like butter on a cob of corn.”

Missy guffawed and slapped her thigh. “Are you serious?”

Bess had never been more serious about anything in her life. “Does he?”

“Have a girlfriend?” Missy’s thickly lined eyes turned calculating, and she looked over Bess’s shoulder, presumably at the topic of their conversation. “No. He’s into guys.”

“What? No!” Bess clenched her fists, turning to stare. Nick’s head bobbed to the beat, up and down, and he tipped his beer again. “He’s gay?”

“Sorry,” Missy said.

She gritted her teeth and tucked her fists beneath her opposite arms. “Goddamn it.”

Missy’s brows flew up to her hairline. “Dude!”

“I’m not a dude,” Bess snapped, so disappointed she couldn’t think straight.

Missy patted her arm. “Have a drink. It won’t seem so bad then.”

“It’s not bad.” Bess shook her head and gulped ice water. “Forget I said anything.”

Missy ho-ho-hoed. “Have a drink anyways.”

Bess lifted her glass of ice water and gulped down the rest before tossing the empty cup into the sink. “I have to get home.”

Her head hurt, suddenly, and her stomach, too. All from a stupid boy she’d never even talked to. She was the stupid one. Bess shoved off her disappointment, angry at herself. Angry at Missy.

“Aww, don’t leave.” Missy grabbed Bess’s hand. “Party’s just getting started.”

“Missy, I really have to go. It’s late.”

It wasn’t, really, and she worked the late shift tomorrow. But suddenly Bess didn’t want to watch everyone else drinking and smoking and making out. She didn’t want to watch everyone else hooking up and having fun. Worst of all, while she’d been talking with Missy, Nick had vanished.

“Call me tomorrow!” Missy yelled after her, but Bess didn’t answer.

She burst from the trailer into the welcome freshness of the cool early June air. Not much of the party had moved outside. A shadowy couple kissed leaning against the wall, their hands groping and the sound of their heavy breathing loud enough to carry. A moaning girl bent over in the bushes while her girlfriends held back her hair and urged her to “get it up.” Bess reached for the pitted metal railing but tripped anyway on the last concrete step and twisted her ankle hard enough to make her curse.

“You okay?”

She looked up to the wink of a cigarette tip. “Yeah. I just tripped. I’m not drunk,” she added, angry that she felt she had to explain.

“You’re one of the only ones.”

It was too much of a coincidence, too much like fate, but even before he stepped out of the shadows and into the streamer of light from the streetlamp, Bess knew it was Nick. He took another drag on his cigarette and tossed the butt to the dirt, where he ground it out with the toe of his boot. They both turned at the sound of vomit splattering and moans, and Nick grimaced. He took Bess by the elbow and steered her around the corner of the trailer, toward the street, so easily she didn’t have time to protest.

He let go of her before she had time to protest that, too. “Some people shouldn’t drink.”

Bess shivered a little. The light was brighter here, and it painted his face in silver with purple highlights. He looked like Robert Downey, Jr. in Less Than Zero, she thought a little disjointedly. The un-strung-out version.

Nick smiled. “Hi. You’re Bess.”

“Yes.” Her voice sounded hoarse. Her thoughts seemed fuzzy. Contact high? she wondered as a wave of dizziness swept her. Or Nick’s smile? “You’re Nick. Ryan’s friend.”

“Yeah.”

Silence.

“I’m heading home,” Bess said. Gay. Why did he have to be gay? How could he be gay? Why was every cute boy around here gay? “I rode my bike.”

“That’s hot,” said Nick with another grin. “What do you ride? A Harley?”

Her thoughts weren’t normally so slow, but somehow lust and disappointment had made syrup of her brain. “What? Oh…no. Ten-speed.”

He laughed. Bess watched his throat work. She wanted to lick him, and had actually moved forward a tiny bit before she stopped herself, embarrassed. Nick didn’t seem to notice.

“Where do you live?”

She hesitated before telling him, not wanting to admit she lived in one of the beachfront homes.

“Don’t worry, I’m not a serial killer,” Nick said. “You don’t have to tell me.”

She felt really stupid then. “Oh. No, it’s not that. I’m staying in my grandparents’ house on Maplewood Street.”

There was only the barest pause before he nodded. “Uh-huh.”

His gaze traveled over her, up and down, and Bess suddenly wished she’d borrowed some of Missy’s clothes. Put on some makeup. Except what did it matter, when he didn’t like girls, anyway?

“Nice meeting you,” she said. It sounded lame, even to her. The sort of thing you said at a cocktail party, not an impromptu kegger in a trailer park.

“You work at Sugarland, right? I’ve seen you there.” Nick thrust his hands into the pockets of his faded jeans.

“Yes.” Bess looked for her bike, still chained to the hitch of Missy’s trailer.

“With Brian, right?”

Bess gave an inward sigh. Of course he would know Brian. “Yeah.”

“I work at the Surf Pro.” Nick walked with her to the bike and watched as she unlinked the chain and wound it along the straddle bar.

One of the few stores Bess had never been in. The bathing suits were too expensive there, and she didn’t surf. Or sail. She nudged up the kickstand with her foot, grasping the bike’s handles, and swung her leg over the seat.

“You sure you’re okay?” Nick asked. “Your ankle’s okay and everything? You’re okay to…ride?”

“I already told you, I’m not drunk.” Her answer came out a little more clipped than she’d intended, but it was late. She was tired. And she was trying very hard not to notice how nice his mouth looked when he smiled.

“Okay, well, maybe I’ll see you around.” Nick gave her a nod and waved as she pushed off and rode away.

“See you,” Bess called over her shoulder, with no intention of ever seeing him again.

Chapter
03

Now

“I thought I’d never see you again.”

At the sound of the voice in the doorway, Bess’s soap-slick hands twitched on the coffee mug she’d been rinsing. It slipped from her fingers and crashed to the kitchen’s tile floor. Hot water splashed her legs as she turned, gripping the counter to keep from sliding in the spill.

He stood, backlit, for just a moment before moving forward. The same dark hair, same dark eyes. Same quirked smile.

Everything the same.

Bess couldn’t move. Last night she had dreamed…Oh, but it hadn’t been a dream. Had it? If not, surely she was dreaming now. She curved her fingers against the sink’s porcelain, finding no purchase. Nothing to grip.

“Nick?”

Now he looked uncertain. His hair dripped, and the hems of his jeans. His bare toes, coated with sand, gritted on the tile as he took a step toward her, hand outstretched but quickly pulling back when she shrank against the counter. “Bess…it’s me.”

Her guts tumbled inside her, and she couldn’t breathe. She sipped at the air in uneven, hitching gasps. “I thought…I thought…”

“Hey.” He soothed her, coming closer.

She could smell him. Salt and water and sand and sun. The way he’d always smelled, back then. Bess found more air. Took a deeper breath. Nick didn’t touch her as she stared. His hand hovered an inch from her shoulder.

“It’s really me,” he said.

A low sob forced its way from her throat and she launched herself forward. She wrapped her arms around his waist and pressed her face to the damp fabric of his shirt. She breathed him in, deep and deeper.

It took him a second to put his arms around her, but when he did, his embrace was firm. Warm. He rubbed her back, then slid up a hand to cup the base of her skull.

Bess, eyes closed, shuddered against him. “I thought I was dreaming last night.”

She remembered stumbling up the beach, peeling off her clothes, tumbling into bed without even bothering to dry her hair or brush the sand from her skin. She’d woken to find the pile of salty, sodden clothes staining the rug, and her bed a shambles. The passion of the night before had been replaced by a pounding head and slightly sick stomach.

Nick’s hand rubbed a small, tight circle on her back, between the shoulder blades. “If you were dreaming, I was dreaming, too.”

Bess held him tighter. “Maybe we’re both dreaming, because this can’t be real, Nick. It can’t be real.”

He put his hands on her upper arms and pushed her back far enough to look into her face. She’d forgotten how small he could make her feel. How deceptively bigger he’d always been.

“I’m real.”

His fingers on her arms felt real. Solid. Strong. Her cheek was wet from where she’d pressed it to his shirt. Heat radiated from him as though she stood in front of a furnace, and the smell of him, that lost, welcome smell, filled her head until there was nothing else inside her. Tears blurred her vision and she blinked them away. Then she pushed herself out of his arms.

Bess looked at him. Salt water had spiked his hair, but had ceased sliding down his cheeks. His clothes had started to dry, too. He took up as much space as he ever had. His touch was as warm. Time hadn’t changed him, hadn’t painted lines in the corners of his eyes and mouth or silver in his hair.

Bess touched Nick’s cheek. “How can this be? Look at you. Look at me.”

He put his hand over hers, then turned his face to press a kiss to the center of her palm. He closed her fingers over it, but said nothing.

His smile broke her.

“Oh, no,” Bess said. “Oh, no. No.”

She pulled her hand from his. Neither of them moved, but the distance between them grew vast. Something flickered in Nick’s eyes, an emotion she couldn’t read.

“How many people have a second chance?” he asked. “Don’t push me away, Bess. Please.”

He’d never asked her for anything. Blinking, Bess turned back to the sink. She’d left the water running, and flicked the handle of the faucet down. Without the rush of water pouring from the spigot, the sound of the ocean outside filled the space between them and brought them together.

“How?” she asked.

“I don’t know. Does it matter?”

“It should.”

He smiled and sent the same old twist into her belly, and lower. “But does it? Really?”

When he bent to kiss her, the taste of him chased away logic. All reason. And that, too, was the same as it had always been.

“No,” Bess said, and opened her arms for him again.

The bedroom she took him to wasn’t the ground-level, closet-size room next to the carport she’d used in the past. She’d claimed the master bedroom now, with its private deck and bathroom. Not that he’d have known the difference. She’d never brought him home before.

Nick seemed to hesitate in the doorway until she took his hand and led him to the king-size bed. Bess had stripped the sheets first thing this morning, but only managed to get a fitted sheet back on the mattress before the promise of coffee and breakfast distracted her. Without the mountain of decorative pillows and coverlet embroidered with seashells, the bed looked bigger. The pristine white sheet, stretched tight, begged to be rumpled.

At the foot of the bed Nick bent to kiss her, but Bess was already stretching on her tiptoes to reach his mouth. She pushed and he let her, and she was on top when they fell together onto the vast empty bed. She straddled him as they kissed, mouths opening and tongues stroking. His hands came around to grab her ass and press her to his damp, denim-covered crotch.

Bess broke the kiss long enough to reach between them and tug open the button and zipper. She reached inside as Nick lifted his hips with a groan. She found more heat, and she cupped him for a moment before working to get the wet jeans down his thighs. They didn’t want to go, but she was determined. Once she got them to his knees it was easy, and she pulled his jeans off and tossed them to the floor as Nick sat up to pull off his T-shirt. He wore only a pair of thin cotton boxers, the front of which tented impressively.

Bess paused, heart pounding. She reached to fill her palm with his erection, at first with the cotton barrier between them and then skin to skin when he helped her tug those down, too. Naked, Nick lay propped on one elbow on the bed, one leg bent at the knee and the other straight. Bess knelt beside him, the hem of her shortie nightgown brushing her at midthigh.

She looked at him, then down at herself. Beneath the thin nylon gown she was bare. Her nipples had already poked out the front of the bodice. Lower, her thighs rubbed together, already slick with her arousal. She looked at him again and found the old familiarity of his body. The dip of his belly next to his hip bone and the pattern of hair leading to the thick, dark nest around his cock. She touched him again, curling her fingers around the root of it and stroking upward with a firm grasp that made him moan.

He was silk and steel against her palm. She stroked again and twisted her hand around the top of his prick before sliding down again. Nick’s cock jerked under her touch, and her body pulsed in reply.

Bess looked at him. His eyes shone and a faint flush had begun creeping up his chest and throat. His mouth parted. His tongue swept his lips. His head tipped back and he sank all the way onto his back when she added her other hand to his balls, cupping and stroking. He muttered what sounded like her name, and Bess smiled.

She straddled him again, his cock trapped between the bare flesh of her thighs. She moved, teasing him with the brush of her pubic curls. Nick put his hands on her hips, his fingers bunching the material of her nightgown as he pushed upward.

His cock rubbed her clit as he rocked against her, and Bess’s lips parted in a sigh. She licked her mouth just as he had moments before. The way Nick’s eyes glittered at the sight of her tongue sent shivers of pleasure dancing down her spine.

“Nick.” She murmured his name, tasting it. She thought saying it might feel unfamiliar, but like the sight of his body, the sound of his name hadn’t changed.

“I want you,” he said in voice as rough as the grit of sand on tile. His fingers tightened on her hips as he nudged his prick along the seam of her slick folds. “I want to be inside you.”

Bess nodded, unable to speak. She shifted, lifted, and he moved to help her. She bent her head, waiting for her hair to fall and shield her face as she guided his cock to her entrance. She’d forgotten she’d pulled it up to keep it from getting tangled as it dried, and with her other hand she yanked off the clip. The heavy locks, longer and thicker than twenty years ago, tumbled around her shoulders and over her face.

Nick hissed and thrust upward at the same time, and Bess didn’t know if his reaction was in response to the sight of her hair falling down or the sensation of easing into her wet tightness. It didn’t matter. She gave her own low cry as she settled onto him. Her thighs gripped his sides. They were connected now.

She didn’t move right away. She looked up through the curtain of her hair, then pushed it off her eyes so she could really see him. Nick smiled. His grip on her hips eased, and he shifted. Bess put her hand on his chest to support herself as she leaned forward to brush his lips with hers. “If this is a dream, I don’t want it to end when we’re finished.”

“It’s not a dream.” His voice was low and hoarse, but unmistakably his. “I told you that.”

He lifted the hem of her nightgown to skim her thighs and belly. “Does this feel like a dream? I’m touching you.”

He pushed upward. “I’m inside you.”

Bess gave a half-strangled laugh. “You’ve been inside me before.”

“Not like this.” He thrust harder and she gasped at the sweet pleasure-pain of him stabbing into her.

He’d been inside her for the past twenty years, but no. Not like this, though she’d thought of it often enough. She didn’t have to think about it now, because now it was happening. Bess ducked her head again as her fingers curled against Nick’s chest. Beneath her palm she should have felt the thump-thump of his heart as it sped up. She took her hand away before she could notice if it was there or not. She gripped him again with her thighs and slid both her hands to the bottom edge of his ribs.

She rode him, remembering how sometimes their rhythm had faltered. She knew her body better now, and when Nick’s pace began to stutter, Bess adjusted easily. She moved when he did, and when he thrust harder, biting his lip in the expression she’d never forgotten, she slowed him with a murmured word and a shift of her body. She slid a hand between them, her finger on her clit and circling just the way she needed it. She groaned at the touch and opened her eyes.

Nick’s eyes flashed as he looked between them, to where her hand moved. He bit his lower lip. His grip tightened again on her hips and he ground her against him, harder and harder. Faster.

Bess closed her eyes. Sensation filled her. This moment. His touch. The sound of her breathing and the skid of his fingertips along her sweat-damp skin. She stroked her clit slowly, then faster, in time with his quickening thrusts. Pleasure built until the hard, sharp shards of it shattered inside her the way her mug had shattered on the floor. She came with a gasping cry as her head tipped back. Her clit pulsed under her finger and she pressed it, urging another wave of climax to surge forth. Nick moaned and thrust once more, his body jerking.

She collapsed on him as she got her breath back. Her face found the perfect spot in the curve of his shoulder. She kissed his neck. Nick stroked his hands down the sides of her spine before he wrapped them around her and squeezed.

“I missed you,” he whispered. His arms tightened and his mouth brushed her ear.

Another spate of tears stung Bess’s eyes and this time, she didn’t blink them away. They mingled with the sweat on her lips and the salt tang of Nick’s skin.

“You don’t have to miss me,” she said. “Not anymore.”

Chapter
04

Then

Sugarland wasn’t the worst place Bess had ever worked. That honor would’ve gone without a second thought to the summer camp counselor position she’d held between her sophomore and junior years of high school. The trauma of that experience had been so severe she was still convinced she’d never have kids.

Waiting on tourists wasn’t as difficult as keeping twenty third-graders interested in weaving lanyards, even when the tourists got pissy about waiting for their food. Bess reminded herself over and over that not everyone in the world had been raised by apes. It just seemed like it.

“Where’s my damned waffle cone?” The red-faced man pounded the counter hard enough to make the napkin holder jump.

He hardly needed any sort of cone, much less a waffle one, but Bess pasted on a bright smile for him, anyway. “Just another three minutes, sir. The machine broke down and we weren’t able to prebake the cones. But yours will be fresh.”

The woman with him, who’d already been handed her cone, but hadn’t offered to share, stopped in midlick. “You mean, mine ain’t fresh?”

Bess bit the inside of her cheek until she tasted blood, but by that time it was too late. The woman wanted her money back on a cone she’d already eaten most of, and her husband was pounding the counter and demanding two new cones. It was quickly heading into chaos, and Bess’s co-worker, Eddie, wasn’t much help. Only a senior in high school, he suffered from a god-awful case of acne that made him so self-conscious he never looked anyone in the eye. Plus he harbored a not-so-secret crush on Bess that rendered him nearly helpless in her presence.

Brian had called in sick, and the other counter girl, Tammy, was even worse than Eddie. She couldn’t make change without a calculator, and wore her Sugarland T-shirts cut off so they’d show her tanned and taut tummy. She spent more time filing her nails and flirting with the lifeguards than anything else. If Tammy hadn’t been screwing the boss’s son, Ronnie, Bess would’ve fired her.

“Are you listening to me?” the red-faced tourist-troll hollered, while slamming a meaty fist onto the countertop.

Maybe being a camp counselor hadn’t been so bad, after all.

So caught up in squaring away the greedy husband-and-wife team, who were finally mollified with two new, “fresh” waffle cones and a tub of caramel corn on the house, Bess didn’t notice who else had come into the shop. Missy wasn’t one to be ignored for long. She sidled up to the counter and flipped Bess a five, then pointed at the slushy machine.

She wasn’t alone.

Nick Hamilton was with her. Tonight instead of a ball cap he wore a red bandanna with tattered edges folded over his sleek dark hair and tied in the back. Among the cloying sweet odors of caramel and fudge, he smelled like fresh air and sunshine and sunscreen. His skin glistened with it, and his cheeks and the bridge of his nose bore a faint pinkish stripe. Proof of his day in the sun.

“Blue,” said Missy. “Nicky, you want any?”

He shook his head and smiled at Bess. “Hey.”

“Hey.” She nodded, her gaze going back and forth before focusing on Missy. “What’re you up to?”

Missy shrugged as she lolled against the counter. Her sly glance over her shoulder at Nick told Bess more than she wanted to know. “You know. Little of this, little of that.”

A whole lot of that, was more like it. Bess forced away a frown but couldn’t stop herself from looking at Nick again. Missy was eyeing him like he was a big old bowl of ice cream and she wasn’t even going to wait for a spoon to eat him with. Jealousy, stupid and formless, stabbed into Bess’s stomach and tightened her throat. Nick wasn’t hers. From what Missy said, he wasn’t going to be hers, either. Unless, of course, Missy had lied. It all made sense. It wouldn’t be the first time Missy’d told Bess a story to get something she wanted, and Bess couldn’t believe she’d fallen for it.

She grabbed up Missy’s money from the counter and filled a slushy cup three-quarters full before shoving it across the counter. She made change and slapped that down, too. Rage stiffened her fingers and hooked them into clumsy claws. The coins scattered on the counter before some clinked to the floor.

“Hey!” Missy protested, bending to pick up her fallen dimes. “What’s up your ass?”

Bess glanced around the small shop, but no other customers had come in. Tammy cracked her gum and looked away when Bess glared at her, and Eddie had already disappeared into the back room. Bess folded her arms across her chest.

“Sorry.”

Missy looked up as she shoved her money into the pocket of her tiny jean shorts. “Yeah, well, not all of us can just go throwing our money all over the place, rich girl.”

The way she said it was more insulting than being called bitch, but Bess did her best not to react. “I said I was sorry.”

Missy appeared soothed, or more likely couldn’t be bothered to care. She sucked suggestively on her straw, hollowing her cheeks and sliding her mouth up and down the plastic tube. “Mmmm. Nick, sure you don’t want any?”

Nick hadn’t been watching her display. He’d been watching Bess. “No, thanks. Can I get a soft pretzel with extra salt, though?”

He dug in his pocket while Bess reached into the hot case for an extra salty pretzel. She handed it to him wrapped in the tissue paper she’d used to grab it, took his money and made change. Sucking on her slushy, Missy watched the transaction closely. Her gaze weighed on Bess’s shoulders and they hunched until Bess forced herself to stand up straight and stare her sometime friend in the face.

Missy smirked. Bess’s answering smile seemed to surprise her. Bess turned to Nick. “So, Nick. I heard the Pink Porpoise is closing.”

The Porpoise was the most popular local gay bar. Bess had been to it once or twice because it was one of the few bars that let underage kids in to dance. It wasn’t the sort of place most straight guys went by themselves, even when they got a good band to play.

“Yeah?” He tore off a bite of mustard-smeared pretzel with sharp, white teeth.

“You didn’t hear that?” Bess wiped at the counter, forcing Missy to move. “I’d have thought you would have.”

Missy tugged on his sleeve. “C’mon, Nick. Let’s get out of here.”

Bess looked up. Nick’s brow had furrowed, but he was stepping backward as Missy pulled him. Missy waved her slushy toward Bess.

“See you later!”

Nick raised the hand clutching the pretzel and followed her out of the shop. The bell jangled as the door closed. Bess slapped the counter with the damp cloth she’d been using to wipe it, and muttered a curse.

“Did you just say…pissflaps?” Tammy cracked her gum and leaned on the counter next to Bess.

“Yes, I did.”

“Gross!” She made a face and angled her head to follow Bess’s gaze out the door. “He’s cute.”

“Apparently, my friend thinks so, too.” Bess dumped the rag in the sink and viciously washed her hands. Without waiting for them to dry, she pointed at the door. “Watch the counter. I’m going in the back.”

Before Tammy had time to protest, Bess went to the tiny back room where they prepped food and stored extra supplies. Eddie, elbow-deep in a box of slushy mix packages, looked up when she came in. His face flushed deep crimson, making the bright red scars of his pimples stand out even more. Normally Bess tried not to look right at Eddie, because it made him blush, but at the moment she was too pissed off to care.

She grabbed up her oversize cup of ice water with the lid and sucked angrily at the straw. The cubes rattled inside the plastic. Eddie blushed harder when she stared at him. “What?”

“N-nothing.” He went back to unpacking the box.

Bess had nothing to do back there, really, except get in his way, but she wanted to fume. She wanted to kick something, or break it. She wanted to slap Missy across the face and call the bitch out. Which, of course, she’d never do, because she really had no reason to.

Bess, after all, had a boyfriend.

Sort of. Or maybe she didn’t. Either way, it didn’t matter, because Nick wasn’t the sort of guy who went for girls like her. He obviously went for girls like Missy.

“Pissflaps,” Bess muttered, and wished she smoked or did something raw like that. She wanted something to do outside the back door, something that made her look cool, while she pretended she wasn’t angry and aching inside at a betrayal she had no reason to feel.

From behind her, Eddie chuckled. After a second, so did Bess. It sounded a little like breaking glass, and it hurt her chest right below her heart, but she laughed just the same. She caught his eye, and the sight of his grin forced another from her, and more giggling, until after a minute they were both guffawing.

“Your friend Missy’s…interesting,” Eddie said when their giggles had faded. “I’ve never seen Nick Hamilton come into the store before.”

“You know him?”

“Everyone knows Nick,” Eddie said, his laughter fading. He wouldn’t look at her. The pink of his cheeks had disappeared, but now crept back.

“I don’t.”

Eddie looked her in the eyes, a rare occasion. “M-maybe that’s not such a bad thing.”

“Must be nice,” Tammy interrupted, sticking her head through the door. “Having time to fool around. But I’m getting slammed out here!”

Bess stood and dusted her hands on the seat of her shorts. “I’ll be right there.”

Tammy rolled her eyes. “You’d better. I’ve got three sundae cones and a jumbo tub to fill!”

As night manager, Bess could have told Tammy to suck it up and deal with it, but Tammy would take twice as long to do the same tasks Bess could do in a couple minutes. “I’m coming, I’m coming.”

She didn’t have time to think of much of anything after that because the store was swamped with hungry, grubby children and sunburned, cranky grown-ups begging for sweets. The last few hours before closing flew past, and by the time she was ready to close up, her mood had changed. She glanced at the clock as she shooed Tammy and Eddie out the back and locked the door, then made her way to the front to lock it, too. With any luck she’d have the bathroom to herself when she got home, and maybe a message from Andy. She’d left half a dozen for him.

“I’m sorry,” she said, looking up as the bell jangled. “We’re—”

“Closed?” asked Nick with a smile that turned her legs to jelly. “I hope so. I came to see if I could walk you home.”

Chapter
05

Now

The sheet beneath her cheek was smooth and cool. The skin beneath her hand, warm. Nick’s chest didn’t rise or fall. He wasn’t breathing. Was he? Could he? She spread her fingers over his nipple, but nothing pulsed beneath it. No heartbeat.

Yet he was alive. There. Solid and real, not transparent. She could touch him. God, she tasted him.

“Tell me what happened,” Bess whispered. She kissed him just above his ribs and let her mouth linger on skin still tasting so much of salt.

He said nothing for so long she became certain he wasn’t going to speak. His hand stroked down her hair over and over, hypnotizing her, and then stayed still. Bess pushed her fingers through the line of curls just below his belly button. The hairs tickled her palm. His body beneath her hand tensed.

“I don’t think I know.” He shifted and his hand took up its stroke, stroke, stroke again.

There were a hundred questions roaming in her brain, but not one to which she could put voice. If he didn’t breathe, if his heart didn’t beat, how could he be warm? If he was a spirit, how could he touch her? How could he fuck her?

Her own heartbeat pounded in her ears and her breath caught in her throat. A chill swept her and she turned to him, pushing closer, grateful for the warmth she couldn’t seem to explain.

And really, how important was it for her to know the details of this magnificent thing, this miracle? Would the knowing of it somehow change it? Make it better?

Or make it worse?

“You don’t have to tell me,” Bess said.

She curled her fingers over his hip bone to press the solid curve beneath warm flesh. She’d memorized every detail of his body with her mouth and fingertips, and had forgotten nothing, but touching him now was as new as if it were the first time. Everything about him was new and old at once, and overlaid with memory.

“I was gone,” he said simply. Three small words with such complication in their meaning. “But now I’m back.”

Bess nuzzled his side, then pushed up on her elbow to look at him. Nick’s fingers tangled in her hair before he let go. She leaned close enough to kiss his mouth, but didn’t. She waited for the puff of his breath on her face, and of course it didn’t come.

“I don’t want to know,” Bess told him. “It doesn’t matter. Does it? You’re here now.”

He put his hand on the back of her neck and pulled her down for the kiss. Mouth to mouth, lip to lip, tongue to tongue. Their teeth clattered briefly, and Bess pulled away to look again into his eyes. They were the same. She traced the line of his brows with her fingertip and buried her face into the solace of his shoulder.

“No,” he said after a few seconds. “I guess not.”

He held her for a minute while her shoulders shook with the sobs she tried without success to bite back. “Why are you crying?”

She held him tighter, her laughter mingled with tears. “Because…I just found out you were gone and I didn’t even know, and now you’re back. You’re here and I’m here, and it’s like…”

“It feels different, too,” Nick said. “It feels…deeper.”

Bess laughed and looked into his face. She touched it. Solid and real. “I’m going crazy.”

“You’re not. I’m real.” He put her hand on his crotch. His penis stirred beneath her touch. “Does that feel like you’re crazy?”

Bess rolled her eyes a little, but didn’t pull her hand away. “Same old Nick—”

“Thinking with my dick,” he finished for her. “Yeah. Some things don’t change.”

“And some things do,” she told him. Still in her shortie nightgown, Bess got up from the bed and went to the window. Her thighs felt a little chafed and she ached between her legs from the unaccustomed rough treatment, but though they hadn’t used a condom, nothing trickled down her thighs.

Apparently, just as he didn’t breathe, Nick didn’t ejaculate, either. There was heat, and she smelled him on her body, but no…evidence. This thought strangled her with the half laugh stuck in her throat. Bess rested her head against the cool window glass and closed her eyes, listening for the sound of the ocean she couldn’t see.

His bare feet whispered on the carpet and his heat reached her before his hand did. She didn’t shrink from his touch, but neither did she go to him. When she opened her eyes, he was looking out the window, too. He turned to her. He ran a hand down her hair.

“It’s longer,” he said.

He was the same, but many things about her had changed. “Yes.”

“I like it.” He tugged the ends and slipped his hand up to cup the back of her neck. “It’s pretty.”

She didn’t think he’d ever said she was pretty. The compliment nearly overwhelmed her with emotion, and she chewed the inside of her cheek until she got herself under control. “Thanks.”

“I mean it.”

Her laugh tasted bitter. “Right. Two kids and a lot of years later, I’m still the same.”

“You are to me.” His voice gained a hard edge that made her look at him.

Bess lifted her chin, then pulled off the nightgown and dropped it to the floor. In the bright and unforgiving early afternoon sunshine, she wanted to cringe and hide behind her hands, but she straightened her back and let him see her. All of her. The scars, the marks, the places where her body had changed. She’d kept in shape and actually weighed less now than she had then, but…she didn’t look the same.

She gestured at her body. “I’m not a girl anymore, Nick.”

His gaze traveled over her from head to toe, so slowly she wanted to squirm, but Bess kept herself still. When at last he raised his eyes again to her face, she braced herself for the look of disgust, or worse, mockery.

This time when he reached for her hand, she let him take it. He pulled her two small steps into his arms. Their bodies still fit as perfectly as they always had. Against her belly, his penis thickened, not quite erect. His hands found the curve of her ass and pulled her closer.

“I don’t know what you’re worried about,” Nick said. “To me you look the same as you always did.”

She laughed. “You don’t have to flatter me.”

He pursed his lips. “Yeah, ’cuz that’s really my thing. Flattery.”

“I have gray in my hair. And…” She didn’t want to catalog all her flaws for him when he could so easily see them for himself, but at his still-curious gaze, Bess couldn’t stop herself. “And crow’s-feet and laugh lines…you don’t see any of that?”

He shook his head. Andy had often claimed the same thing, but Andy was also the first to remind her that if she ate too many cream puffs her ass would spread. Bess let her head rest against Nick’s chest for a moment before looking at his face again.

“Tell me what you see.”

“You’re beautiful,” Nick said.

He’d never told her that, either. She wouldn’t have believed he meant it then, anyway, if he had. She believed him now.

Chapter
06

Then

Bess kept her bike between her and Nick, as though that small barrier there made any sort of difference. He was still so close she could smell him. Close enough for their arms to brush every so often. She tried ignoring the tingle that shot up and down her arm every time his bare skin connected with hers, but it wasn’t easy.

“You don’t have to walk me the whole way,” she protested when they got closer to her house. “Really. It’s late.”

“Which is why I should walk you.” Nick grinned.

They stopped under a streetlamp. His pirate bandanna held his dark hair off his face, but Bess remembered the way it had fallen across his eyes the night of Missy’s party.

“You really don’t have to,” she said.

It would be hard to explain to her aunt and uncle or cousins or any of the half-dozen other people staying in her grandparents’ beach house exactly why she was being escorted home by a young man. A townie, no less, and definitely not Andy. They all knew Andy. They all loved Andy.

She loved Andy.

“Fine. Okay.” Nick shrugged and pulled a pack of Swisher Sweets cigars from his pocket. He lit one with the lighter he pulled from his jeans pocket. The fragrant smoke swirled between them, and Bess, who normally would have coughed, sucked it in.

The circle of light was a wall around them, keeping out the night. Bess heard the low mutter of voices and the jangle of a dog’s leash, but she didn’t turn to see who was walking by. The soft and never-ending roar of the ocean was muted here, just three blocks back from the beach. She’d taken him the long route home.

“It’s a crazy house,” she explained, though Nick hadn’t asked her to clarify. “It’s my grandparents’ house and they let everyone in the family take turns with it. They could get more money if they rented it, but they said they’d rather know who’s sleeping in their beds.”

And who was shitting in their toilets, according to Bess’s grandpa, but she didn’t say that.

“Makes sense.” Nick nodded and sucked in smoke, his eyes squinted.

“They let me stay there,” Bess continued, half hating the eagerness in her voice and what she knew had to be a transparent attempt at keeping the conversation from fading away. “I get the crap room, but it’s a place to stay. So I can save money for school.”

Again, Nick nodded, though this time he didn’t add anything. Bess waited, watching the smoke so she didn’t have to look at his face and see if he was looking at her. Or if he wasn’t.

“I go to Millersville University,” she said. “Do you go to school?”

“Nope.” Nick tossed the butt down and ground it with the toe of his sneaker. “Not that smart.”

She laughed at that. Nick’s smile said he hadn’t been kidding, and she stopped laughing. “Oh, c’mon. I’m sure that’s not true.”

Nick shrugged. “Being a smart-ass isn’t the same thing, Bess.”

The way his voice wrapped around the single syllable of her name gave her a thrill. “Being smart isn’t everything.”

“Says the girl who’s smart.”

“Like I said,” Bess repeated, looking away, “smart isn’t everything.”

Nick shoved his hands in his pockets and rocked back and forth on his feet. “How long have you known Missy?”

“For about three years. Since I started working down here.” Bess toed the gravel and leaned on the handlebars of her bike. “You?”

“Just met her. She’s Ryan’s girl.” Nick gave a low, amused snort. “Sometimes.”

“Yeah. Other times she’s everyone’s girl.” Bess surprised herself with that bit of mockery, but Nick didn’t seem shocked.

“Yeah,” he agreed, with another of the slow grins giving Bess a fever. “Not mine, though.”

“It’s not any of my business.”

Nick said nothing. Finally, unable to bear the silence, she looked at him. He wasn’t smiling.

“She tell you I’m queer?”

Bess’s mouth parted but she didn’t quite find the words right away. The longer she didn’t answer, the worse it seemed, until finally she said, “Yes.”

“That little bitch.” Nick scowled. Bess had fallen hard for the grin, but the scowl made her heart pound like the surf. “What the fuck’s her problem with me? If she’s not telling everyone I screwed over Heather, she’s making shit up about me being queer.”

It didn’t take Bess long to figure out what he was saying. Nick looked up at her rueful laugh. “I don’t think it was about you, really,” she said.

“No?” He put his hands on his hips and scowled harder. The light overhead cast his eyes in shadow, but Bess caught the flash of anger, real anger, in his gaze. “What, then?”

“Um…” Bess had been dating Andy for as long as she’d known Missy, but there had still been plenty of rivalry, never actively acknowledged. “Missy likes to prove guys like her better, or something. I don’t know. If I say I like a guy, she’s suddenly going after him.”

That little revelation hung between them and Bess wished she could take it back. Nick grinned slowly, looking even more like a pirate than ever. Bess smiled, too, a bare second after he did. She couldn’t have stopped herself even if she wanted. They shared a look and something unspoken passed between them. An understanding. At least, that was how it felt to her, and when Nick spoke he proved her right.

His scowl softened to a frown. “I thought she was your friend.”

“Yeah. Well.” Bess shrugged. “She is. Sort of.”

“Girls,” said Nick with a shake of his head. “Jesus.” He gave her a sideways glance and an equally sideways smile. “So…she didn’t tell you I wanted to ask you out?”

Bess’s heart lodged so firmly in her throat she was certain she couldn’t speak…until the words came. “No. Did she tell you I have a boyfriend?”

“No.” Nick eyed her. “You do?”

Bess nodded after a moment’s hesitation, not trusting herself to speak. “Sort of” seemed a dangerous answer to that question. Nick scuffed the gravel.

He stopped, head cocked. “What a fucking bitch.”

Bess shrugged again, though he was only voicing what she’d thought earlier. She shouldn’t have cared about sounding disloyal. Missy obviously didn’t care about the unspoken rules about poaching.

“We really should mess with her a little,” he said. “Give her a taste of her own medicine.”

Bess had often thought of doing just that, but had never quite figured out how. “Oh, yeah?”

Nick nodded. “Yeah.”

“And how do you think we should do that?”

It was as if he’d opened a hinge on top of her head and poured her full of heated honey, thick and sweet, easing its way into every crevice from her toes to her scalp. It made her feel languid, that look. And naughty.

“Don’t tell her anything. Just let her think something’s up with us.” Nick grinned again. “Drive her a little crazy, wondering. Right?”

Bess shivered at the idea, the crazy rightness of it. The dangerousness. Yet there was no question of what her answer would be. None at all. “Right.”

Nick held out his hand. “It’ll be fun.”

Bess slid her palm against his and curved her fingers around his. Nick had big, strong hands, a little rough. His fingertips brushed gently at the back of her hand, the sensation magnified by sudden anticipation.

He would pull her closer, just then. Maybe kiss her to seal the deal. Bess’s mouth parted and her body tensed, but Nick let go of her hand and left her yearning.

“Fun,” she agreed hoarsely, and cleared her throat. She stepped back, the bike once again a barrier. “I’ve got to get going. Thanks for walking me.”

“I’ll see you, right?” Nick didn’t move.

Bess didn’t dare turn to look at him fully, but settled for a forced-casual glance over her shoulder. “Sure. Come by the shop tomorrow.”

“Bess!”

She stopped. Turned. Smiled. “Yeah?”

“Good night.” Nick saluted her, then spun on his heel and shoved his hands in his pockets.

He walked away, whistling, and Bess watched him until he left the circle of light they’d shared, and disappeared into darkness.

Chapter
07

Now

“Mom! Are you listening?” Connor’s voice snapped Bess back to attention.

“Yes. Of course I am. Graduation is June 13. The invitations for the party already went out, honey. I got it covered.” Bess cradled the phone against her shoulder as she bent to search inside the fridge. She’d been forgetting to eat for the past two days. She was ravenous. “And you guys are leaving right after that with Dad for the Grand Canyon.”

“Yeah.” He didn’t sound as excited about the trip as he had a few months ago when they’d been planning it.

“You’ll have a good time, honey.” Bess ducked to look for something in the back of the fridge. “What time is everyone coming over today?”

“They’re not.”

“Why not?”

Connor, her oldest, grunted into the phone. “Dad didn’t open the pool.”

Bess paused in her rummaging. “He didn’t?”

Andy had always been so adamant about opening the pool for Memorial Day. Having a party for their friends and neighbors. The boys had always invited tons of kids over for burgers and dogs and swimming.

“No.”

Bess really didn’t want to ask, but Connor’s sullen answer prompted the question. “So you’re not having a picnic today?”

“No, Mom, God. Weren’t you listening? No party today! Dad didn’t open the pool!”

“So,” Bess said calmly, to fend off any further histrionics from her easily annoyed oldest son, “what are you going to do?”

“I’m going over to Jake’s house.”

“What about Robbie?”

“What about him?”

“Is he going with you?” The question came by rote. Bess found a jar of jelly and one of olives and pulled them out. She really needed to get to the grocery store. It had been on her list of things to do, but her priorities had…changed.

“How should I know?”

“Well,” she said patiently. “You could ask him.”

“Robbie’s got his own friends,” Connor said coolly, as though putting on a sophisticated tone could change the fact that at eighteen he was still complaining like an eight-year-old about having to take his younger brother with him.

“I know he does. But Jake is his friend, too. I just wondered if he was going with you, that’s all.”

“I don’t know.”

Bess sighed as she pulled out bread and a knife and found a plate in the cupboard. “Where’s your dad?”

Silence. Connor breathed into the phone. Bess stopped making her sandwich. “Connor? Something wrong?”

“No.”

Bess put the knife down and sat to give this conversation her full concentration. “Is something going on with your dad?”

“I said nothing’s wrong! I gotta go.”

“How’s studying for finals coming?”

“Fine. Mom, I gotta go. Jake’s waiting.”

“Are you driving or is Dad dropping you off?” Connor had had a few fender benders since getting his driver’s license, and though he insisted he was a more careful driver now, Bess wasn’t as comfortable with him behind the wheel as Andy was.

“I’m driving.”

She bit her tongue against an admonition. “The Chevy?”

“As if Dad would let me take the BMW.”

“I thought the Chevy needed new brakes.”

“Dad says he’s taking it in next week.”

A vision of crumpled metal and blood spattered on the highway turned her stomach to ice. “Wear your seat belt. Make sure Robbie does, too.”

“I gotta go.”

Without waiting for her to say goodbye, Connor hung up. Bess stared at the phone for a second before replacing it in the cradle. She remembered a sweet, affectionate child who’d never hesitated to hug and kiss her. Who’d been unrelenting with his affection as a matter of fact, to the point of being overwhelming. When was the last time he’d hugged her? When had he been replaced by the sullen, combative young man who locked her out of his life?

“Mmm, jelly sandwich.” Nick, wearing only a towel tucked low around his hips, sauntered into the kitchen. He glanced at the phone. “Everything okay?”

Bess nodded as she spread the bread with jelly and used a fork to scoop out some olives. “That was my son. Connor.”

She deliberately didn’t look up as she said it. They hadn’t talked about why she was at the beach house, or her life now. For the past two days, she and Nick had done little else but screw and sleep. Well, she’d slept. She didn’t know what he did, only that she’d woken more than once to find him gone. Each time, she’d been convinced she’d dreamed it all, and he wasn’t coming back. So far, he always had.

“Want a sandwich?” She gestured at the plate and then looked at him.

Nick put a hand flat on his belly. “I don’t think so.”

He didn’t breathe or sleep, so he probably didn’t eat, either. Bess shoved away that detail. Thinking too much about stuff like that made all of this seem too much like a dream when she wanted…no, needed…it all to be real.

She pulled out the chair and sat to bite into the sandwich with a small sigh. Her stomach rumbled and the hunger she’d been ignoring roared to life. Jelly had never tasted so sweet.

Nick leaned an arm against the door to the deck and stared out at the beach. Bess liked watching him like that, with the late-afternoon sun dappling him with gold. He stood with unselfconscious ease, unaware of or unconcerned with her scrutiny. She could count his ribs, though he wasn’t thin, just lean. The jelly coated her tongue and she swallowed against the sudden rush of saliva. She wanted to press her face to the tuft of hair under his raised arm and nuzzle him. Smell him. She wanted to tug the carelessly knotted towel and reveal all of him to her hungry gaze. She wanted to get on her knees and take him in her mouth and have him fill her up all over again.

He turned and caught her looking. She saw no surprise in his gaze, just the same heat that was burning in hers. Nick didn’t move toward her, though. He stayed silhouetted in the doorway and watched her eat. His eyes took in each movement of her hand to her mouth, each bite, each time she swiped her tongue along her lips to lick away the jelly. He watched her eat as if he was eating, too, only his meal was made of desire and not bread and jelly.

Bess finished her sandwich and licked her fingers, the touch of her tongue on her skin as sensual as if Nick had taken her hand and licked it himself. She picked up an olive and popped it into her mouth, where the tangy, sharp taste contrasted with the jelly’s lingering sweetness, making her eyes water.

The front of Nick’s towel bulged, and still he didn’t move. Bess turned sideways on the straight-backed kitchen chair to face him. She parted her legs, giving him a shadowed glimpse of her thighs below the hem of her nightgown. Nick swallowed. She watched his throat work. She watched his mouth open, his tongue creep out, and she inched up the hem of her gown with a slow, purposeful curling of her fingers in the fabric.

Higher and higher the material crept as Bess clutched it. Her thighs trembled. Her clit throbbed as she parted her legs still further. What did he see now? The first hint of dark blond curls? The shadow of her cleft? The smoothness of her inner thighs?

She shifted soundlessly on the chair and tilted her pelvis just slightly. Offering herself to him. He still didn’t move, though now the front of the towel bulged even more and his fists had clenched at his sides. His chest hitched. His jaw tightened, and Bess watched the small muscles of his cheek leap.

She pulled the gown higher and let the cool breeze from the ceiling fan wash over her bare skin. Without looking away from his eyes, Bess ran her other hand over her breasts until her nipples poked the front of the lace. She didn’t have to see herself to know how she looked; his gaze reflected her. She licked her fingers and slid them under her gown. She used her own wet heat to stroke her rigid clit.

Nick groaned.

Bess, smiling, opened her legs wider to show him exactly what she was doing. No more hiding. She rubbed herself in small, tight circles until her inner muscles clenched and she had to bite her lower lip on a groan of her own.

At the noise, Nick’s hands moved as though he wasn’t exactly sure what to do with them. He took one step and stopped. He put a hand to the place where the towel tucked against his body, but didn’t open it. The pale blue cotton was too thick to outline the shape of his stiffening cock, but there was no doubt he was getting hard.

Bess’s gown now bunched up around her waist. The cool, slick, white-painted wood slipped beneath her bare ass as she moved on the chair. She let go of her gown to grip the seat, her other hand moving faster between her legs. Her toes pointed and she pushed upward a little. The back of the chair dug into her shoulder blades. She wanted to close her eyes, but didn’t.

“Take off the towel and come here,” she ordered.

Nick did with a simple jerk of his wrist. The towel fell unheeded to the floor and he stepped over it. Without stopping the slow circle of her fingers on her clit, Bess let go of the chair to reach for him. She pulled him closer. Her fingers dug into his ass. She kissed his belly and his muscles jumped. She licked him, and his hips bumped forward.

She put her hand at the base of his prick, holding him still while she feasted on the warmth and salt tang of his skin. She nibbled his hip as her hand worked faster between her legs. Nick gathered her hair at the base of her neck and kept it from tangling around her wrist or his cock, wet now from her mouth. She took him in deep, down the back of her throat, gratified at his grunt of pleasure and surprise.

New tricks.

She slid her first and middle fingers inside herself and used the heel of her palm to press against her clit in the same rhythm she was using to suck him. Up, down. She used her tongue to swirl along the rim of his cock head as she brought her curled fist up to meet her mouth. Hand and mouth in tandem, other hand between her legs. She fucked him and she fucked herself. Nick pushed forward as his hand tightened in her hair. Bess opened her mouth at the sting as he pulled, but didn’t protest.

She was already close, her body primed rather than depleted by the past two days of near-constant sex. Pleasure swelled inside her. It would have been easy to lose herself in it and forget what she was doing for him. Easy to stutter. She was so close she almost couldn’t care.

Nick mumbled encouragement as he pumped forward, and she took him all the way in. Stroke, lick, suck, rub. Bess shuddered and had to move her mouth away in order to breathe. Her hand slid up and down along his length while the one between her legs slowed. Slower. Slower…She pressed her body forward into her palm and took him in her mouth again.

She came. The world got dark for a moment, closed to all but the climax washing over her and the taste of Nick. He cried out, something incoherent. Heat flooded her tongue. The memory of his taste and smell, but only the memory. He came in her mouth but only memories filled it.

It didn’t matter. Was, in fact, better that way. A bonus. She’d go down on him ten times a day if she didn’t have to actually swallow.

Her clit pulsed against her hand in the sweet aftershocks of coming. Bess kissed Nick’s stomach and reached behind her head to loosen his fingers from her hair. She looked up at him with a smile.

He stared down at her, face slack in the aftermath of his pleasure, but then smiled back. “Holy shit.”

She laughed and kissed his stomach again, then pushed him gently away so she could stand and go to the sink, where she washed her hands and splashed cool water on her face. Rinsing her mouth was habit rather than necessity, but the cool water tasted good and she cupped a couple handfuls to her mouth.

He was still staring, still naked, when she turned from the sink. “Wow.”

Bess raised an eyebrow and leaned against the counter. “Wow?”

Nick bent to grab the towel and wrap it around his waist again. “You’re fucking amazing, you know that?”

She grinned, pleased. “Thank you.”

“No…” Nick shook his head. “I don’t mean that.”

This wasn’t quite as nice to hear. “No?”

“No.” He shook his head again, so that his hair fell over his eyes. “I mean…you didn’t used to be like that.”

That was both true and not. She hadn’t been like that with him. “I’m not sure what you want me to say, Nick.”

“I don’t want you to say anything.” He crossed to her and took her in his arms, but didn’t kiss her. “I just wanted you to know you’re incredible.”

“Thank you.” She poked his chest. “Better than you remembered?”

He laughed. “Just different.”

She ran a finger around his nipple and watched it tighten. The past two days had proved his cock would do the same if she stroked it, though they’d just finished. Bess looked up at him. “Comes with the territory, Nick.”

Age, she meant. Nick brought her hand to his lips and kissed the fingers, then nibble-kissed up her arm until she laughed and squirmed away. He let her go, but his eyes gleamed and his smile sent warmth oozing all through her.

“Amazing, that’s all.”

Bess curtsied. “I’m going to take a shower, and then I have to go to the store.”

Nick had already showered, but he followed her into the large master bath. Bess started the hot water, then quickly brushed her hair and pulled it into a loose bun on top of her head to keep it as much out of the spray as possible. She pulled off her nightgown and tossed it into the laundry. The scent of sex had thoroughly saturated the fabric. Hell, it had probably saturated the entire house by now.

Nick leaned against the sink, watching. Bess tested the water with her hand before getting in, giving him a glance over her shoulder. “You coming in again?”

“I’ll wait until you’re done.”

Even before, when they’d spent every spare moment they could together, it hadn’t been like this. She’d eaten at his table and brushed her teeth in his sink, slept in his bed and watched TV on his couch, but she hadn’t lived with him. They hadn’t been together for so long without a break, the way they’d been here.

Bess ignored him as she ducked under the water and let it hit the sore spot between her shoulders. Her entire body ached here and there, and bruises had blossomed in strange places. She and Nick hadn’t been rough, just frequent and abandoned. She touched one spot, an already yellowing rose on one hip, and remembered Nick’s teeth had put it there. She filled her palm with shower gel and scrubbed her skin, reminding herself to pick up a net sponge at the store. Her knees and calves prickled with hair she’d been too busy to shave, and she reached for her razor. The shower had a built-in seat and she used that to prop up her foot as she scraped the blade along her soap-softened skin.

The shower door slid open and she jumped, cutting the back of her ankle. The water stung and she looked up, annoyed. “Ouch!”

“You okay?” Nick leaned in the opening.

Bess touched the wound. It left her fingers briefly crimson, but the water quickly washed away the blood. “I’ll be okay.”

“Can I watch you?”

Refusal rose to her lips, but she shrugged. “Sure.”

Self-conscious from his attention, Bess fumbled through the rest of her routine. She’d been looking forward to a long, hot shower, but finished quickly instead and turned off the water. Nick handed her a towel matching his. Bess wrapped it around her chest and stepped out onto the bath mat.

“I never watched a girl shave her legs before.”

She thought about telling him she wasn’t a girl, but didn’t. “Was it everything you ever dreamed of?”

Nick chuckled and moved out of her way as Bess went to the sink. “Sure.”

She brushed her teeth and rubbed her skin with lotion, then hung up the towel. He was still wearing his towel. “Are you planning on getting dressed at all?”

“Sure.” Nick glanced into the bedroom, then back at her. “My clothes…”

“Oh. Right. You can toss them in the washer while I’m gone. We probably should do the sheets and towels, too.” Bess pushed past him and into the bedroom, where his clothes lay in the same pile they’d stayed in since she’d first stripped them off. Behind her, Nick came into the room.

“Yeah,” he said. “Well, it’s not just that.”

He toed the pile. Bess looked up from the drawer where she was pulling out a pair of panties for the first time in two days. She stepped into them, then reached for a bra.

“Oh,” she said, feeling really stupid. “They’re all you have.”

Nick nodded. The breath suddenly wheezed out of her, and Bess had to sit on the edge of the bed. Her stomach tumbled and she pressed her hands to it. She tried to take slow, even breaths, but heard the whistle of her own gasps anyway.

One set of clothes. This seemed more important, somehow, than the fact that he didn’t sleep or eat or breathe. One set of clothes only, nothing more, because Nick had nothing more. Was it what he’d been wearing when he…? Bess shuddered and clapped her hands over her eyes.

The bed dipped beside her. Nick put his arm around her shoulder, and though she meant to resist his touch, Bess turned and buried her face against him. She didn’t weep. This wasn’t grief rearing up inside her, stealing her breath and turning her guts. It was something else. Fear, maybe, that she was insane. Fear of the unknown. Fear he’d go away again without letting her know, and this time she’d have no secret hope harbored within her of ever seeing him again. If he went away this time, she’d never be able to convince herself he would come back.

“I’m sorry,” Nick said. She released her grip on him and looked up. “Don’t be sorry.”

He touched her softly under the chin. “Believe me, Bess, it freaks me out a little, too.”

“I’ll buy you some more clothes when I go out.” She got up, needing action to force away emotion. “You’re about Connor’s size.”

She turned, to see him looking stunned. She paused with one arm through the sleeve of her blouse. “Nick?”

“How old’s your kid?”

“Connor’s eighteen,” she said. “Robbie’s seventeen. They’re what my grandma called Irish twins. Eleven months apart.” Her old habit of babbling caught up with her, and the wider Nick’s eyes got the faster she spoke. “Nobody would ever mistake them for twins, though. They barely look like brothers. Connor’s dark and Robbie’s light, like me…”

She trailed off. Nick had stood and gone to the window to stare out. His shoulders hunched as he gripped the windowsill. Tension vibrated in every line of his body.

“Nick?”

“I didn’t think,” he said. “I know you said it, but I really didn’t think about it.”

Instinct told her to go to him, but old habits couldn’t completely change. She imagined, instead, the silk of his skin beneath her comforting touch. Nick bent his head, his voice a low rasp.

“Tell me how long it’s been,” he said.

How could he not know? She had counted every day since the last time she’d seen him, one by one like bricks in a wall. How could he not remember, unless the passage of time had meant nothing?

“Twenty years,” she told him without pause. There was no point in trying to soften it.

Nick’s body jerked before he got himself under control. He half turned toward her, a tight smile pulling at his reluctant mouth. “So he’s not mine, at least.”

“Not yours?” Bess’s breath skipped in her lungs. “Oh, Nick. No. He’s not. Did you think he might be?”

Nick shook his head. “No. I don’t know. When you said you had kids, I thought…I mean, I knew you might. I thought you must have gotten married and stuff. I just didn’t think…Twenty years…” He trailed off and his mouth twisted again. He blinked rapidly.

The sight of this breakdown, however valiantly he fought it, destroyed the old reserve. She went to him and took him into her embrace. He buried his face against her neck and clutched her so tightly she thought her ribs might crack. She held him while he fought the sobs.

“Shh,” she soothed, her hands rubbing his back comfortingly. “It’s all right.”

Nick shook his head against her. Heat pressed her skin, but though his shoulders heaved, apparently he could no more shed tears than he could sweat or ejaculate.

“I don’t know where I was,” Nick moaned, so low she could barely hear him. “Where the fuck was I, Bess? For twenty fucking years?”

“I don’t know, baby,” she whispered. “But you’re here now.”

He pushed away from her and stalked the room, stopping to grab up his boxers from the pile and shove his legs into them. He turned as she watched, and his face had gone dark. Storm dark.

“Didn’t anyone look for me?” he demanded, throwing out his hands. “Didn’t you care where the fuck I went?”

She blinked, trying not to be offended by his sudden wish to blame her. “I cared. But I didn’t know you were…gone. Not like that.”

“Why not?” He advanced on her to grab her by the shoulders and shake. His fingers dug into her skin. He’d leave more bruises.

She couldn’t explain to him how hard it had been to find out where’d he’d gone or how easy it had been for her to believe he didn’t really want her. “I asked about you, but nobody knew anything. I waited for you, but when you never came I thought you didn’t want to. I didn’t know you couldn’t. Nobody knew.”

He let go of her and paced as she watched. He turned to look at her, answering his own question before she had the chance. “You mean, nobody cared.”

She’d cared, but Bess said nothing.

“I was that much of an asshole, huh?”

“I never forgot you.”

“That’s supposed to make me feel better?” He shook his head.

“No. It’s just the truth.”

“Did you want to forget me?” he asked her after a moment.

Bess sighed, but answered. “After a while. Yes. After a while I just put that summer behind me.”

Nick shook his head, turning. He sank onto the bed, his arms crossed low over his stomach as if it hurt. He rocked a little and groaned, then looked up, face bleak. His cheeks and the bridge of his nose bore the same faint sun-kissed blush of pink, and the rest of his skin was as tawny as it had always been, but dark circles had lodged beneath his eyes. Lines that had nothing to do with age bracketed his mouth.

“I wanted to come to you,” he whispered in a soul-sick voice. “I remember, now. I said I’d find you. I wanted to. But instead—”

She shook her head and went to him. Their knees touched when she sat next to him. She took his hands from their grip on his stomach and put them around her, and she pulled him close. His face nestled with perfect precision into the hollow of her neck and shoulder, and hers found the same place on him. She closed her eyes. She breathed him in. She touched him. Once upon a time the sun hadn’t risen without her thinking about Nick’s smile, and the wind hadn’t blown without it whispering his name.

“You’re here now,” she said. “And that’s all that matters.”

Chapter
08

Then

“What’s going on with you and Nick?” Missy wasn’t subtle enough to pretend she didn’t care.

Bess, on the other hand, was clever enough to pretend she didn’t know what Missy was talking about. “Nick?”

“You know who I mean.” Missy jerked a thumb toward the living room, which bounced with the usual party.

Bess let her gaze follow. Nick leaned against the wall near the hall, tipping a beer to his mouth and talking to Ryan. It was a near mirror of the pose in which Bess had first seen him. It affected her even more this time, but she kept her expression bland when she looked back at Missy.

“What about him?”

Missy scowled. “What’s going on with you two, that’s what.”

Bess shrugged and tipped the glass blender container—God knew where it had come from, or even if it was clean—toward her cup. Brian had made frozen margaritas. She sipped and her eyes watered instantly at the burn of tequila. “Holy shit.”

“Holy shit is right,” Missy said, her own eyes narrowed.

Bess sipped a bit more to hide her smile. “This is strong, that’s all.”

“Especially for a Miss Goody Two-shoes who doesn’t drink.” Missy crossed her arms and leaned back against the counter. The position shoved her cleavage out of her tank top. “Don’t change the subject.”

“Nick?” Bess looked again. This time, he was looking back. And smiling. It was the smile that got Missy, Bess was sure of it, and she smiled, too. “Nothing’s going on with him.”

“I saw you,” Missy hissed. She was on her way to being drunk, but not quite there.

Bess flinched as a fine spray of margarita-scented spittle flew from Missy’s lips. “Saw me what?”

“When you went to the bathroom,” she said. “You walked past him!”

Bess laughed and inched away to get out of the soak zone. “Oh, c’mon. So does everyone who has to go to the bathroom, Missy. He’s standing right there.”

Missy shook her head. “No. No, you—” she stabbed her finger toward Bess “—you…sidled.”

Bess burst into laughter that turned a few heads, even over the sound of the Violent Femmes pounding from the speakers. “Look who got herself a Word of the Day calendar.”

Missy didn’t appear insulted, but she did look crafty. She gulped the final dregs of her margarita without even a grimace. “I saw you touch him when you went past.”

She hadn’t, actually. Over the past week, as he’d managed to stop in almost every day to see her, Bess had thought about touching Nick. She always thought about it, but never did it. “You’re drunk. You didn’t see anything.”

“I saw you,” Missy insisted. “I saw you thinking about it, Bessie.”

“How the hell do you see anyone thinking about anything?”

Missy made a face. “Just because you’re pissed I told you he’s gay…”

“I think he’s the one who’s pissed about that. Not me.” Bess couldn’t help looking for him again. Touching him with her eyes. Now he was deep in conversation with Brian, whose hands were waving, but while Bess missed the sizzle that came from Nick’s gaze meeting hers, she also liked watching him when he wasn’t looking. She could drink him in that way.

“I’m talking to you!” Missy snapped her fingers in front of Bess’s face.

She heaved a sigh and gave Missy her attention. “Nick and I are just friends.”

Missy spluttered into laughter. “Oh, right. Nick? You and Nick the Prick? He’s not friends with any girl unless he’s fucking her.”

“Whatever, Missy.” Bess tried to pretend hearing that didn’t bother her, but her friend wasn’t too drunk to know when she’d struck a direct hit.

“Yeah, yeah. You say whatever.” She pointed across the room. “Ask Heather about him. She’ll tell you.”

Bess wouldn’t ask Heather for a glass of water if she were on fire. She looked up, though, to see Heather standing with her hip cocked, talking to Nick. Heather flung her fall of long blond hair over her shoulder and twirled a piece of it around one finger. If she pushed her boobs any closer to him she’d be holding his beer in her cleavage, Bess thought, and turned away.

Missy looked triumphant, then put on a mask of sincerity that might have fooled someone as drunk as she was, but didn’t convince Bess. “I was only looking out for you, Bessie. Nick’s bad news. And you have a boyfriend, remember?”

As if Bess could forget. She hadn’t told Missy about the sort of. “We’re just friends.” She tried to make the words taste better by swallowing them with a swig of margarita. It didn’t work, and made her cough. Missy pounded her on the back.

“I’m just saying,” Missy said, but nothing else, as if those three words were explanation enough.

Across the room, Bess watched Heather lean in close to Nick, who didn’t pull away. And why should he? The blonde had big tits and a small ass and a flat stomach. Heather could suck the chrome off a truck hitch. She didn’t “sort of” have a boyfriend.

“Slow down with that drink,” Missy advised as she poured herself another. “That bitch Brian’s a fiend for the alcohol.”

For maybe the first time in her life, Bess wanted to get drunk. Instead she put down the cup and left the party. At home she declined an offer by her older, married cousins to join in on a game of gin rummy. She stretched the phone cord as long as it could reach, out onto the deck, and though it wasn’t their appointed time she called Andy, anyway. The phone rang for a long time before his brother answered.

“Andy’s not home.”

“Do you know when he’ll be back? It’s Bess.”

Did she imagine Matt’s hesitation? The sympathy in his voice? Would Andy’s brother tell her the truth if she asked him to, about the other girl whose letters Bess had found in Andy’s desk drawer?

“I don’t, Bess. Sorry.”

He sounded sorry, but that didn’t do her any good. Bess thanked him and hung up. She looked out at the black ocean but could see no waves.

She hadn’t meant to look in Andy’s drawer, hadn’t been looking for something she wasn’t meant to see. He’d asked her to grab a package of snapshots he wanted to show his parents, and Bess, who liked Mr. and Mrs. Walsh but wasn’t sure if they really liked her, had been all too happy to escape the dinner table to get them.

She’d been in Andy’s room quite a few times and knew what drawer in his desk he meant. The pictures weren’t there, but there was a rubber band-bound package of envelopes addressed to Andy in a looping, unfamiliar hand. A girl’s handwriting. Men didn’t dot their i’s with little flowers.

She hadn’t meant to find them, but once she had there was no question of her not reading them. She’d eased the first from the envelope and glanced at the salutation, skimmed the body of the letter and went straight to the signature.

Love, Lisa

Love? What the hell was some girl doing sending Andy, Bess’s Andy, letters signed with such a word? At the sound of footsteps in the hall, Bess had crammed the letters back into the rubber band. If it had been Andy in the doorway she’d have confronted him then, not left it a secret dissolving them like acid.

But it had been Matty, Andy’s younger brother, who’d come to see what was taking her so long. Bess saw on his face he knew what she’d seen, or guessed, but Andy was Matt’s brother and Bess was just some girl who might or might not someday be part of their family. Matt had said nothing, so neither had she. Not to Matt, and not to Andy himself.

She’d left the next day for the shore with Andy’s promises ringing in her ears. He’d write. He’d call. This year, he’d visit. So far he hadn’t kept any part of his promise.

So far, Bess had stopped expecting him to.

Chapter
09

Now

The Surf Pro still sold overpriced bathing suits, but like so much else time had changed, money was no longer quite the issue it had been when she was younger. Bess perused the racks of clothes, knowing she wouldn’t find much of anything Nick really needed—jeans, T-shirts, boxers, socks. Her fingers drifted through racks of baggy surf shorts and wetsuits. It didn’t escape her that she knew just what a twenty-one-year-old guy needed, or what one would like.

She’d only stopped into the shop on a whim because Nick had once worked there. She wasn’t sure what she’d expected to find. A plaque? A shrine to his memory? She doubted there’d even be anyone working there who remembered him. That, more than anything, and hearing him ask why she hadn’t known he was gone, pushed her out of the shop and back onto Garfield Street. She’d driven into town to hit the small grocery store, Shore Foods, because it was what she knew. A lot had changed since the last time Bess had been to Bethany Beach. More shops, for one. She’d have to look for something like a discount store to find everything she really needed, but for now Nick would have to deal with wearing shorts and T-shirts she picked up from the Five and Ten.

Across the street from where she’d parked was Sugarland. Or rather, where Sugarland had once stood. The storefront had changed, nearly swallowed up by a bunch of newly constructed specialty shops and an arcade, but the store inside looked mostly the same. Cleaner and with updated decor, but not much different than it had been when she’d been a slave behind the counter.

On impulse, clutching her plastic bag of gaudy, tie-dyed clothes, Bess crossed the square and went into the shop. The bell jangled on the door the way it always had, and she couldn’t help smiling. The bored teenager behind the counter barely glanced up. She looked about sixteen, with dark, thick hair pulled into a ponytail, and rectangular glasses perched on the end of her pierced nose. She yawned as Bess came up to the counter.

“Help you?”

“I’d like a large tub of the caramel corn.” Bess hadn’t bothered reading the menu, but surely Sugarland still sold the gooey, secret-recipe caramel corn that had been so popular.

The girl waved a languid hand toward a small pyramid of tubs. “We only have small right now.”

Bess couldn’t forget the hours she’d spent bending over the hot vat of sugar, corn syrup and melted butter. Mr. Swarovsky, Sugarland’s owner, had insisted on fresh caramel corn every day. “Is it fresh?”

Bess winced the instant the words slipped from her mouth. She sounded just like every uptight tourist who’d ever made her crazy. The girl didn’t react much, just shrugged.

“Sure, I guess. Hey, Dad!” she called over her shoulder toward the back. “Dad!”

The man who ducked out of the back room took up a lot of vertical space. His broad shoulders and lean hips gave the illusion he was taller even than he was, though Bess estimated him at over six feet. Dark thick hair spiked off his forehead, and glasses nearly identical to the ones the counter girl wore would have hinted at the family relationship even if she hadn’t called him Dad. The man’s smile stretched across his face and revealed straight, gleaming teeth. It transformed him instantly from geeky to gorgeous, and Bess wondered what she’d done to deserve such a look.

“Bess? Bess McNamara?” The man came around the counter, oblivious to his daughter’s goggling stare, and reached for Bess’s hand.

She gave it, and he pumped it up and down. “Yes? I mean, yes. I’m Bess.”

“Bess.” The man held her hand tight in both of his for a few minutes longer than necessary before letting go. “It’s me. Eddie Denver.”

It was rude to gape in disbelief, but Bess did anyway, scanning him up and down while he laughed. “Eddie? Oh my God, Eddie…wow!”

He laughed and ducked his head, and that gesture cemented it for her. “Yeah. Times change, huh?”

Bess wouldn’t have recognized him if he hadn’t introduced himself. Gone were the acne, the braces, the scrawny, perpetually hunched shoulders. Eddie Denver had grown up. “How did you know it was me?”

Eddie’s smile brought a twinkle to his eyes evident even from behind his Elvis Costello-style glasses. “You haven’t changed at all.”

Bess laughed, feeling self-conscious. Her turn to blush. “Oh, sure.”

Eddie shook his head. “No, I mean it.”

She touched her hair, left loose around her face today. She wasn’t going to point out the silver threads there, or pat the extra curves in her thighs and ass. She looked around Sugarland. Eddie’s daughter was still goggling.

“What are you doing here, Eddie? Don’t tell me you’re still working for Mr. Swarovsky!”

Eddie tipped his head back to laugh, and Bess marveled at his easy self-confidence. “No. I bought the place from him about five years ago. Oh, this is my daughter, Kara.”

Kara wiggled a few fingers and went back to looking bored. Eddie laughed. “She’s thrilled to be here, can’t you tell?”

Kara rolled her eyes. Bess gave a commiserating smile. “Your dad and I used to work here together.”

The teen nodded. “Yeah. He told me all about it, oh, about a million times.”

Bess and Eddie laughed together at that.

“Tell me what you’ve been doing with yourself,” Eddie said. “I haven’t seen you since that last summer you worked here.”

Bess started to speak, stopped, laughed. “Oh, you know. The usual. Married, kids. Nothing exciting.”

Eddie glanced around the empty shop, then back at her. “Hey, let me buy you a cup of coffee and we’ll catch up. Can you? Do you have time?”

For an instant Bess caught a glimpse of the old Eddie, the one who’d never been able to look her in the eye. It was endearing, that hint of times past, and she nodded. “Sure. That sounds great.”

“Watch the shop, Kara. I’ll be back.”

Kara rolled her eyes again and shooed them with her hand. “Whatevs, Dad. Go.”

Eddie gave Bess an apologetic look as he held the door open for them both to leave. “Sorry about Kara. She’s not too thrilled about having to work in the shop.”

“Don’t worry about it.” They paused to let a car go by before crossing the street to the coffee shop. “I’ve got two boys. I know how teenagers can be.”

Eddie opened the door for her at the coffee shop, too. His manners gave Bess both a little thrill and a pang of regret that such courtesy should be somehow notable. He even stepped back to let her choose the table, and asked her what she wanted, then went to the counter to order for both of them. It seemed a little old-fashioned but definitely flattering. Bess couldn’t help studying him as he gave his order to the counter staff with confidence. Not much like the stammering, blushing Eddie she’d known back then.

“Thanks,” Bess said when he brought her café mocha and a plate of chocolate-dipped biscotti. Her stomach rumbled and she bit off the end of a dry, crumbly cookie. “Wow, good.”

Eddie dipped his into his coffee before nibbling. “Yeah. I swear I should buy stock in this place. I’m here every day.”

“Maybe you could set up a trade agreement. So many cups of coffee for so many tubs of corn.”

Eddie gave that infectious laugh again. “Yeah, sure. Except sadly, nobody’s interested in my popcorn since Swarovsky’s opened up down the street.”

Bess hadn’t followed, and her face must have shown her confusion.

“When I bought the place from old Mr. Swarovsky,” Eddie explained, “I wanted the rights to the secret recipe, too. The old man was willing to sell me the store because Ronnie supposedly didn’t want to take over, but when it came time to give up the family recipe, the old man hemmed and hawed. I tried telling him Sugarland wasn’t worth much without the caramel corn. He died while we were in the final negotiations. I got the store for a song…but not the recipe.”

Bess made a face. “Ouch. And then Ronnie opened up his own place?”

“You got it. Just down the street.” Eddie shrugged. “Apparently he had plans to do it for a while, but he and his dad didn’t see eye to eye on it. When his dad died, Ronnie got the recipe and I got the old shop.”

“Eddie, that’s too bad. I’m sorry.” Bess reached automatically to pat his arm. He glanced up at her touch, for another fleeting instant looking the way he used to. She took her hand away.

“It’s okay. I’m doing a nice business with the ice cream, and I do sell a couple different varieties of popcorn, but we can’t really compete with the genuine Swarovsky’s. Even if I wanted to be a jerk and use the recipe…which would be stealing. You know how people are about that stuff, Bess. You remember.”

“Loyal,” she said with a nod. “Yeah, I remember.”

Eddie rapped the table with his knuckles. “Hey, enough of that. Tell me about you. Your life. What grand and exciting things did you go on to do?”

Bess’s laugh wasn’t quite as vibrant as his. “I wish I had a lot of stories to tell you, but I don’t, really. I went to school. Got married. We had two boys, Connor and Robbie. Connor’s eighteen. Robbie’s seventeen. They’re going to be coming down here in about two weeks, as soon as school lets out.”

“If they need jobs, send ’em my way,” Eddie said seriously. “Right now it’s me and Kara, but once the season really gets going I’ll need a couple other kids.”

Bess smiled. “I’ll let them know. Thanks.”

Eddie sipped more coffee and eyed her over his mug. “What about your job?”

Bess turned her mug around in her hands. “Oh, that. Well, I worked for a little while, but when I got pregnant with Connor I quit and just never managed to go back.”

“You were going to be a counselor,” Eddie said. “That’s too bad you had to quit. Not that staying home to raise your kids isn’t an important job,” he added hastily. “God knows someone should stay home and raise the children. I just meant…”

“I know what you meant,” Bess said quietly. “I wanted to do a lot of things I didn’t. Having Connor changed a lot.”

She and Eddie stared at each other over their cooling coffees and biscotti crumbs. He sent her another smile, not so broad or wide, but sweeter for being so tentative.

“Kara’s mother, Kathy, and I never got married. We, umm…well, I can’t even say we dated,” Eddie admitted. “The year after your last one here, I shot up about four inches, lost the braces. My face cleared up. I wasn’t Quasimodo anymore.”

“Oh, Eddie.”

He shook his head. “I know what I looked like, Bess. Anyway. I guess the sudden transformation sort of went to my head. I got cocky. A little careless. Kathy was the daughter of one of my mom’s friends from church. Both our moms tried to hook us up, but I wasn’t really interested in marrying a preacher’s daughter.”

Bess swept biscotti crumbs into a pile. “But you had a baby with her?”

She hadn’t meant to sound judgmental, and Eddie didn’t seem to take it that way. He gave her a rueful grin and crunched the last of his biscotti.

“She wouldn’t marry me. We both should have been more careful, but Kathy was the one who said she wasn’t going to spend the rest of her life married to the wrong person just because she’d made a mistake. We share custody of Kara. Kathy married an accountant from New Jersey.”

Bess wiped her fingers free of chocolate with a paper napkin. “And you?”

“Never got married.” He leaned back in his chair to study her, his head tilted. “Never found the right woman, I guess.”

Heat tickled Bess’s cheeks. “You look good, Eddie. I’m glad to hear you’re doing well. Really. Even if you are still a townie.”

They both laughed.

“With beachfront properties selling in the millions, being a townie isn’t quite a slap in the face, you know. Not that I have a beachfront house,” he amended. “Kara and I have a place in Bethany Commons. The condos. It’s not so bad, even if we do have to share it with you tourists.”

“Hey,” she protested. “I’m officially a townie now!”

Eddie gave her the familiar head tilt and an entirely unfamiliar slow, assessing grin. “Cool.”

“What about everyone else?” she asked, looking away. “Have you kept in touch with any of them?”

“Ah, well, obviously I don’t hang out with Ronnie Swarovsky at the country club.”

“Obviously.” She laughed. “Did he and Tammy get married?”

“They did, actually.” Eddie filled her in on twenty years worth of gossip and news. Bess was surprised at how many of the people they’d known back then still came back for the summer, or lived here year-round.

“Melissa Palance lives over in Dewey.” Eddie crunched biscotti between his white, even teeth.

Bess gave him a questioning look, but figured out who he meant a few seconds later. “Missy?”

“She goes by Melissa now.” He laughed. “She’s got four kids and is married to some real-estate bigwig.”

“Wow. Four kids?” Bess shook her head. “I can’t believe it.”

“She stops into the shop sometimes. You wouldn’t even recognize her, Bess. She’s not blond anymore, for one thing.”

Bess twirled a strand of her shoulder-length hair. So far the silver wasn’t overpowering the gold, but in the next few years she figured she’d have to decide whether or not to go gray gracefully or start coloring. “Who is?”

Eddie ran a hand over his dark, shaggy hair, where no signs of white glinted. “My dad’s in his seventies and doesn’t have a gray hair.”

“Wow! Good genes.”

Eddie laughed. “He’s bald.”

Bess eyed Eddie’s thick hair. “You don’t look like you’re in any danger of that.”

“Let’s hope not. How about you? Do you keep in touch with anyone? Brian?” Eddie paused, sounding casual. He sipped coffee and settled back in the booth. “Nick?”

“I…” Bess stopped to drink some coffee. “I lost touch with Brian after college. And Nick…no. I never kept in touch with him.”

“You didn’t?” There was no mistaking the sound of pure pleasure in Eddie’s voice, even if he did try to mask it with surprise. “You guys were pretty hot and heavy. Weren’t you?”

He knew they’d been. “Yes, but…it didn’t work out.”

“So he’s not the guy you married.”

Bess looked up, shocked that Eddie might have thought so. “God, no! Can you imagine?”

She couldn’t, actually. Married to Nick? How her life would have changed.

Eddie shrugged. “I didn’t know. He up and disappeared. Missy said she thought he joined the army. I thought maybe he went with you.”

“No. I married Andy.” She paused. Eddie had only met Andy once. From what she could remember, Andy hadn’t been too nice.

“Ah.” Eddie didn’t ask any more questions. “Sounds like you’ve been doing well. I’m glad for you,” he added, though something in his face told her he hadn’t quite been convinced she was doing as well as she pretended.

Of course, maybe she was just projecting the truth she knew onto him.

“I should get going,” Bess said. “Thanks so much for the coffee. It was great seeing you.”

“Tell your boys about the job offer.” Eddie stood, too. “And don’t be a stranger, Bess.”

“I won’t.” This time, she held the door open for him.

Eddie paused on the sidewalk. “You’re staying at your grandparents’ house?”

“It’s mine now. But, yes. Same old place.”

“Yours?” Eddie whistled low, then grinned. “Nice.”

Bess laughed. “By default. I lucked out. Mom and Dad didn’t want to deal with the hassles and the taxes.”

“Even so. It’s a great property. They had it up for sale for a while, didn’t they?”

She nodded. “Yep, but then decided not to sell.”

“I know.” Eddie grinned. “I tried to buy it.”

“Eddie Denver,” Bess said in admiration. “You really are a mover and a shaker, huh?”

He laughed and made the same sort of shooing motion Kara had given them in the shop. “I wish. Someday, maybe.”

Bess joined his laughter and looked toward her car, still parked close to the market. “I’ve really got to go. I need groceries.”

“You know there’s a Food Lion now, right? It’s bigger than Shore Foods.”

“There’s a lot of stuff that wasn’t here before,” Bess told him. “It’s like I’ve got to relearn the whole town.”

“If you ever want a tour,” Eddie offered, “you know where to find me.”

She smiled. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Well. See you.” He waved and loped across the street, back to his shop.

Bess watched him go, trying to fix the memory of the old Eddie over this new version, and pleased to find she couldn’t.

Chapter
10

Then

Bess wanted a shower. She wanted to wash away the smell of sticky sweets from her hair and skin, and stand under pounding hot water until the faint headache behind her eyes went away. That was all she was thinking about, a shower and bed, when she closed up Sugarland and found Nick waiting for her again.

“Hey,” he said as casually as ever, as if there was nothing odd about him showing up there.

“Hi.” Bess made sure the doors were locked, and tucked the keys into her backpack. “What’s up?”

Tonight he wore the bandanna again, along with a black, tight-fitting T-shirt with white letters that read Better to Be Dead and Cool Than Alive and Uncool. Somehow Bess doubted Nick had ever been uncool in his life.

“Nice shirt.”

He glanced at it, then gave her a grin that squinted one eye. “Thanks. They sell them at the Surf Pro.”

“I’m sure they do.” Bess laughed. “I’m sure they’re very popular, too.”

Nick shrugged. They stared at each other. The orangeish light from the streetlamp made his eyes look more gray than brown, and she wondered what it did to her blue ones. Probably turned them some nasty color the way it did her skin.

“So…” Nick got off the bench where he’d been lounging and shoved his hands in his pockets. “You going home?”

Bess nodded. “I was planning on it.”

“Want to walk along the beach?”

“With you?” The question blurted out, potentially insulting, but Nick didn’t seem offended.

He looked from side to side and held out his hands. “I’m the only one asking.”

She crossed her arms. “How do you know that? Maybe I have tons of offers for moonlit walks along the beach.”

Nick saluted her, mocking. “Maybe you do. But you also have a boyfriend.”

“Sort of.” This blurted out, too, and she frowned.

Nick’s eyes gleamed. “What does ‘sort of’ mean?”

She waved a hand. “Nothing.”

Nick the Prick is only friends with girls he’s fucking. Missy’s warning should’ve meant less than nothing, but Bess couldn’t forget it. Nick wasn’t fucking her. But they weren’t friends, either. Were they?

“Is that like sort of being pregnant?”

Bess laughed. “No.”

Nick grinned again. “C’mon. You have to walk home. Why not walk with me along the beach?”

“What about my bike?”

“Leave it here.” He nodded toward her ten-speed, chained safely to the rack. “You don’t have to work too early tomorrow. You can walk.”

“How do you know what time I work?” Bess asked suspiciously, but she was already slinging her backpack over her shoulders and facing toward the boardwalk rather than the street.

“I just know.” Nick wiggled his hand and made a “woowoo” noise. “Like a psychic.”

“Uh-huh.” She hooked her fingers into the straps of her backpack just below her armpits. The sidewalk wasn’t deserted even this late, but it was far less crowded and she and Nick could walk side by side.

She paused when they got to the ramp leading to the boardwalk next to the Blue Surf Motel, toeing off her sneakers and pulling off her socks. She tucked the socks inside the shoes and put them in her backpack. She wiggled her toes on the wood, still warm from the summer sun though it had set a couple hours before. She sighed.

Nick laughed. “Long day?”

“A lot of standing. You have to stand at work, too, don’t you?”

They walked together to the stairs leading down to the sand. Streetlamps lit the beach here, turning it to stark whiteness but leaving the sea itself in shadows. The sand was still kicked up, not yet smoothed by the grooming trucks. She spied more than one half-destroyed castle.

“Yeah.” Nick bent to untie his boot laces and pulled his boots off. He staggered, off balance.

Bess laughed when he fell, and he grinned up at her, his eyes flashing. He got up, brushing the sand from his rear and dangling his boots from his other hand.

“You’re lucky I don’t get easily insulted,” he told her.

“Sorry,” she said without remorse.

Nick snorted. “Uh-huh. Right. I know how girls are.”

“That’s what I heard.” Bess scraped one foot along the chilling sand as she walked and left a line behind them. In the morning it would be gone.

Nick turned around to face her, walking backward. “Heard what?”

Bess looked sideways at him. “That you know all about girls. A lot of girls.”

He turned again, still walking. “Who told you that?”

“Who do you think?”

He shot her a glance. “Same bitch who told you I was queer? She’s a real reliable source.”

Bess feigned nonchalance. “I’m just saying what she said.”

“Which is what, exactly?”

They’d reached an outcrop of rock, big slabs of it poking from the sand like the back of an alligator, or a dinosaur. The jetty. The waves crashed louder here. Bess hopped up on the rock and Nick followed.

“Well, after I told her I knew you weren’t gay—”

“Jesus.” Nick snorted. “Ryan really reamed her for that, by the way.”

“Did he?” Bess hopped onto the sand on the rock’s other side. The lamps had ended with the boardwalk. Light still shone behind them but in front the only glow came from the windows of houses lining the beach.

“Yeah. He was pissed.”

This was interesting. “Because she said you were gay?”

“No.” Nick snorted again, laughing. “Because she tried to get me to fuck her.”

“Oh.” Bess wished she hadn’t asked. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t known, but she didn’t want to hear it.

“I didn’t.” Nick stopped walking, and so did she. “If you care.”

Bess shrugged. “Why should I care?”

He stared at her. The wind came up and tugged at the tied ends of his bandanna. He reached up to slide it off his head, and the wind played then with his hair. After what felt like a very long time, he smiled. “You tell me.”

“According to Missy you fuck a lot of girls.”

“I didn’t fuck her.”

Bess started walking again, her stride determined. Light behind, darkness ahead. She didn’t need the light to know where she was going.

“It’s not my business, Nick.”

“So Missy told you I’m what, some sort of big slut?”

It wasn’t a word Bess had often heard used for a boy, and she laughed. Nick didn’t. “Are you?”

“I thought it wasn’t any of your business.”

“It’s not!”

“I’m not queer,” Nick said, “and I’ve screwed pretty many girls. Just not Missy.”

He’d stopped walking again, and Bess did, too. She turned to face him. He’d linked his boot laces together over one wrist and shoved his hands into his pockets again. She crossed her arms, wishing she’d taken her sweatshirt out of her backpack before hitting the beach.

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