Ahead in the Heat (16 page)

S
aying that Cloudbreak was a heavy wave was like saying that a bird had wings. It was
yeah, duh, bro
territory. Annie sat cross-legged on a vinyl-upholstered bench of the resort boat used to take them the full mile offshore to the wave. Beneath the boat, fading out to the left, was the shallow reef that broke the ocean’s power to create Cloudbreak. The curl was a left break, coming straight at the boat’s anchor.

Annie’s stomach was tight. A hard little knot, as if she’d eaten something rotten. Her heartbeat thumped in her throat, where it didn’t belong. “You’re going out there.”

It wasn’t even a question. Of course Sean was. He was good at what he did. More than that, he was up there with the best of them. He paused in the act of streaking sunscreen over his upper arms and peered out at the wave. “Yeah. It’s kind of small, I know. But it’s worth trying out.”

She rolled her eyes and gave a slightly hysterical giggle. “That was kind of the opposite of what I meant. It’s fucking huge.”

“It’s only ten feet. Not that big. On a good day, Cloudbreak can double that.” He pulled on a white-and-blue rash guard, hiding the damp sheen of his already tanned skin.

“Ten feet on the
back
.” She was totally preaching to the choir, but she couldn’t help it. “That means twenty on the front.”

“It should make for some mean barrels.” He flashed a grin at her, but something in her face must have finally given away her worry. “Oh wait. You’re not okay.”

She swallowed against the sickly feeling in the top of her chest. Rubbing her knuckles over her sternum didn’t ease the burn. “Jesus, no wonder Mom asked if I was going to surf it. I mean, I’ve seen pictures of Cloudbreak, and I’ve seen video stream, but this is totally different.”

He sat down on the bench beside her. The arm he folded around her shoulders was warm, even under the pounding tropical sun. She’d practically dipped herself in sunscreen, and she’d reapply a hundred times before the end of the trip. It made their skin both slip together and sticky. “If you want to head in, the boat can run you back. You don’t have to watch.”

“But you have to do this.”

His jaw tightened, and she knew by the glint in his eyes that he was trying to hold back a smile. “It’s more than that.”

She sighed. “You love to do this.”

He held her close, and she could feel his nod against the top of her head. “It’s what I’ve been dying to get back to. Even six weeks out has been too much.”

“You’re good.”

“I’m the fucking best.”

She giggled, because there was only so much ego
that she could take with a straight face. But it was more than being good. It was dedication. She’d seen his office and the work he put into the competition. He’d been doing it last night too. After mind-blowing sex on the porch, they’d made their way toward the heart of the resort for an incredibly slow dinner served by staff who seemed to be training Annie to go with the flow rather than actually serve her in a timely manner. When she’d asked Sean if the speed of their meal was usual, he’d just shrugged and said it was island time. So she’d gone with it.

But when they’d gotten back to their lush
bure
, Sean’s bags had been delivered post–customs inspection. He’d pulled out reams of printouts and his laptop, then consulted a tide chart for the best times for practice. He’d been on websites, aggregating information that she didn’t even understand the name of. All for something that seemed like intuition to her. If this was what pro-land was like, maybe it was better that she’d walked away. To her, surfing was feeling the water under her and trusting the board between her and the ocean.

Except maybe not when it was compared to a wave like this. Cloudbreak could snap necks. Period.

It could snap necks of the unprepared, maybe. Sean most certainly was not.

He rubbed her shoulder briskly to bring her back to the moment. “Your call. You don’t have to stay with me.”

She swallowed and took a long, deep breath. He wasn’t the only one who was good at his job. She’d been on her iPad and her computer last night and
this morning, making sure things ran smoothly at home. “Make it good, yeah?”

“I’ll give you a killer show.” His mouth tasted like the freshly cracked coconut milk he’d been drinking moments ago. The kiss he gave her was swift, but no less powerful for the way he swept her over. Her lips clung to his, her fingers digging into his back, but she wanted to think that was just the kiss and just his mouth and what he could do to her.

Not doubt. She didn’t want to doubt him.

“I’ll be back before you know it.”

Then he was gone, diving off the side of the boat with his board. His legs were so strong, she wanted to wrap her own around him. The arch of his thighs said he could do wicked things with those legs.

“It’s hard to watch the first time, but then you’ll get used to it.” Gloria had been sitting in the bow, where there was a set of captain’s-style chairs set just before the driver’s portion. She had on a killer bikini that made Annie drool with envy. The floral pattern should have seemed too old-fashioned, plastic-covered-couch for words, but instead, Gloria’s curves filled it out in a way that would make a
Playboy
model proud. Her blond hair was completely casual, pulled back in a low ponytail at the nape of her neck, and she’d gone without makeup.

Annie remembered the dichotomous surfer look. She’d never managed it, instead defaulting to Speedo sports tops and honing her physicality until it meant she could cut killer rips. Her hair got skinned back into athletic ponytails. She didn’t think she could stomach regularly watching Sean surf. “I don’t know if I’ll come out again.”

“No?” Gloria shot Annie a sidelong glance. Maybe Annie was reading too much into it, but to her, it totally said
amateur
. “I always try to give Nate my full support. Hell, I did when Sean and I dated too. Some of the girls spend their time lounging on the beach, drinking fizzy things, but I always wonder what the point of that is. You could do the same thing back home.”

Annie froze a little bit. Gloria and Sean. Yeah, that made perfect, crystal sense all of a sudden, in a way it hadn’t before. The heartbeat that had been too fast minutes ago took a sluggish, ice-laden thump. “Ah. Yeah.”

Jesus, she didn’t want to get into the business of professional girlfriend. She had her own life. She couldn’t match up to chicks like Gloria anyway. A vacation was nice, yeah, but that didn’t mean she could sign off the rest of her commitments and do this full-time. She had a center to get up and running, and considering that she’d turned down Sean’s financing, she was going to have to return to her previous long-term plans, especially since the WavePro rep had yet to return her phone calls. Which meant returning to grant writing and shilling herself out at charity events.

Not sitting on the beach drinking fruity boozy things. No matter how good they had been the night before. “Anyway, it’s totally funny that we keep running into each other.”

“Not really,” Gloria replied. She had her gaze trained on the bobbing surfers. From this distance, they were mostly wet heads bobbing. At least they wore different-colored rash guards, which helped in telling them apart. “The guys always come out early. Get to know the waves. I was kind of surprised to see Sean. With everything that’s going on . . .” She dashed another sidelong glance at Annie. “I bet it’s been hard.”

“What do you mean?”

“I heard you got blitzed by the paparazzi.” Gloria’s eyes were wide with sympathy. “I’ve heard how creepy that can be. All those guys pressing in on you.” She gave an artificial shiver.

“It was a little annoying, but it was fine. I lived.”

The surfing community was so tiny. Annie hadn’t said anything to anyone at dinner last night, but they’d seen Kelly Slater and Mick Fanning at the bar when they’d passed by afterward. And then the Internet had been completely lit up this morning with photos and video of Sean leaving the airport. Word didn’t just get around; it flew.

That was yet another thing that Annie had been happy to leave behind when she left the surfing world. There wasn’t anything like that when you lived in Orange County but
didn’t
live in the insular world of pro sports. She’d been happy to keep secrets. Particularly of how things had ended for her. There was no reason for that to get around.

She hitched her elbows on the rail of the boat and watched the swell build. Sean was out there, in the lineup and ready to go soon. She could tell by his position in the water, the way he was angling his
board and starting to paddle. The wave surged, picking him up.

Annie gasped and sat up straight. He stood on the wave’s lip, then his board dropped three feet off the edge. For a second, she thought he’d blown it. But he dug into the front. His knees loose, he cut into the wave as if he’d been born to do this. He pumped, bouncing with his full body weight to gain speed.

The wave swallowed him. The barrel curled over his head, minimal white at the lip. There was mostly smooth, blue perfection, and Sean owned it. He owned it.

Annie clapped, even though he couldn’t possibly have heard her. Her palms stung with it, and then she cupped her hands around her mouth and cheered. A couple of the resort employees hooted, giving their own happy energy to the moment. Even Gloria grinned.

“It’s so admirable, where he’s come from. How far he’s come.” Gloria gave an artful sigh. “Pity no one knows. He’d get a lot of fan support behind him.”

“Excuse me?” Annie hadn’t been around the pros for a while, but she sure as hell knew mental sabotage when she heard it. “Sean’s life isn’t something to be mined for fan attention.”

“No harm meant,” Gloria said, but her beautiful, perfect, orthodontist-endorsed smile didn’t go anywhere near her pretty blue eyes. “Nate’s mine, of course. He’s got my loyalty.”

“Doesn’t mean others should get you being a bitch, though.” Annie gave a perfect smile of her own. “But then, I get it. Nate’s nice, but that’s the
problem, right? He’s lacking that cutting edge, the little oomph that gets him to the top.”

Gloria dropped all manner of pretense. Her eyes were cold and the sun-kissed bronze of her cheeks went white underneath. “That’s why he’s got me.”

“I don’t see you out there pushing him into the lineup to get the waves he needs.” She kept the smile, even as she waved the porter down. She needed a drink. Some kind of fruit juice with a shot of rum if she was going to have to listen to this bitch for the next four hours of surfing. “Honey, you seem to have an inflated idea of what you do for Nate’s career.”

“I do whatever I need to,” Gloria said, with what approached a snarl. She pulled her ponytail forward over her shoulder, twirling her fingers through the end. Her nails were blunt but carefully polished.

Annie just nodded along with her, looking back toward the guys out surfing. Unless Gloria was willing to blow judges to guarantee Nate perfect tens, she had no idea what the other woman could possibly be doing for the guy’s career. After all, even oral sex wouldn’t help much. There were three judges per heat, and that would be a lot of inappropriate contact to guarantee a boost in scores. A lot.

Annie ordered a drink from a porter with a gleaming white polo to match his smile. She wasn’t sure if the guy really liked his job, or if he was just a really cheery person, but either way she enjoyed chatting with him for a few minutes about the local fruit and which would go best with rum. He was a nice balance to Gloria’s hard-to-navigate personality.

But as soon as Annie turned back to watch the
surfing, Gloria was chattering away again. She knew a lot about the surfers, both the few pros who’d turned up to try out the waves a few days early, and the local guys. She pointed out the guy who’d won a wild card by placing first in a local event, just as he nailed a barrel and bounced out as smooth as butter. “But then, at least these aren’t tow-in waves today. Must seem small to him.”

“Tow-in?” Annie shuddered. She figured that if the waves were so big that surfers had to be pulled by a Jet Ski to get enough speed, maybe humans should stay out of the water temporarily. “Yeah, I don’t think I’d even be here on the boat on a day like that.”

“Why?” Gloria looked at Annie and did something suspiciously like fluttering her lashes. A faux-innocent blinking thing that Annie wanted to ask her to rewind and do again because did women really
do
things like that and mean it? “At least on tow-in days they wear safety rigs. Today, Sean could get slammed on the reef just as easy as anything. Be a shame if he wrecked that pretty face.”

S
ean’s first barrel of the morning was the best wave he caught all day.

The wave closed over him, the perfect glass of the blue water closing over his head and then his right side. He put his left hand out and trailed his fingers through the water. The move regulated his speed, so that he didn’t pick up too much and shoot out before the perfection was used up, but there was something heady in the act. He was one with the wave. The heavy slab owned him, but he was part of it too. If the opening closed, he could be slammed by thousands of pounds of water, pushed with the weight of an entire ocean behind it.

He leaned forward, increasing his speed so that he shot out through the contracting eye of the barrel. He could have kept carving the front, maybe add a switchback, but there was nothing better than getting barreled, so he cut up the front and dropped down the back. Let the rest of the wave go by him.

He was in paradise. He was somewhere more perfect than he’d imagined. Knowing Annie sat on the white-sided boat that floated in the middle distance only made it more perfect. He wondered if she’d spotted him on that wave.

The photographers had. One of them waved to
him from her position in the water. He paddled over to the only female photographer with a lens trained on the lineup. “Hey, Avvie. Where ya been?”

Her nose wrinkled, and she gently sculled through the water to maintain her position with one hand. Her other hand had a firm grip on a camera in a waterproof casing with a safety strap attached by Velcro to her wrist. “You know Tanner hates it when people call me that. Jack never should have started it.”

“I don’t see Tanner out here.”

“I hate it too.”

“Well that’s different, then.” He flicked water at her, but she was already soaking wet. “How you doing, Avalon?”

“So damn awesome.” She beamed at him, and he got the feeling that she’d have levitated out of the water if only happiness counted. “Things are going really well.”

“I guessed. Never seen you out here before.”

It was difficult for female photographers to get assignments to Fiji. They could go on their own, in the hope that maybe they’d sell photos to a magazine and make their investment back, but the outlay was high. Economy tickets started close to two thousand bucks, and that wasn’t even counting accommodations. Sharing bunk style with communal bathrooms didn’t work as easily for women, and it really didn’t work for photographers with thousands of dollars of equipment to protect.

“I’m on assignment.” Three simple words, but Sean knew the weight they carried. And Avalon did too, because she was ecstatically happy.

“Proud of you, chickie.” He’d give her a hug, but he was still floating on his board and there was no reason to drown them in the middle of a hard-core wave. “I’ll stand you a pint later.”

“You’ve been hanging out with the Aussies too much. Pint?” she teased.

“Eh. Beer. Drink. Whatever you want.” He reached out quickly and scrubbed his knuckles across the top of her head. “Not every day a chick gets a deal so big.”

She stuck her tongue out at him. “Tanner would kick your ass if he heard you say that.”

She and Tanner had been dating for five months now, since about the period when Tanner had nailed his championship with the San Sebastian Pro. Word was that they were happy, even with Tanner home most of the time while Avalon traveled the globe. They went together occasionally, but often Tanner was too busy painting and otherwise improving the school he planned to launch. “Still don’t see him. Besides . . . I’ve got a girl with me.”

Avalon’s eyes went wide. She pushed wet bangs off her face, sinking a little in the water as she did so. Then she popped back up again. “No, I didn’t hear that right. You brought a girl? To a competition?”

He shifted on the board, but that made him bob. His toes dangled in the water, which had felt warm initially. Now the chill was getting to him. His stomach pulled tight. “I brought her to Fiji. Major seduction points.”

“You brought her to a competition, dude. Don’t be dense.” Avalon was one of those girls who said
things exactly how she saw them. No bullshit between her brains and her mouth.

A lot like Annie, as a matter of fact, but Sean had never wanted to pin Avalon against a wall and kiss the hell out of her. “Don’t be jealous. You’ve got the love of your life.”

She laughed, and, kicking to keep herself floating, started to push herself away from him. He paddled closer. “Do you mean she’s the love of your life? Because I really think that’s what you just implied.”

“Oh, c’mon,” he muttered. “You’re acting like you’re twelve.”

“Nah, I already asked my boy to go steady.” She stroked to keep herself even on a slightly larger-than-normal swell. “You’re the one who swore since Gloria that you’d have no steady chicks during the season.”

“The season is eleven fucking months long. Maybe I got a little tired of that rule,” he muttered.

“What’s that?” She hadn’t been able to hear him over the constant roar of the breaking wave. At this distance, Cloudbreak was so big that it became a constant sweeping engine of sound in the background that had to be shouted over.

“Nothing,” he said in the necessary louder tone. “Drinks. Later. Promise me?”

“You got it, hot stuff. I can’t wait to meet the girl.”

“She’ll probably get pissed as hell if you call her a girl.”

Avalon’s smile went wide. Her round cheeks were pink with the amount of sun she was getting. She had on a racerback bikini top of some sort, because he could see the straps wrapping around her shoulders and behind her neck. “Then she’s my kind of woman, and I double can’t wait. Now go surf something that I can take a picture of.”

“Aye-aye, girlie,” he said with a sardonic tip of two fingers to his eyebrow in a lazy salute.

Avalon flipped him the bird. Of course she did. That was what happened when you teased little-sister types, after all.

And little-sister types were also prone to pointing out things that you didn’t want to look at. Like his blithely having brought Annie along when he had Ackerman to shut down. Then they’d spent most of yesterday afternoon in bed. Well, on the back patio, and then in bed, coming until he’d been so tired that his knees had been wobbly as he walked across the room to the bathroom.

What kind of training was that? What kind of concentration?

The kind that would lose him the world championship before he even got a crack at it.

He wouldn’t allow that. He couldn’t.

The last fifteen years of his life had built to this. Every time he’d hidden a board from his mom at a friend’s house, so that he’d actually know where it was when it came time to surf. Every time he’d washed off in the locker room at the high school rather than go home. Every time he’d ridden his bike to the beach and stayed. Occasionally, he’d stayed for more than one day. Once he’d even hidden out
underneath the San Sebastian pier, just to be able to surf the next day, because he’d known if he went home, his mom would have him. Would trap him. He’d have to go with her to thrift shops and yard sales, standing there while she bought more shit they didn’t need.

More shit there wasn’t anywhere in their house to keep.

He had fought hard for his career. He
believed
in his career. Hard work got gains. Got the things worth having in life.

He didn’t trust things that came easily.

It was time to get his head in the game.

He paddled out toward the break, watching the sun glimmer off the bright blue ripples of the water. There was bright and then there was bright as diamonds. The water was the latter. It sluiced over his hips and thighs as he lay on his board. Each stroke brought him closer to the lineup. A half dozen men were out there. Fewer than any given day at San Sebastian or anywhere in Santa Barbara. But more than there’d be for the competition.

Then, it would be four men at a time to make up a heat. Round by round. Wave by wave. The weak would be cut.

Which meant he had to work it.

He threw himself into practice. Snatching every wave he lined up for, because when it came down to the semifinals, he would have only thirty minutes to surf. Only his two highest scores would be counted, so there were two schools of thought. Wait for the perfect wave, and hope he got two prime specimens,
or take everything he could catch and trust that two of them would be good.

At Cloudbreak, everything was heavy. For most of them, he concentrated on cutbacks and did a pretty decent layback snap. There was too much power behind the waves to gain the speed necessary to catch air at the top. But he wanted another barrel. He was chasing it. The need rode on the back of his heels and pushed him out into the water again and again, even after a hydration break.

Near four o’clock, he thought he had it. He had a perfect drop-in on an eleven-foot wave. He slipped down the front, digging his back rail into the heavy water. Nothing blocked him ahead. The barrel closed in from behind and he shouldn’t have fucked it up.

But he did. He threw one hip into the switchback, trying to squeeze just a little more speed out.

Instead, he dug the nose of his board right into the wave. It jerked out from under him. He flew free. He sucked in air as quickly as he could. The air and the wave and the moment froze around him. Everything went into second-by-split-second breakdown. He wasn’t leashed to his board. The wave was coming up behind him.

He could see the fucking reef beneath his feet, under the too-clear water.

Screwed.

The wave smashed him in the back first. Heavy-handed. A crushing blow took him down, then down farther. His shoulder screamed. He let the water flip him. Waves worked in a circle. If he let it do what it needed to, the pounding would be the worst of it.
He’d get tossed out the back. Air then. Not now. Holding on. He fought for calm.

He only knew he hit bottom by the slight sting across the elbow of his bad arm. Then he was being sucked back up.

He ignored the burn in his lungs. This was pure adrenaline. When he broke the surface, he gasped for air. He tossed his head back. Water flicked out of his eyes.

Adrenaline had his blood surging. The air he sucked down his throat was damp with spray and burned him. Salt stung his eyes. He was better than this. He
surfed
better than this.

There was getting pounded by a big wave because sometimes shit happened, and then there was getting pounded by fucking Cloudbreak because he’d been a jackass and done something stupid. This was stupid. He’d earned the beating. That his elbow hurt and leaked a faint cloud of pink into the water was only exactly what he deserved. His shoulder ached in a sharp, painful way.

He’d fucked up. Not just on the wave. By not keeping his mind where it needed to be. He was on the World Championship Circuit. It wasn’t the same thing as being a kid on the Prime circuit and thinking he could have anything. Look how that had turned out. His mom had gone into the hospital for mold-borne respiratory issues, but that hadn’t been enough for her. She’d gone back to that shitty house.

Nothing easy was worthwhile. He had to remember that.