Lawless (17 page)

I turn to look at Heather, but she shakes her head hard. “It’s all there. I didn’t take anything. I just looked. He’s hot. Congrats.”

I don’t respond. I leave the room and head across the hall for mine, hearing Asper mutter a curse at her as he follows me.

I put the box on my bed and take a step back, watching it. Waiting for it to move. To tell me what to do, but it doesn’t have to because I already know. I knew before I found it.

“What’s in it?” Asper asks, back to leaning in my doorway.

“I don’t know.”

“Do you want some privacy to open it?”

“No,” I answer instantly. “I want something else. A favor.”

“Sure. What do you need?”

I turn and throw open my closet. I pull my suitcase out and toss it open on the bed next to the box.

“A ride to the airport tomorrow,” I tell him decidedly. “I’m going home.”

I don’t open the box until I’m in the air. Until I’ve boarded the plane and I’m allowed to play Candy Crush on my phone for the next five hours. But I don’t. Instead I pull the brown box from my carry on and I set it on the tray in front of me. The flight is light, not many passengers, and there’s no one next to me. No one to see me read the return address on the label. To see me smile faintly when I read the city.

Malibu.

He got out,
I think happily.

Inside is a jersey. A bright red surfer’s jersey with the words ‘Cascais Billabong’ written across the stomach and ‘WSL’ just under the collar. It takes me a second to remember why I know that name, Cascais, but then it hits me. Portugal. Lawson competed in the Cascais Billabong Pro in Portugal.

Did he win?

I pull the satiny material of the jersey into my lap and dive inside the box. There’s a postcard with a picture of a gorgeous, rocky beach on the front and the words ‘Wish you were here’ scribbled across the back with a small heart in the corner. I smile at it before pulling out the only thing left in the box – a picture. It’s of Lawson and three other guys standing on a podium. He’s wearing the red jersey. He’s smiling and gorgeous, totally natural under the attention of a crowd of strangers in a foreign country. The guy next to him is holding up a trophy while Lawson and the third guy wave to the crowd. He obviously didn’t win, not first place, but he must have taken second or third. My money is on second.

I flip the picture over hopefully. He doesn’t let me down.

There’s a note penned across the back.

Second place ain’t bad.

“Called it,” I sing to myself quietly.

Got out of my backyard. You were right. It’s better out here.

I reread it three times, still smiling and so proud and happy for him that I’m nearly bursting. I wish I could use my phone to look up the rankings online. The season is over, but I want to know – did he stay in the top sixteen? Did he qualify for the World Tour next year?

It’s another four and a half hours before I can find out.

***

He didn’t make it.

I stare in disbelief at my phone as I wait for the luggage carousel to start spinning and spit out my stuff, but the numbers don’t change. He wasn’t even in the top twenty, let alone the top sixteen.

His numbers disappeared after the two events in Portugal that he attended. He placed in the second one, though not as highly as the first, and with no more competitions under his belt for the rest of the year he couldn’t keep up with the growing scores of the other competitors. They were still traveling, hitting up Japan and Tahiti. Hawaii and Brazil while Lawson apparently stayed home. I wonder if it had anything to do with his brother.

The room bursts into action as yellow lights flash, a monotone alarm sounds, and the belt starts to weave its path in front of me. I watch it go, feeling mesmerized.

I could call him. I could call my parents or Katy. I probably should. I haven’t told anyone I’m home. I’ve gotten into the habit of not talking to people about how I feel or what I’m doing. It feels weird to think about calling Lawson, though. To hear his voice on the phone and not in person. But am I going to Malibu? It’d be smarter to head home on the bus toward Santa Barbara. I would bypass Malibu all together.

It’s what I
should
do, but is it what I want to do? When am I going to start doing what I want and not what I should?

“Today,” I whisper to myself

The old woman standing next to me at the luggage carousel glances over uneasily.

I smile at her, probably a little maniacally, and sweep my bag off the belt as it slips by.

I hurry out the doors into the cool early morning air of a southern California winter. I have a coat on but it’s unbuttoned. No mittens, no scarves. No frostbite. It’s heaven. It’s everything that’s right with the world and nothing that was wrong with Boston. If any part of me doubted coming home was the right choice, it shuts the hell up right then and there.

And when I get on a bus to Malibu, it starts to sing.

When the bus drops me off I take a cab to the ocean front condominium at the return address on the box. I leave my suitcase with the man at the small desk by the elevators, telling him I’m there to see Lawson Daniel.

“I’ll call him and let him know you’re here,” he tells me, reaching for the phone.

I put my hand out to stop him. “He won’t be up there.”

“Oh. How do you know?”

“Because I know him,” I reply with a grin. “I know where he is.”

When I reach the beach on the other side of the building I’m not surprised to find I’m right. He’s there on the horizon waiting for a wave, his legs in the water on either side of Layla. It’s such a familiar sight that it takes my breath away and replaces it with something else. Something warm and full that sits heavily in my body until I’ve sunk down into the sand.

I sit and watch him surf the way I used to in the early morning. It’s cooler now. Softer and gentler than it was in the summer heat. It feels more comfortable than it ever has and I think it’s because I know it’s right this time. I went out, I tried the world, and I found it lacking. Nothing on this earth can feel as good as being home for me. Nothing can ever be as good as him.

He takes two waves before he spots me, but when he does his reaction is immediate. He comes to shore instantaneously, riding Layla as far as she’ll carry him and then he’s running with her up the beach. I smile, standing to greet him, but I’m not ready for the force of his embrace when it comes. His hug takes my legs out from under me, his body knocking me backward so hard I’m clinging to him to stay upright and he’s laughing and wet and strong. He’s holding me up as he’s knocking me down and I giggle against his shoulder like a little kid.

“You’re back?” he asks breathily, his mad sprint from the water taking its toll on his voice.

I nod my head against him, his wet hair dripping down into mine. Onto my smiling face. “I’m back.”

He leans back, not letting me go. “When? When did you get back?”

“A little over an hour ago.”

“For how long?”

“Forever.”

I feel his body literally soften with relief. “What happened?”

“I failed,” I chuckle lightly.

He grins. “Me too.”

“We’re a couple of losers, aren’t we?”

Lawson laughs, reaching up to push my windblown hair from my eyes. “You’re
my
loser.”

“Are you still mine?”

“Always, Rach. I’ll always be your loser.”

He leans down to kiss me softly, sweetly, and then I’m in his arms again. I’m pressed against him with my face to the ocean and the sun on my skin and I can’t even remember what it was like to not be here with him. It’s like the tide has already taken the memory away, sifting it with the sand, dispersing it with the grains until it’s lost and unrecognizable.

“Congratulations on Portugal,” I tell him quietly.

“You got your present?”

“I did. I love it.”

“I lost the second one.”

“I know. But you tried.”

He kisses the top of my head. “So did you.”

“They told me I’m good but not good enough.”

“Ouch.”

“It was the best news I’ve gotten since I found out I still had my leg.”

He chuckles silently, holding me close. The only sound is the roar of the ocean that’s on his skin and seeping into mine. “I’m gonna try again.”

“Good. I’m glad.”

He hesitates. “Will you?”

“No,” I answer honestly. “I don’t want to. I know what I am and I know what I’m not now. I’m not a concert pianist, I’m a mixed tape. I don’t belong anywhere in the world but where I’m happy and California makes me happy.” I squeeze him hard. “You make me happy.”

“I’m gonna be gone a lot if I make another run at the World Tour.”

“I know.”

“Where will you be when I come back?”

I lean back, shaking my head, unsure what he’s asking. “I’ll be here.”

“Here in Malibu?”

“No.”

“Why not?” he asks frankly. “Don will hire you again. He’ll probably pay you better than before since you’re showing loyalty by coming back.”

“I can’t afford to live in Malibu, even with a raise.”

“I know a place you could afford.”

I laugh. “You always know a guy or a place or a band, don’t you?”

“I get around.”

“So I’ve heard.”

He lowers his brow playfully. “Ooh, low blow, Mason.”

I stand up on my toes to kiss him. “Now you’re being a tease,” I whisper.

I can feel him smiling against my lips. “Rachel.”

“Mmmm,” I hum, savoring the sound of my name in his deep tenor. It rolls through my body like warm honey, making me sinuous and sweet.

“My apartment is big,” he tells me quietly. “And lonely.”

“You should get a dog,” I joke.

“I don’t want a dog. I want you.”

“You have me.” I kiss him again, dying to get closer.

He leans away from me, taking his mouth out of reach. His eyes are serious and so, so green. “What do you say?”

I blink. “To what exactly? What are we talking about, Lawson?”

“You moving in with me.”

“I—“ I begin, unsure how to finish that sentence. “You want me to live with you?”

“Yeah. I’ll be gone a lot during the season, but I would love to come home to you every break.” He leans in again, making me soft. “So, what do you say?

I should think it through. I should talk to my parents about it. I should talk to Don first and make sure I’d actually have a job down here. I should at least ask what my share of the rent would be, but I don’t. Instead I ask myself what I
want
, tapping into my heart and not my head, and I know immediately, beyond a shadow of a doubt.

“Yes,” I tell him with a smile. “I say yes.”

Lawson glows happily as he leans in to kiss me. I let myself melt in his arms, into the sand, and when he pulls me toward the building to show me upstairs I’m on a cloud. I ride with him high up into the building to his condo with his hand in mine, his thumb running absently over my skin.

The place is amazing, all white walls and marble countertops. It doesn’t feel much like Lawson, though, and he’s quick to explain that it came furnished. Nothing here is really his.

He gives me a tour that ends in the living room looking out large windows that frame the ocean outside. It’s there that we stop, that the world stops, and we disappear from it for the next hour. I ask to see his scars, the ones he promised to show me in the hospital, and he grins that crooked, knowing grin of his before he agrees.

Lawson shows me slowly. It starts with his leg and ends with his clothes on the floor and my lips on his skin, tasting each story his body tells me the way he tasted mine. Seeing him, all of him. The truth and the lies, the rumors and the reality, and showing him every piece of me that I’ve never had the courage to share. My honesty. My whole heart, so full to bursting with him and the warmth of the sun that I’m near tears when his body finally finds mine. When our stories come together and the only truth that matters is this.

Is us.

“This summer’s gonna be another scorcher,” Lawson comments.

I watch as he lifts Layla off the stand by the front door, the muscles on his back flexing and rolling under his tan skin. I know it’s all in my head but his skin looks darker than I’ve ever seen it. All that foreign sunlight giving him a deeper hue.

He got back late last night from Hawaii but the week before he’d been in Brazil. Two weeks before that he was in Japan. He brings me something small and touristy from every place he visits – a keychain, a magnet, a little figurine. I have a collection starting on the wall by the door with the date he came home written on the back of each one. I see it every time I leave the apartment, every time I come inside, and it makes me smile to know that even though he’s not here, he’s coming back. He always comes back to me.

“I can handle a hot summer as long as I have air conditioning,” I tell him from the kitchen.

I live in peace in the cold air inside the condo knowing my parents are feeling the relief as well. I convinced them to sell the piano they got me for Christmas and buy a new air conditioner for the house. They weren’t thrilled about it first. Not until earlier this month when the heat wave started. Now they’re all smiles.

“You’re letting that sausage cook too long,” Lawson warns me.

“Shit,” I mutter. I flip it over and see that he’s right. It’s getting charred on one side. “How did you know that?!”

“I was timing it.”

“You’re a friggin’ witch, is what happened,” I whisper.

“I heard that.”

“I stand by it! You should not have been able to hear that.”

He comes to stand across the counter from me, smiling at my anger. “You’re not as quiet as you think you are.”

“Maybe I wasn’t trying.”

“Maybe.”

I kill the heat on the stove, giving up. “Will you please make the sandwich for me?”

“Nope. You said you wanted to be able to make them when I’m gone. You’ve gotta learn how.”

“Dude, please,” I plead pathetically. “I’m so hungry.”

He shakes his head, his smile widening. “You’re mom learned how to make them on one try.”

“Well, she’s amazing.”

“So are you. Keep trying.”

“Ugh!”

He laughs as he grabs a grape out of the bowl on the counter. “What time do you work today?”

“I don’t. Don gave me the day off since you’re home. Do you want to go into the shop anyway?”

“Yeah, after I hit the surf. I need to talk to him about Tahiti.”

“Are you gonna go?”

“I don’t know if I need to.”

“But do you want to?”

He shrugs. “It’d be killer, but if I don’t have to so why do it?”

“Practice. Prize money. Fame. Glory.”

“Only one of those sounds appealing.”

I wipe my hands on a towel and toss it near the sink. “You should go.”

“You should go with me.”

I roll my eyes. “Uh uh, no. One a year, we agreed.”

“Two. I’m still pushing for two.”

“Maybe next year. This year I want to do the World Tour event with you.”

Lawson is going back to Portugal. While he didn’t earn himself an invite to compete in the World Tour for the championship, he did impress the people in Cascais who organized the Billabong Pro. So much so that they invited him back, giving him a wildcard invite to compete. He won’t earn any points, he can’t possibly win the championship title, but it’s a good opportunity to get experience on the tour against the guys who made it. And any prize money he earns is his to keep.

When he started making his schedule for the year he asked me to go to at least four events with him. That’s a lot. It’s a lot of time away from work, time traveling, and a lot of expense. It’s easy for Lawson to go because it’s his job. He makes good money when he wins or places and his sponsors pay him well to make the appearances.

All of his boards, once clean and devoid of any emblems or stickers, now all sport a very distinctive red A and a simple yellow and black emblem that reads ‘Dee’s Wax’.

While I was away Lawson went to Don for advice on diving into the qualifying tour. In addition to advice and an offer to mentor him, Don offered him sponsorships. One from Ambrose Surf and another from the board wax business he’s part owner in. Lawson and Don’s partner agreed and there was a small press conference in Florida at the Dee’s Wax headquarters where Lawson signed with both companies. Suddenly the sky was the limit on his travel, he was renting his condo from Don for a song, and he had one of the most adored men in surfing history backing his play. That’s when the wildcard came in and since then Lawson has exploded all over the surfing scene. He was well known in California and by a few of the pros who competed against him when they came here, but his face is international now. Guys in Australia and Africa are watching out for him, studying his competition footage and getting a feel for what they’re up against.

A whirlwind, that’s what.

“You could go to both,” Lawson suggests.

“I have to work.”

“Not really.”

“Don’t start that again,” I warn him.

Lawson doesn’t charge me rent. He grudgingly accepts help with utilities, and if he got this way I would quit my job at Ambrose and spend the year traveling to events with him. I can’t do it, though. I gave up on playing piano in an orchestra because it’s not what I wanted, but I’m not looking to lose myself entirely. I’ve joined a small band with three other girls, playing keyboard and just jamming on the weekends. We have no goals, no dreams of making it big. We play to play, that’s all there is to it, and I’ve never loved piano more. I’ve never played this way before – wild and untethered. It feels like the way Lawson surfs. Following a rhythm where it takes me. No rules, no expectations. Only a feeling. Freedom. I’m addicted to it and if I quit everything to follow Lawson around the world I’d have to give that up too, and I won’t do it.

“I know, I’m sorry,” he relents, stepping back from the counter.

I soften my tone. “It’s not that I don’t want to go.”

“I know. I get it, though. I’ll back off.”

“Thank you.”

He grins at me, quirking his eyebrow high.

“What?” I ask.

He doesn’t answer. Only looks at me disapprovingly.

I pick up the towel and throw it at him. “Let it go!”

“No way,” he laughs. “It’s still fun.”

“I’m gonna start leaving you Thank You cards in your suitcase when you go. Thank you for leaving your dirty underwear on the bathroom floor for me to pick up. Thank you for drinking ninety-nine point nine percent of the milk and putting the dredges back in the fridge.”

“Thank you for rocking my world last night,” he throws out with a grin.

“You’re welcome.”

“I meant—“

“I know what you meant. Oh!” I pick up my phone, checking the calendar. “Remember, you have a date with Aaron tomorrow.”

He cringes. “Don’t call it a date. It sounds weird.”

“What do you want me to call it?”

“An awkward lunch in a dark room?”

“He’s making progress,” I protest. “He’s been in L.A. for almost a year, and he and your mom are looking at apartments next week. That’s huge for him.”

“I know,” Lawson agrees tiredly. “I get that he’s doing better but it’s still exhausting going over there. He still won’t talk about anything that happened before the accident. It’s like he made huge strides after talking to Katy and now he’s backsliding.”

“He’s working on it.”

“Yeah. Hey,” he says, his tone lightening immediately as he changes the subject and the feel of the room, “if I make you that sandwich will you surf with me today?”

“Baby, if you make me breakfast I will do anything you want.”

He laughs, coming around the counter. “That’s a bold promise.”

“I’m counting on you being a gentleman.”

“You obviously don’t know me very well.”

I hug him from behind, my cheek on his back and his heartbeat hollow and strong in my ear.

“I know you,” I promise him affectionately. “I see you, Lawson Daniel, even if no one else does.”

“And what do you see?”

“I see the ocean in your eyes.”

He chuckles, jostling us both gently. “Oh yeah?”

“Yes.”

“I know you too, Rachel Mason.”

“What do you know?”

He turns to face me, pulling me close. His lips hover over mine, only a breath away but still too far. “I hear the music in your heart,” he whispers.

“So sappy,” I laugh. “You must be tired.”

“Among other things.”

I back up, pointing to my unfinished breakfast. “Sandwich first.”

“Surfing first,” he counters.

“Sandwich before surfing.”

“Those are your priorities? Sandwich, surfing, sex?”

“Yours are surfing then sex!” I exclaim. “Why are you judging my sandwich?”

He pauses, debating. “Sex, sandwich, surfing, sex.”

I smile. “That’s a sex sandwich.”

“This conversation is becoming a tongue twister.”

“Sally sells sex sandwiches in the surf shop by the seashore.”

“Rachel?” Lawson laughs.

“Yeah?”

“I love you.”

I smile, stripping my shirt off over my head and stepping into his arms, my hunger put on hold. “I love you too, Lawson.”