Seaside Secrets (11 page)

“Let me be the judge of what you deserve, okay?”

She leaned in so close her breath brushed over his bare chest. Torture. Pure, unadulterated torture.

“No,” she whispered. “You aren’t a good judge of what I need, because what I need is right here, right now. We don’t have to deal with the past. I have no idea why you think you’re not good enough to be with me, but from the feel of things, I think you want to be.”

He narrowed his eyes and gripped her shoulders. “I never said I wasn’t good enough. I said you
deserved
better. There’s a difference.” He was powerless to resist sliding his hand down her hip to the curve of her thigh. His fingertips brushed her bare ass, inciting a sexy mew from Amy.

“You’re the best, Tony. Can’t you see that? You’re one of the top three surfers in the country. People pay money for you to tell them
how
to live their lives. Who could be better than you?” Her breathing became shallow as he dropped his other hand to her thigh.

He had driven himself to succeed in his career, but he’d never pushed himself to be the best boyfriend he could be. He’d pretty much spent his life avoiding being a boyfriend, because every other woman was a substitute for the one he really wanted. The one he really needed. The woman he truly believed deserved more than a guy who hadn’t fought for her all those years ago when she’d sent him away, a guy who had never been able to commit to a long-term relationship since—and worried now that he might let her down.

“It’s not about how successful I am, Amy. I need to prove to myself that I can be the man you deserve, and I need to prove it to you before I can call you mine again. I need to know I’ll never risk your health again. I mean, I know it already, but I need to prove it to us both.” He wanted to kiss her, to slide his hands across her beautiful ass and finally take what felt like his for way too long, but he held back. They needed to deal with the past, but he couldn’t say that now. She’d come a long way. For the first time in fourteen years, she acknowledged that they’d been together. That was huge. A start. A fucking blessing.

“Maybe you don’t know what I need after all,” she challenged.

Goddamn it
. He breathed deeply, trying to ignore the way every bit of him wanted to give in to what she wanted. But Tony wasn’t a man who believed in doing things he’d regret. Not anymore, and especially not with Amy.

“I know you better than you know yourself. Can’t you see that?” He tangled his hands in her hair and tilted her head back. “You’re everything to me, Amy. You’re the first thing I think of when I wake up and the last thing I think of before I fall asleep.” He pulled her impossibly closer and lowered his mouth so their lips were a heartbeat away.

“It’s your voice I hear pushing me through those treacherous swells, and it’s your voice I hear in my head right now, guiding me to do the right thing by you.”

He had to kiss her. Just one kiss. He wasn’t strong enough to leave without one kiss, restaking his claim, showing her how much he loved her.

“I’m not worthy of a pedestal,” she whispered.

“You’re so damn worthy.” He paused to keep himself from lowering his lips to hers.

“Statues are put on pedestals,” she whispered, blinking up at him. Her fingernails, which had grazed his skin so lightly, dug into his back. “Statues are cold and hard. I’m warm and soft in all the right places, not at all like a statue.”

She was reaching so far out of the way she normally behaved that he clenched his jaw just to try to remain in control.

“You say all the right things, Amy, but I know you. You’re going to wake up conflicted tomorrow, and I don’t blame you.”

His heart threatened to burst through his chest as he tightened his grip in her silky hair and whispered, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t do this. It will only muddy the waters, but, Amy…I can’t wait a second longer.”

He sealed his lips over hers, and years of want and lust came crashing like a wave, holding him spellbound as she opened her mouth to him and slid her tongue over his. A storm of emotions rocked through him: greed, lust, disbelief, and a swell of love that seemed as endless as the sea. She tasted sweet and ripe, like she’d been waiting her whole life for this moment. Her body molded to his effortlessly, naturally, as he lifted her in his arms and carried her into the bedroom, feeling the tension and excitement as real as when he entered the barrel of a wave, knowing it had the ability to drown him and needing it too badly to turn away.

He lowered her to the bed and followed her down. She circled his neck with her arms and arched up with a needy moan when he tried to reluctantly draw away from her. He moved beside her on the bed, finally pulling back from her delicious mouth and their mind-numbing kiss. He brushed her hair from her forehead and kissed the corners of her mouth, feeling her hot breath against his cheeks, spurring him to take more than he intended. He kissed her forehead, the soft indentation beside her eye, her jaw, and God help him for being weak, he allowed himself a luscious taste of her collarbone. She was his drug, even after all these years.

She arched her neck and fisted her hands in his hair, jolting him back to reality.

“Yes.” Her needy whisper cut him to his core.

He needed more of her. All of her. He didn’t want to leave. He wasn’t ready. Would he ever be? He sealed his lips over hers, probing, memorizing, claiming her mouth as his. She met him stroke for eager stroke. His hand slid down her rib cage to the hem of his T-shirt she was wearing and met her bare hip bone. Well, fuck him. What was he doing? One slide of his hand and he’d feel just how ready she was for him. How wet, how eager.

He could only imagine.

He forced himself to tear his lips from hers and pulled back with a gasp for air.

“We have to stop.”

“No.” She pulled him toward her again.

He smiled at her determination, so reminiscent of that incredible—and treacherous—summer.

“Tony, please.”

He was quickly careening toward giving himself up to her. To be one hundred percent utterly and completely hers once again was everything he wanted. He was weakening again. She needed strong.

He needed to stop.

Now.

“Babe,” he panted out. “We have to stop.”

“Noooooo.” She buried her face in his chest and clutched his arms for dear life.

“I’ll never forgive myself if we do this, Amy. Not now.”

Not until I know we can deal with the past and move forward without regret. Not until I’m sure you won’t send me away again.
He couldn’t say either of those things; all he could do was frame it in a way that hopefully wouldn’t scare her off.

“Not until I can prove to myself, and to you, that I can be the man you deserve and the only man you’ll ever need.”  

THE NEXT MORNING Amy sat on Bella’s deck wearing Tony’s T-shirt from last night and her sleeping shorts, with four sets of eyes on her.
Four
, not three.
Four
. Apparently Sky had had a nagging intuition that something big was going on at Seaside and she didn’t want to miss out. Sky had grown up on the Cape. She’d come back to help run their father’s hardware store when their father went into rehab two summers ago, and she’d fallen back in love with the area and was here to stay. She’d also quickly become another Seaside bestie. At the moment she had her feet tucked beneath her legs, her long cotton skirt tangled around her knees, and her tie-dyed tank top slipping off one shoulder while Jenna painted her fingernails a deep shade of purple.

“Well?” Bella pushed. She and the other girls were still wearing their pajamas, too. They were all braless. Bella wore a tank top and shorts, while Leanna and Jenna had on camis and silky shorts to match.

I really need to sex up my sleepwear
. She glanced down at Tony’s shirt and decided she’d rather wear Tony’s shirt than sexy lingerie any day of the week.

Amy glanced at Tony’s empty driveway. He’d gone surfing, of course. He lived and breathed surfing. He scheduled his summer days around the surf as much as she tried not to schedule hers around anything. It was one of the things she’d always loved about him. He was dedicated to being the best in everything he did, which was why, after he’d left last night and her hormones had finally calmed down, she understood his need to be the best for her, too. If only he’d understand that to her he was already the best.

“As I said.” She lowered her voice to a whisper even though Tony was gone. Kurt was at his keyboard on Leanna’s deck, and Caden and his almost eighteen-year-old son, Evan, had run out to pick up a few things that Evan needed for his first semester of college in the fall.

The girls leaned forward expectantly.

“We talked.” She was still a little numb. She could still hardly believe they had kissed after all these years, and while she wanted to stand on the table and shout,
I finally kissed Tony Black!
she worried that it might jinx whatever chance they had for something more. What if he hadn’t meant all the things he’d said? Maybe she’d pushed too hard and he’d given in just because he didn’t want to hurt her any more than he already had.

Bella threw her hands up in the air. “Seriously? All this afterglow is caused by a talk? You freaking have a freshly satisfied grin on your face. I’m not buying it one bit.”

Leanna patted Bella’s shoulder and spoke softly. “Bella, give her a little space. It’s okay if all they did was talk. Depending on what they said, that could be a much bigger deal than having sex.”

Bella rolled her eyes. That seemed to be the theme for the morning.

“I agree.” Sky waved her wet fingernails in the air. “When I fall in love, like
really
fall in love, I’m going to wait to have sex.”

Jenna threw her head back and laughed, loud and hearty.

“You have no idea what you’ll do, Sky.” Jenna put her foot up on her chair and began painting her toenails. “I know Petey’s your brother and you probably don’t want to hear this, but there is no way I could have waited any longer to be in his arms. Love is like this amazing, all-consuming force that sneaks up on you and steals all those brain cells that make you think rationally and replaces them with emotions so powerful that you’re impotent to change their course.”

“I gotta say, I totally agree,” Leanna said. “But I also agree with Sky’s idea. I mean, I couldn’t have resisted my feelings for Kurt, but I think there’s some value in waiting to have sex.”

Bella patted Sky’s foot. “You’re trying to tell me that you haven’t slept with Blue?” She laughed.

“Seriously?” Sky slapped her hands on the table. “You ask me that all the time. No. No. And no, again. I told you we’re just really good friends.”

“Hey, you’re the one who sleeps at his place,” Bella said.

“We’re friends. We watch movies and hang out,” Sky explained.

“Either you’re a very good liar, missy, or you’re full of shit.” Bella pointed at Sky. “Either way, fifty bucks says when you either fess up about Blue or find the man who is your forever love, there is no way you’ll be able to hold back from the big bang.”

Amy arched a brow. “The
big ban
g, Bella? Can’t it be a little more romantic, like the
big love
, or
lovingly naughty
?”

“Your sweetness is showing, sugar,” Bella said.

Amy was deflecting, as she had done for years. She wanted to pull her closest friends around her like a shield and share the secret that had nearly killed her in college. The secret she’d been denying existed for fourteen years. The secret that, if she hadn’t buried it deeper than the earth’s core, she wouldn’t have survived.

She’d lost Tony’s child.

Our child
.

She should have told Tony that summer afternoon instead of agreeing to go surfing first. She shouldn’t have wanted one last time to feel that high of the waves with him behind her, watching her, being proud of what she could do. She’d loved sharing in the one thing that brought him freedom from the confines of his father’s overbearing nature that summer, and she’d just wanted one more moment of it before telling him she was pregnant. She knew he’d never let her surf if he’d known.

She’d been so afraid that someone would get wind of their relationship and that they’d had sex that summer, and then her father would have…God, to this day she had no idea what he would have done. If she hadn’t lost the baby, they’d have told him, wouldn’t they? How would he have reacted? She hadn’t thought of that since the night she lost the baby. She’d always been the light of his life, his
little
girl
. She’d never stepped over his carefully outlined boundaries or breached his confidence and trust…until that summer, when she couldn’t hold back. Denying her feelings for Tony would have killed her. And now, as she looked into the eyes of the women who had been there for as long as she could remember, her betrayal of their trust hit her like the wave that had taken her under so long ago.

Jenna clapped her hands. “I’ve got it! The
deep impact
! Or…or…” Her eyes lit up. “In Tony’s case, the
big wave
.”

“Well, he does surf on an ocean. How about the
big O
?” Leanna laughed.

“Oh, oh, oh! Surfer words! I’ve got this. I surfed when I was a teenager.” Sky waved her hands in the air. “
Pumping the
pipe!
Banging the barrel?
Or how about
riding the bomb
?”

Amy wasn’t laughing. Listening to them reference sex and surfing brought her back in time. Would she ever get past it completely? She remembered the panic attacks she’d succumbed to when she’d gone to Brown after that fateful summer. She’d barely saved her grades and learned to overcome them with the help of a counselor. But she
had
overcome them, and she was strong enough to push away those memories now and enjoy her friends, who were doing what they always did, keeping things real. If only they knew how real things had become that summer.

Banging the barrel?
“You guys, stop,” Amy pleaded. “This is
Tony
we’re talking about.”

“Exactly.” Bella raised her brows. “Ready to fess up?”