Wrecked (Sons of San Clemente Book 2) (21 page)

She rolled over so that she could look at the stars and opened her mouth to sing a Grace Potter song about love and loss and stars. And then she was grabbed. She went under, struggled and choked when she swallowed water.

“Hollis, Hollis.” Kadan grabbed her arms hard. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” He looked like a vengeful god. He shook her. “Talk to me.”

She stared at him, her mind a blank. It was as if time went fluid, flowed around her. She was nineteen again, racing him into the ocean, swimming, happy, laughing. And then she was in the present, weighted down by sorrow and fear. And Kadan was still here. He was still hers. And he had come after her this time.

“Swimming,” she whispered. “I’m swimming.”

They rose up with a wave and gently dropped down in the swell. Hollis didn’t want to know how far she’d swum out. She couldn’t quite catch her breath so she stared into his eyes, black in the midnight, his face stamped with tension.

“You scared me.” He held her so tightly she couldn’t breathe. “I was afraid that you, that you—” He couldn’t even speak the words he’d wanted to say.

She searched his worried face. He’d noticed she’d left and come after her. She treaded water for the both of them, careful of her legs so that she wouldn’t bump his injury.

His dark scrutiny burned over her and Hollis felt herself settle. She smoothed his lips with her thumb.

“Sorry,” she said. For scaring him. Or being so afraid of everything for most of her life. “I wanted—” She broke off, not sure how to explain.

“We have to talk if we are going to have anything,” he said.

She smiled. So Kadan. Direct and commanding even though he’d just thrown himself into a situation where he was taking a huge chance that he could lose control of it all in an instant. His crutches could have been sucked into the ocean. They should probably head back to shore, but no, this was perfect. The water was cold, but it made her so alert, hyperaware of everything. The bite of his hands spanning her waist. The press of his chest against hers.

“I wanted to match you,” she said finally.

“I don’t know what that means.” His eyes searched hers.

“To not let my fears hold me back. To choose my life how I want to live it.”

“That’s what the swim was?” he said. “I thought it was I-can-finally-get-rid-of-this-asshole-by-giving-him-a-heart-attack.”

She laughed. Kissed him. Laughed again. Their breath mingled.

“I didn’t even think of that,” she said and kissed him again.

She ran her fingers through his slick hair. Even soaking wet, it still started to curl a bit around his face. This was so familiar to her. Holding him in the embrace of the ocean. Like time hadn’t passed at all, but had plucked her from someplace else and delivered her home where she belonged. Home was Kadan, she marveled, thinking how happy she’d been with him. Content. No pretending.

“I never ever want to get rid of you,” she said.

He didn’t answer.

“Kadan?”

“I think I can breathe again.”

“I believe I said no swimming in the ocean,” she said, worry creeping in.

He grinned. So Kadan. Arrogant and amused.
So what-are-you-going-to-do-about-it
? He seemed to be asking. Well, he’d find out later.

“You’re not my physical therapist anymore. You handed me off.”

She bit her bottom lip, trying to think of a come back.

He groaned and kissed her again, his mouth going hungry, deepening the kiss and letting his hands play over her body as he molded her closer. Despite the chill of the water, she found herself heating up.

“Unfair advantage,” he whispered against her lips. “You know that drives me crazy.”

“I’m just getting started.” Hollis let her hands slide from his shoulders to move lower. “If you promise not to behave, I’ll show you.”

His laugh rang out in the moonlit dark.

“I love you, Kadan,” she said quietly. “I’ve loved you always. That’s never changed, ever.”

He sighed. “I know,” he said, touching her lip. “It’s the same for me, Hollis. I loved you from the beginning. Even when you were gone I loved you. I always wanted you to come back when you were ready.”

“I’m ready.”

This time her voice rang with certainty.

“No more running,” she promised. “Unless I’m running with you.”

T
wo months later

H
ollis ran her fingers over the spiral spines of several notebooks. She pulled one off a shelf and sat with it on her lap. She should open it, but it was like everything else in the past that still had the power to scare her.

But she wasn’t going to live like that any more.

She sank down on one of Kadan’s woven rugs and opened one of the notebooks. For a minute she closed her eyes and savored the sun cutting through the window. The marine layer of grey fog was finally burning off. Then she started skimming through the pages. She’d been a melodramatic teen. More sarcastic than she remembered. With a dry humor. She laughed. It was embarrassing yet impressive at the same time, Manga type drawings skewing several of the popular girls at her school, who had doled out fashion advice while wearing next to nothing but a lot of make up. She hadn’t remembered having such a sharp wit. Or so much resentment. She continued to flip through the pages of her drawings. Parodies of middle school first, then bigger stories, more fantastic. Then the surf stories. The Sons of San Clemente that bordered on superhero status as they progressed.

“Crush much,” Hollis muttered.

If her parents had paid attention to her “hobby”, they would probably have sent her to into serious counseling. How had she managed to fill all these notebooks and still get such good grades? Had she had any friends at all or had she just sat on the beach watching Kadan and his buddies surf?

“I knew I should have hired packers, little slacker.” Kadan entered the room, no longer on crutches, but still in a boot.

He’d had two of his pins removed so he could flex his ankle a bit more.

“No. No. I’ve been packing. I can’t believe you kept these. I would have chucked them in recycling.”

“Sacrilege, according to Lane.”

Hollis looked up from the page. “He’s as crazy as you are,” she said. “I still think he’s joking or does he owe you a favor? He can’t really want me to try to come up with storylines and characters for a world surf adventure game.”

Kadan made a derisive sound, even as he reached down and ran his fingers through her hair, pulling it out of its pony tail.

“Like that guy would do anything for me. Did you go up to Newport Beach for a meeting?”

Hollis closed the sketch book and put it reverently into a moving box. “Yeah. I felt so old.” She groaned. “Everyone there looked like a teenager.”

“He assures me everyone has a college degree,” Kadan said solemnly, which caused Hollis to look at him suspiciously. “So you’ll fit right in.”

She put more notebooks into the box. “I know I don’t have an art degree,” she said. “But I feel weird talking about storyboarding like I know something.”

“You’re doing it,” he said. “Not studying it. You also agreed that we would get a dog but you don’t have a degree in zoology or veterinary medicine.”

“Ha ha,” she said. “You giving up surfing for a career in comedy?”

She stood up and brushed the hair out of his eyes. Kissed the corner of his mouth.

“The conference room is amazing,” she told him. “More your scene than mine. It’s more like a school gym with rock climbing walls, some huge boulders, and a ropes course and everyone was sitting on yoga balls. Well, not really sitting, rolling around. Everyone seems to have ADHD. Bouncing around. Talking all animatedly in non sequiturs.”

“Can you work from home?”

She laughed. “I thought you approved of my self-improvement plan where I challenge myself to try things that sometimes make me uncomfortable and to try to be more social.”

“I never asked for that one,” he said, pulling her close and nuzzling her neck.

She sighed as he licked along her earlobe and kissed a path along her hairline. She melted into him a little bit more.

“Mmmmmmm. I definitely think you should work from home. I don’t need Lane or some twenty-something’s eyes walking all over you every day.”

“I thought I was the too possessive one,” she said. “It’s a large strike against me, ah—” She caught her breath when he touched a particularly sensitive spot.

“You are perfect,” he said. “I was a jerk. Lane reminded me all about it at length.” He cupped her breasts. “I love the way you feel,” he whispered.

“I can tell.”

“Kadan?” she asked after a long moment where he explored her body with his hands until she was liquid with need. “We are supposed to be packing.”

“Taking a break.”

“Do you regret selling your house?” she asked. “It happened so fast. The first weekend you put in on the market.”

She could feel him shrug.

“But you haven’t even started looking for another place and the buyer wants to have a quick close so they can be in here before the end of summer. My grandma’s going to come back probably this fall at least to check the progress on her house. Where will you go?”

“Wherever you are,” he said.

“But this house is beautiful.”

“Single guy’s house. Not a family house. I want us to pick something together.”

“Kadan,” she whispered. “I don’t have any money for a house. And my credit’s going to be ruined for a long time. Seven years at least.”

She felt him stiffen behind her and not in the good way. His hands stilled on her shoulders.

“Kadan?” She felt a jolt of adrenalin and turned around.

He looked serious and a little nervous. Weird. She moistened her lips. She’d never seen him look so uncomfortable. Kadan was always relaxed and appeared easygoing even when he was balancing on his most focused, competitive edge.

“I have not been completely open with you,” he said. “And it won’t happen again, but you were being unreasonable, and before you get too pissed off, which I probably deserve, but...”

“Unreasonable?” she demanded.

“In my opinion, but this affects me, too. Us. As a family, and I want us to be a family and so I wanted to start off right, and I thought that you might not be so pissed off if we were getting married.”

Hollis stared at him. She counted to ten, waiting for everything to become really clear like it did in a book or a movie, but there was no dramatic build up in the music to explain.

“Are you telling me...are you asking me...are you thinking about getting married because I’m in debt?” She finally managed.

“No,” Kadan said. “I want us to get married because I love you, and my life is empty without you, and I don’t ever want to be without you again.”

“Oh. Oh.” Hollis felt her eyes flood with tears, but she didn’t know what to do with her body. Shriek? Jump? Throw herself in his arms and knot her arms and legs around him. Why did women always seem so smooth in romance novels?

“Is that a yes?” Kadan asked softly. “Too soon?”

“I...I’m just so...”

She stared up at him helplessly. “I’ve always loved you,” she said. “Always. Even as a kid and you seemed so far away and an impossible dream and then when I went away, moved to Seattle I never stopped loving you.”

“That’s promising,” he said. “But not a yes.”

“I just want to come to you whole. Not wrecked.”

“Hollis, you have more education than anyone I’ve ever met, but you are wildly impractical and totally blind about yourself, you dope. You aren’t wrecked. You’ve never been wrecked.”

“But I’m just beginning to feel like I’m not floundering.”

“Long engagement then,” he said. “A couple of weeks at least.”

She laughed. “You’re going to compete again so you can dump the comedy routine.”

“But I want you to wear this.”

He slipped a ring on her left finger.

“Wow.” She breathed.

It was platinum in the shape of a cresting wave with a large sapphire in it and two small diamonds nestled in the curve of the wave.

“Not traditional, I know, but....”

“It’s beautiful.” She marveled. “Perfect. Kadan...”

This time she did cling to him.

“When did you get this?” she asked. They’d hardly been apart since she’d come back to San Clemente two and a half months ago.

“Eight years ago.” He looked sheepish.

“But....”

“I had it designed in Thailand during the trip you were going to come with me on. I was going to propose in Hawaii later that month at the end of the surf competition, and after you’d graduated Stanford, but you dogged out of that trip, then we had problems, and I held on to the ring, waiting for the perfect moment, and it never seemed to come. Then you were in medical school so I kept waiting. Even when you walked out the last time, I held on to it never thinking you’d left for the last time.”

“Oh, Kadan.” She held him, just held and held and held him.

“Is that a yes?”

“Who’s the dope now?”

“I guess that would be me, but would it kill you to say, ‘Yes, Kadan, I want to be your wife and have your babies’.”

She laughed. “Yes, Kadan, I want to be your wife and have four of your babies.”