Page 63 of So Close

“Later. I promise.”

She grabbed his hand and tried to tug him back to her, but he grinned and resisted. “You don’t want to miss your party.”

“I want—”

“Your hair’s a little mussed,” he said, patting it down in the back where it had been rubbed into frizz by the shed wall.

“You’re a bastard.”

That made him smile.

“Yeah, well. You knew that long before you let me kiss you.”

31

They lay on a blanket on the beach and watched the sky explode with fireworks overhead. They were very close, shoulders touching, her hand in his. It was not much contact at all, really, but she felt like if she rolled toward him, even a little, they might both spontaneously combust. She didn’t, because there were families all around them on the beach, and she didn’t trust herself to stop if he touched her for real.

“So this is how Tierney Bay does the 4th,” he said. “All of this? The street dance, the beach fire, the parade, the barbecue, the fireworks?”

She smiled into the dark. “Yeah. Didn’t you ever come to visit Carl on the 4thof July weekend?”

She felt, rather than saw, him shake his head beside her.

“You’ve been doing this every year since you grew up, huh?” he asked.

“Every year except the year my parents died. None of us wanted to celebrate that year. So we didn’t. And in some ways I think that was what I grieved the most. That year, it felt like everything had ended. My parents were gone. My childhood was over. And I’d lost the part of the year that had always felt like rebirth—because in Tierney Bay the world comes back to life July 4th weekend. But not that year.”

His hand tightened on hers.

“And meanwhile Levi was busy trying to run Cape House, provide for all of us, keep Mason from self-destructing. Chiara—she got her heart broken on top of everything else, and she was Hannah’s security blanket. Mason was just a blank wall. You might have seen—that’s him. He’s—not an easy guy to know.”

She took a breath. “Beachcrest and Carl were the only things in my life that kept making sense.”

“Auburn.”

Her name in his voice was a touchpoint. An anchor. It made her know he was listening and really hearing her. It made her think about how few people did that, reallylistened and heard.

“Oh!” she said suddenly, because the sky had lit up with a brilliant ball of gold flecks. “I love those. They’re my favorites. The ones that are just showers of sparks.”

She turned her head. He’d turned to look at her. His face was splintered into shadows and the play of light from the fireworks above.

He got to his knees, suddenly.

“What—oh!”

He’d scooped her up and lurched to his feet, and now was carrying her across the sand, leaving the blanket behind. She didn’t care. It was one of the oldest ones, a castoff from the Beachcrest beds that had gotten too worn to be good for guests. He carried her up the path, all the way to his room. He set her down, fumbled with the door key, got the door open, and followed her inside.

When he kissed her, the world stopped. He did not kiss like the man she’d met in Carl’s hospital room. He kissed like the man who’d secretly adored her biscuits and chocolate chip cookies, who’d tumbled laughing into the sand on their bike ride and wrestled his nephews like they were puppies. He kissed like sunshine and salty breezes and beach magic.

He stopped kissing her and stood just looking at her, which should have been unnerving but was so lovely, the way his gaze took her in and made all of her beautiful. Her wild hair and the sunburn under the straps of her dress, the curves she sometimes loved and sometimes hated. His hands settled on her shoulders and brushed the straps away like strands of spider web.

“This okay?”

“Hell yes.”

He tugged the top of her dress down and ran a finger along the top edge of her bra, tracing the contour of the lace, making her breathless. Slowly, like they had all the time in the world, he eased the cup of her bra down, baring one breast. The hunger in his eyes made it perfect.

“Oh,God,” he said, bending and licking. “I’ve wanted this since the first time I saw you.”

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