Page 5 of Tourist Trap

“I don’t want to go home yet,” Claire says defiantly.

I shake my head and put a hand to her elbow, feeling the jolt of electricity that shoots through me when I’m near her. “Too bad. You made enough of a scene for one night, and it’s getting late. Let’s go.”

She tips her head, looking at me curiously. “You’re not my dad, and you’re not my boyfriend. I don’t have to do what you say. You realize that, right?”

I close my eyes and sigh with exasperation.

“I don’t want to be doing this all night, Claire.”

She shrugs out of reach and takes a step backward, a twinkle in her eye I very much do not like before she speaks. “Then don’t.” Then she’s turning on her heel and walking down the boardwalk, away from me.

“Claire,” I call out as I watch her move toward the set of stairs leading to the beach. She turns and begins walking backward with her eyes on me, a playful smirk on her lips. “Claire, what are you doing?”

She has some plans I know I am not going to like.

“I want to go swimming,” Claire says suddenly, then looks at her friend.

“Claire, it’s going to be freezing,” June says with a drunken laugh. “It’s May.”

Everyone here knows the ocean doesn’t really warm up until late July at the earliest, but Claire shrugs as if hypothermia only impacts the weak before slipping her shoes off on the boards.

“So?”

“It’s dark.” I add to the list of reasons this is a terrible idea, crossing my arms on my chest and watching her take the first stair. “You could get hurt.” Clearly, that was the wrong fucking thing to say because she turns back to me with a wide smile, her face gleaming in one of the overhead lights that flicker on at dusk, and steps into the sand.

“Claire,” I say in a warning. What exactly I’m warning her of, I have no idea, and she knows it when she glances at me over her shoulder, thoroughly entertained.

“Who’s coming with me?!” she yells, then starts moving toward the shoreline.

“Literally no one,” I shout, as I jump over the railing. I don’t move toward the water yet, but I start slipping off my sneakers, somehow already knowing I’ll have to go in after her.

That’s confirmed when she gets within five feet of the waves and tosses her wallet into the sand. “Claire!” She looks over her shoulder at me once again, the dim moonlight glinting off her wide smile as she shrugs off her shorts, revealing a tiny thong and her perfectly shaped ass.

Fuck me.

I force my gaze to move to the sand and my feet to start moving in her direction. While I keep my eyes averted, I hear the splash of Claire running into the water, and my eyes shift back to her figure, finding her already waist-deep in the ocean.

“Claire, get out of there,” I say, moving toward the water as she dives under. She takes off her top and throws it onto the shore, the wet fabric landing next to me with a loud thwack. I’m not sure if she has a bra on underneath, but I hope to all that is good in the world she does. I’m not sure I could handle a topless Claire right now.

“Make me!” she shouts, and Grant lets out a loud laugh from the boardwalk behind me. I look over at my best friend, standing there with his arms crossed over his chest, a wide, entertained smile on his lips, and know I am completely fucked.

No one is going to help me.

“Claire, get out of the ocean before you drown.” If June and Lainey are anything to go by, Claire is hammered, and everyone knows drunk people and large bodies of water are a terrible combination.

“Come get me!”

“What?”

“Come and get me,” she repeats, then goes under the water, coming up with her blonde hair slicked back. “You know you want to.”

Something about her invitation hits somewhere it very much should not. I can’t feasibly deny that Claire Donovan is fucking gorgeous. Everyone who encounters her knows it, and worst of all, so does she.

But she’s also Paul’s. Or at least she used to be.

There was a small moment in time when I thought maybe she could be mine, but as always, my brother gets what he wants, or, more accurately, what he knewIwanted, and Claire was no different.

Except now she’s apparently single and drunk and she’s swimming in the ocean, begging me to come in with her. A siren, promising to ruin me.

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