Page 85 of Tides That Bind

What the fuck is wrong with you?

A sign for Oceanside’s Boulevard comes into view, and I clear my throat. “I’ve gotta do something first.”

“What?”

Clear my head of how pretty you are.

My breaks squeak as I pull into an open parking spot I nearly missed. “Just something. Go ask Finn for a suit and change.”

I get out of the car but immediately stop. Taking a deep breath, I loosen the tie and slip it off my neck, handing it to her.

“Riley,” Harper calls for me as my feet hit the boardwalk, but I don’t think there’s any stopping me even if she begged and pleaded.

The thought brings a different image of Harper begging, and it doesn’t include her begging me to stop.

God damn it.

Heat creeps up my body beneath my clothes. The beach is relatively empty, but I don’t care how crazy I look struggling to slip out of my loafers and twist free from my suit jacket. I’m desperate and frantic to cool off, to wash the obscenity from my mind that I’m not only attracted to my best friend’s wife…but I like her.

A lot.

I faintly hear Harper call from the distance when I begin to sink in the damp sand as the cool water washes over my sock-covered feet. The tide creeps up to my ankles, to my shins, to my knees. Each inch of me it covers takes some weight and tension from my body, and I run further out like I weigh nothing, like I’m full of nothing, especially these confusing thoughts.

I dive under the wave and find that even though air is trapped in my lungs beneath the surface, I can finally breathe. I’ve been purged of this kind of ludicrous betrayal that fills my veins.

When I surface, though, I’ve got Finn and Harper looking at me like I’m just ludicrous in general.

And, maybe Finn has a right to given what happened after Nate’s funeral.

He approaches the shore. “Riley?”

I shake the hair that has fallen loose from my face. “I’m straight.” For emphasis, I give him a thumbs up. Now he’s really looking at me like I’ve gone mad.

I see Harper jogging toward us.

“Go suit her up for me,” I yell to Finn. “I need a second.”

I weigh about thirty more pounds than normal with my clothes drenched, so it takes serious effort and time to get back to shore. But by the time I do, Finn turns, taking Harper with him back up to The Surf Shack.

And maybe I have gone mad, and not just because I thought this plunge of a baptism would work. And maybe these feelings for Harper developed because we’re spending so much time together in this sort of dysfunctional family unit neither of us wanted.

I make it to the sand, leaning forward and pressing my hands to my knees. When I straighten, Harper looks over her shoulder and even in the distance I make out the shy, playful smile on her face. And shit, the shape of her mouth like that—the shape of happiness—it cuts me deep.

I might’ve never wanted to be in this situation.

I might’ve tried to run away from it.

But damn, I want to stick around now.

“Now what?”

Now what? I’m going to smack Finn upside the head for putting Harper in this wetsuit that isn’t more than a long-sleeved one piece and has her ass on full display.

“Riley?”

I rub my face. “You’re…you’re too far forward.”

Remaining on her stomach, Harper lifts her head to look up at me. “I’m where I was before.”

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