Page 32 of The Summer House
Olivia was already heading down the stairs, still snapping photos. She turned around and threw up her hand with a smile.
“Slip your shoes off,” he said, leading Callie down the steps toward the bouncy castle where Olivia had her hands cupped around her eyes, peering in at Wyatt while he showed her the tricks he could do. “Let’s go down to the beach.”
She got to the bottom of the steps and took her sandals off, placing them neatly under the deck with one hand, her mojito in the other, and followed Luke down the wooden sidewalk that divided the yard in half and led straight to the ocean.
He walked quietly beside her and she wondered what it was that he had to say.
They walked along the walkway, the lush grass giving way to taller sea oats and wild grasses along sand fences that were all part of the dunes that had been created to prevent erosion on the small barrier islands. Callie stepped down the few steps at the end and put her feet in the sand, immediately responding to the heat of it. The intense sun beating down on it relentlessly made the surface feel like hot coals.
Luke took her hand. “Run,” he said, pulling her toward the water.
He took off, and Callie had to work overtime to keep up, his hand gripping hers as she pushed herself full speed along the powdery beach, trying to hold her drink steady, her feet feeling like fire, until they reached the wet gritty shoreline. A wave broke, fizzing and bubbling its way toward her, the gurgling spray cooling her feet immediately. Luke dropped her hand and walked closer to the waves, the current sliding up around his ankles. Callie moved beside him. She pushed a runaway strand of hair off her face.
“They’re all liars,” he said, looking out at the water.
She didn’t understand, so she waited for more.
He finally turned to look at her. “Those articles. They aren’t real. They don’t know. None of them know.” Any trace of sarcasm or arrogance was gone. He looked exposed, vulnerable. “They say I’m shallow, that I date models and actresses just so I can have a pretty face to look at… I date them because they understand. Their lives are even more in the spotlight than mine. I own a sailing company. Who am I? But this town has made me into someone; they’ve built me up into this character—for what? To increase tourism? To give people something to talk about? They say that I don’t understand the locals. It’s not that I don’t understand them. It’s that I can’t just be. I always see a judging eye, someone who has some opinion about my life’s choices. So I keep to myself.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I had no idea.”
He turned back to the ocean again as if it held answers somewhere far off in the distance.
Callie didn’t talk. With the wind in her ears and the whooshing of the ocean, she let the silence settle between them. He seemed like he’d wanted to get that out, and she was glad he’d confided in her.
“I’ve never told anyone that.”
“Really?”
“I’ve never felt the need to.” He picked up a shell and chucked it into a breaking wave. “But when I’d heard you’d read some of those awful things about me, it frustrated me and I wanted you to know.”
He’d surprised her again. And she couldn’t help the flutter in her chest at the thought that he’d wanted her to know the real him, but it scared her as well. She wasn’t ready for things to get real. He’d trusted her with his thoughts. She wasn’t the best person at relationships and, while they weren’t in one yet, this was how they usually started.
She mustered all the strength she had to respond to him. She didn’t want to do this wrong; she wasn’t any good at it. “I’m glad you trust me,” she said, her words feeling flimsy as they came out of her mouth. But the concern he seemed to have at making sure she understood him made her let go of her worries and speak from her heart. “I don’t believe those articles,” she said, watching the bubbles rise in her mojito, the ice melting in the heat. She looked up. “I guess I kind of did, when you took me on that big boat of yours and ordered that lobster what’s-it-called. I thought maybe the guy in the burger joint was just an act to appeal to me. But I know now that’s not true. Not at all.”
He let out a breath as if he’d been holding it in and smiled at her—a genuine smile, one that gave away how thrilled he was with her comment—and she knew she’d said just the right thing. And she hadn’t even had to try. She’d just done what had come naturally.
