Chapter 4 Chapter 4

Heaven

The horn sounded before I'd gotten halfway down the face, and shifting my weight, I cut hard across the wave, throwing spray behind me as I drove toward the section beginning to rise ahead, already knowing Tyler was somewhere behind me without having to look.

That pissed me off almost as much as knowing exactly where he'd been for most of the heat without needing to look then either, because three years should have been long enough to forget how another person moved through the water, especially when I'd spent most of those years doing everything possible to forget the person attached to those movements, yet forty minutes in the same lineup with Tyler and my body had slipped right back into old habits my brain wanted nothing to do with.

I knew when he was too deep, when he was going to paddle and when he'd spotted something I hadn't because the bastard had a particular way of sitting forward on his board whenever he was studying a set, and worse, I'd known he was about to take the wrong wave.

I should've let him, and the thought came as I drove off the bottom and brought the board around, climbing toward the lip before snapping back toward the open face, except I hadn't let him take it because I'd yelled his name across the water, pointed him toward the better wave and watched him change direction without so much as questioning me.

Just like he used to.

He'd ridden it like three years hadn't happened, like we were seventeen again and I could yell third one from twenty yards away knowing he'd trust me enough to go without checking whether I was right, and feeling my chest tighten at the memory, I dropped lower and pushed harder into the final section.

Stop thinking about him.

The wave began closing ahead of me, and spotting the opening before it disappeared, I drove toward it, hit the section and came down clean enough that the roar from shore reached me over the water, which was considerably better than thinking about Tyler when thinking about surfing was safe and thinking about him had nearly gotten me killed once already.

Kicking out, I dropped into the water and surfaced beside my board as the announcer's voice rolled across the beach.

“That's an 8.12 for Heaven Bailey!” he announced as I grabbed the rails and hauled myself up, breathing harder than the ride deserved while I pushed wet hair from my face and did the math.

An 8.12 added to my 7.41 should hold, and turning toward the lineup, I found Tyler already watching me because naturally the man who'd spent the morning noticing entirely too much about me would be doing it again.

He sat astride his board with water sliding from his hair and one hand resting against the nose, and even from thirty yards away, I could see the smile spreading across his face, the same damn smile he'd worn every time I'd landed something he liked when we were kids, before everything between us became complicated, before I'd been stupid enough to fall in love with my best friend and before he almost killed me.

My own smile disappeared, and when Tyler's followed a second later, a small, mean part of me was satisfied that at least one of us still remembered how this worked.

I dropped onto my stomach and began paddling toward him as another set rolled beneath me, ignoring the familiar ache starting in my right shoulder because I had exactly zero interest in Tyler noticing it again when he already watched too much.

I'd caught him doing it twice this morning, and both times his eyes had gone directly to my shoulder the second I'd touched it, which meant either he'd developed a fascinating new interest in orthopedic medicine during the last three years or he knew something he shouldn't, and the second possibility bothered me considerably more because I'd never told him about the surgeries, the months of physical therapy, the first time I'd tried lifting my arm over my head and couldn't, or how long it had taken before I could paddle without feeling as though somebody was driving a knife beneath my shoulder blade.

I hadn't told him about the first time I'd gotten back on a board either, when I'd lasted eleven humiliating, terrifying minutes before a waist-high wave rolled toward me and I'd frozen, not because it was dangerous, but because for one second I'd been seventeen again, trapped beneath enough water to make up and down meaningless while my shoulder screamed, my lungs burned and the leash around my ankle dragged me toward a board I couldn't reach.

I'd gone home afterward and cried in the shower where nobody could hear me, then I'd gotten up the next morning and gone back.

I'd gone back the morning after that too and kept going until the water became mine again because I refused to let one wave take the only place I'd ever felt completely at home, and Tyler hadn't been there for any of it, which meant he didn't get to look worried now.

“You're rubbing it again,” he called as I reached the lineup, dragging me out of the memory and making me jerk my hand away from my shoulder before I realized I'd put it there.

Damn him for noticing everything.

“It itches,” I replied, slowing beside him before sitting up on my board.

His gaze dropped directly toward my shoulder. “Your shoulder itches?”

“Yes, Tyler,” I answered, trailing one hand through the water as I turned toward the horizon. “Sometimes human skin does that.”

“It only seems to itch after you surf,” he observed, shifting his board closer.

I looked at him, and when he looked right back with the same expression that three years ago would've gotten him whatever answer he wanted because I'd never been particularly good at hiding things from Tyler, I reminded myself I'd had three years of practice since then.

“Maybe I'm allergic to the ocean,” I suggested, lifting one shoulder.

His mouth twitched. “That would be inconvenient.”

“Devastating,” I agreed, looking toward the next set beginning to form. “I'd have to take up bowling.”