Chapter 5 Chapter 5

Tyler's laugh rippled through the air, and something inside my heart responded before I could stop it, which only irritated me more because as much as I wanted to hate that sound, the truth was I hated that I still loved it. Tyler had always laughed with his whole face, his eyes narrowing slightly at the corners while that stupid dimple appeared in his left cheek, and three years hadn't changed that nearly enough for my liking.

I turned toward the horizon before he caught me staring. “How bad does it hurt?” he asked, the humor disappearing from his voice so quickly my fingers stopped moving through the water.

“It doesn't,” I replied, keeping my attention on the swell.

“Heaven,” he murmured, shifting beside me.

“Tyler,” I returned, mimicking his tone as I adjusted my position on the board.

“You rub it every time you come off a hard wave,” he pointed out, resting his forearms across the nose of his board.

I looked at him then because that was a hell of a lot more specific than casual concern from a man who'd only been back in my life for three weeks. “You've been here three weeks,” I reminded him, tightening my fingers around the rails. “Three weeks, Tyler. So either you've become an expert on my shoulder in twenty-one days, or you've been watching me before you came back.”

Something moved across his face before he glanced toward shore, small enough that anyone else might have missed it. “You have,” I whispered, sitting straighter.

Tyler rubbed one hand over the back of his neck. “I've seen some of your competitions.”

The word #some sat between us because there was a hell of a difference between stumbling across one competition and watching enough of them to recognize the way I touched my shoulder after a hard wave.

“How many?” I asked, shifting my board around when the current started pulling me south.

His fingers moved along the rail. “Does it matter?”

“Yes,” I replied, digging one hand into the water to keep my board facing him. “Since we're discussing my life, it matters to me.”

Tyler suddenly developed an intense fascination with the Pacific Ocean.

“Tyler,” I pressed.

“A lot,” he admitted, finally meeting my eyes.

The answer hit harder than #some had because whatever number #a lot represented, he'd been watching while I'd believed he'd disappeared completely.

For three years, every competition had belonged to the life I'd built after him, from the first ugly ones when I couldn't finish a heat without my shoulder screaming to the ones where I'd finally stopped wondering whether one bad landing would put me back in a hospital bed, and somewhere during all of that, Tyler had been watching.

He'd seen me lose, he'd seen me win, and he'd probably seen the competitions where I'd climbed out of the water smiling for cameras before finding somewhere private to ice my shoulder, which meant he'd witnessed pieces of a recovery I'd believed happened entirely without him.

That should not have mattered as much as it did. Except Tyler hadn't accidentally found one competition, watched long enough to make sure I was alive and moved on with his life. He'd watched enough to learn me again from a distance, enough to know what I did after a hard wave and recognize a movement most people standing ten feet away from me wouldn't have noticed.

Somewhere along the way, while I'd been learning how to trust my shoulder again, he'd apparently been learning what it looked like when I didn't. Maybe believing he'd known nothing had been easier because at least his absence had made sense in the cleanest, ugliest way possible. He'd left, I'd survived it and whatever happened afterward belonged to me. Knowing he'd kept watching changed that because every competition he'd found had given him another chance to see me, another chance to know where I was and another chance to come back.

I looked away as the announcer called another competitor's score from shore, barely hearing it because my thoughts had already gone somewhere I didn't want them.

“Why?” I asked, running my thumb along the wax beneath my hand.

Tyler went quiet, and almost immediately I wished I hadn't asked because there were some questions I'd spent three years refusing to touch when every possible answer hurt in a different way, and #why were you watching me after you left, belonged somewhere near the top.

“I wanted to know you were okay,” he replied, his voice quieter when it finally came.

My throat tightened, and I laughed even though there wasn't anything funny in it. “That's a little late, don't you think?”

His jaw flexed, and seeing it gave me a nasty little flicker of satisfaction because I wanted that one to hurt, and maybe that made me a bitch, but he'd had three years to live with whatever he'd felt after the accident while I'd spent those same years learning how to use my arm again.

“You're right,” he replied, dropping his gaze toward the water between us.

That wasn't what I wanted him to say because I wanted him to argue, wanted him to tell me I didn't understand or remind me he'd never meant for any of it to happen, because anger was easy when Tyler fought back while his agreement left me with nowhere to put mine.

I turned toward the horizon, watching another swell begin rising in the distance while I pressed my lips together. “You don't get to worry about it now,” I murmured, dipping my fingers into the water.

“I know,” he replied, dragging one hand through his wet hair.

“Then stop watching it,” I demanded, turning back toward him.

His gaze dropped briefly toward my shoulder. “I don't know if I can.”

My heart stumbled because he hadn't said it dramatically or moved closer, he'd just sat there with one hand resting against his board and water dripping from the ends of his hair as though he hadn't taken a hammer to one of the walls I'd spent three years building.

#I don't know if I can.

My fingers tightened around the rail, and turning toward the wave beginning to rise behind him, I forced the only answer I trusted past my lips. “Learn,” I ordered, keeping my eyes on the approaching swell.

The horn sounded from shore before he could answer, ending the heat and giving me the excuse I needed to drop onto my stomach and start paddling toward the beach.

The waves pushed us in quickly, and catching a smaller one, I rode it until my fin scraped sand before stepping off and grabbing my board as noise rushed over me from every direction, people talking, boards hitting the sand and music playing somewhere near the competition tents while the announcer read the standings.

“Heaven,” Tyler called behind me as I started toward shore, his feet splashing through the shallows before he caught up.

“If this is about my shoulder, I'm drowning you,” I warned, continuing toward the tents.

“Tempting,” he replied, shifting his board beneath his arm as he fell into step beside me, “but we're first.”