“I know. I’m sorry, bad joke.” She exhales. “Seven. I’ll send you the address.” I hear a bell jingle on her end, the sound of customers coming into the shop. “I have to go. Love you. Keep your face neutral. You are aterribleliar, but you can do it for five hours.”
“I’m a great liar.”
She laughs. “No, you’re not. Okay, love you.”
“Love you.”
She hangs up.
I set the phone on the couch, and the address for tonight arrives thirty seconds later.
I stand in this house I’ve been calling home and realize I’m a scent match with three Alphas who might be hiding something big from me. So I tell myself it’s probably nothing, probably just people with pasts and a collecting instinct, not to mention a concerningly thorough approach to home security.
21
NORTH
Luca drops into the wave like he’s trying to prove something, and Ace is already on the inside of him, cutting across the face with that showboat grin that I’ve been watching him develop for two years. They’re both going to be out of position for the section coming up, and I’m not going to tell them.
Instead, I’m going to sit on my board and watch them figure it out. Best way to learn.
Luca makes the section. Barely. Ace doesn’t, gets cleaned up by the whitewater, and I hear the whoop from Luca before I see either of them surface because Luca is incapable of shutting up when he’s won anything.
“HA!”
Ace’s head pops up thirty feet inside. “Lucky,” he yells across the water.
“Skill,” Luca yells back.
“Timing!”
“You were in my priority?—”
“You had no priority?—”
Together they paddle back out toward me, still arguing. The afternoon sun is coming off the water, gold on the surface, the shadows of our boards long underneath us. The swell is smalland consistent, and the lineup has thinned since lunch. Just the three of us out here now, past the main break, rising and falling on the sets coming in, and I’m thinking about Adelaide.
Been doing so since I woke up with her tucked against my chest in bed, and I lay there listening to her heavy sleeping for a full ten minutes before I got up.
Ace straddles his board and glances back at the house in the distance. “What do you think she’s doing?” he asks.
“Going through my drawers,” Luca says immediately.
“Again?” Ace barks a laugh.
“Well, she clearly can’t get enough of my titty magazines. I plan to swap out the girl photos with her head.” He’s laughing, and I’m shaking my head.
“Right, she’s gonna love that,” Ace says.
“She loves my sense of humor,” Luca states, tossing water at his face.
“What doyouthink?” Ace asks in my direction.
I watch a set roll through without committing to anything. “I think she’s watching us through the window.”
“Boring,” Luca snorts out.
“Realistic.”
