He smiles, and there’s no humor in it this time. Just heat. “Yeah. I figured.”
We float for a while. The sun is properly up now, the water sparkling, a pelican doing a low pass overhead. I breathe in the salt and the warmth.
“I fell for you on the plane,” Ace says quietly. He isn’t even trying to dress it up. He’s sitting there on his board with the sun on his shoulders, telling the truth, and that somehow makes it worse. Better. Worse for me.
“Before we even got off the ground,” he goes on. “And when I woke up and you were gone…” He exhales through his nose, once. “I was a mess for a while.”
My throat goes tight so fast it hurts.
“I’m not saying that to corner you,” he says. “But I wanted more too, and then you disappeared, and I think you deserve to know I would’ve wanted it just as badly.”
I open my mouth. Nothing comes out.
He fixes me with those hypnotic eyes in the morning light, green and gold and devastatingly steady. “I think I still would,” he says.
The water rocks us gently. My hands are flat on the board, but my pulse thrums in my palms anyway.
“I have so much going on,” I say, and I hate how small my voice sounds. “Too much. More than you know.”
“I know enough.”
“And the second my van is sorted, I need to…”
“Go where?”
I look away first. “I’ll figure it out.”
“You’ll keep running.”
“I’ll keep being strategic about my location choices.”
His mouth twitches. “You’re going to run out of road.”
“Better that than dragging this to someone else’s door.”
His answer is immediate. “You’d be letting someone stand beside you.”
I have to blink against the glare of the water. “You don’t know what this is,” I say.
“No.” He shifts closer on the board, not enough to touch me, just enough that I notice. “But I know what I am. And I knowwhat we are when the three of us are together.” His gaze holds mine, unwavering. “Nothing is getting to you while you’re with us. Do you understand me?”
It’s the way he says it that nearly breaks me—as if protection is a fact, not a promise. My heart is pounding so hard I can barely think over it. “Don’t say things like that.”
“Why?”
“Because I want to believe you.”
He licks his lips, and I’m staring too intensely. “Then start there.”
That is… not a fair thing to say to me while I’m sitting in the ocean in a bikini, trying very hard not to ruin my own life.
A clean set starts building behind him, the swell lifting the water between us.
Ace glances over his shoulder, then back at me. “Come on. Turtle’s probably doing another pass, and he might scare you.” He chuckles.
“I will absolutely let the turtle have you,” I say, already swinging my board around because if I stay facing him much longer, I’m going to do something reckless. I paddle hard for the wave, shoulders burning, and I almost make it cleanly into the set before I hear him splashing behind me, much closer than I expected.
“If you let me in,” he says, his voice low enough to slip under my skin, “I’ll take such good care of you.”
