“Battery morelikely. Why?”
The gold came up under her lashes, and below us the entire north stretch of beach began, grain by grain, to swallow the sandbags that remained.
“Sit closer,” she murmured. “I’m going to need the power.”
“And what do I get?”
I scooted closer. Her shoulder against mine, the static jumping the last inch. My senses lit up like they always did around her, and I leaned in and bit her shoulder. Not hard, just enough for her to shiver, and then the structure holding the LED wall crashed down onto the sand.
She opened her eyes, grinning.
“Another free smoothie, Tibby?”
“Don’t call me that.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Selena
Thursday arrived,and so did Greg.
Greg drove a white pickup and unloaded what looked like a lawnmower’s evil cousin strapped to it—ground-penetrating radar. He set up cones, wore a cute little OSHA-approved vest, and had the unhurried nature of a man who billed by the hour and had never once been attacked by a flock of seagulls.
I watched him from the Shark Bites window with a pair of binoculars—very nonchalant.
“You know who else watches men through binoculars,” Lupe said, restocking napkins. “Serial killers.”
“I’m a bird enthusiast.”
On the windowsill, El Soldado adjusted one wing, then squawked with approval.
The situation was dire. Greg’s radar would crawl the north stretch in lanes. The nests would show up as “anomalies”—disturbed sand columns, void spaces. Exactly the destabilizations that RipTide’s insurance would want “taken care of” to approve their location.
So Greg could not finish his lanes.
“Yeah, sure. Definitely not watching the hot surfer out on the waves.” Lupe waggled her eyebrows.
I was not doing that.
Iwas watching Greg, not how just behind him Chase Perez paddled into a wave that had no business being as good as it was on a weekday morning in Crescent Cove.
He caught it low, almost too late, and for half a second I thought,Good. Eat it. Wipe out. Give me something to feel good about today.Then he was up. And the thing I hated most about Chase Perez—more than the grin and the tattoos and the abs—the thing I hated most was that he was good.
Really fucking good. Not flashy or loud like he was in person, good because he was built for exactly one purpose and he knew it and was doing it.
He read the wave before it finished forming. His weight shifted a full beat ahead of where the break was going. His back foot adjusted and the board responded like they were one. He carved a bottom turn that used every inch of the wave face without going over, drove up through a cutback that threw a clean arc of white behind him, and his body, through all of it, wasquiet.
No wasted motion, no show, no cameras.
Just a guy and the ocean having a private conversation.
He was wearing his real smile.
So, yes, I was definitely not watching him, my body recognizing that joy—where athletes made impossible things look easy. I had lived inside a body like that once. I knew what it took to get there.
I knew the hours and the salt and the tape on your fingers and the mornings you got up before the sun because you couldn’t do anything else. I knew what it meant to be that good, and I knew what it meant to give it up.
And I knew, watching him drop off the back of the wave and paddle out for another with that easy roll of his shoulders, that Chase Perez had never given up a damn thing in his life. He was a star, a world champion, because he would never have set aside his dreams for someone else.
