Page 7
It was a strange realization, one that had me looking at Mark a little differently.
Which was crazy. I was the one who had left him, after all. The one who had thrown him over for a selkie prince and a life beneath the waves. How selfish, how stupid, how ridiculous was I to imagine he’d spent the last year pining for me? Even if I’d spent a great deal of it pining for him.
Doing my best to ignore the uncertainty niggling at me, I followed Mark into the stands. He was leading the way, blazing a trail through the crush of people—all of whom seemed to know him. But the entire time his arm was stretched behind him, his hand clasped tightly with mine. There was no reason for me to feel insecure or superfluous, I reminded myself.
But when we went to weave through a group of guys spilling out onto the steps of the bleachers, I realized I wasn’t the only one feeling a little off-kilter.
“Hey, sweetheart. How are you?” one of them said as he reached out and wrapped an arm around my waist, pulling me toward him.
I gasped, startled, and somehow Mark heard it. He whipped around and before I could say anything, he had put himself between us. “What the hell, man?” he demanded, shoving him hard enough to make him fall backward into his friends. “Don’t touch her!”
The guy sprang up, fists clenched at his sides. It didn’t take a lot of observation to see that he was drunk, and I shrank back a little. Not because I was worried about him hurting me—Mark wouldn’t let him touch me again, and besides, I could take care of myself—but because he was far enough gone to be belligerent. Worse, he looked like he was in college, which meant he wouldn’t like being told off by a high school kid.
Sure enough, he slammed his fists into Mark’s chest with a lot more force than Mark had initially used on him. “What’s your problem? I was just saying hello!”
Mark didn’t so much as flinch at the attack. “She doesn’t want to say hello. ” He grabbed the guy by the collar of his preppy polo shirt and shook him some. “And you don’t go around grabbing girls like that unless you’re a total dick. ” Mark finally let go of the guy’s shirt but added another shove—this one hard enough to have him landing on his ass in the bleachers. He didn’t get up. One of his friends made to intervene, but Mark gave him a bad-ass look that told him to bring it on. He didn’t. Instead, he muttered a curse and sat down, feigning an intense, sudden interest in the game.
“Come on. Let’s go find the others,” I told him, tugging at his hand.
It took a minute, but I finally felt the tension drain out of him. Then he wrapped an arm around my waist and began propelling me toward the top of the bleachers.
“You didn’t have to do that, you know,” I told him even as I snuggled into his side. “I could have taken care of—”
The look he shot me smoldered with a rage that surprised me. “I may not be able to protect you while you’re in the ocean, but I can damn well do it here. He had no business touching you. ”
I wasn’t going to argue. Not when Mark was so adamant about it. So I just said, “Thanks,” and rose up on my tiptoes to kiss his cheek.
He paused, like he couldn’t believe I wasn’t yelling at him. But why should I cause a fight when it was so important to him? Besides, Mark had always been a bad-ass. I’d known that when I fell for him. Trying to change that part of him now would be ridiculous.
He pulled me in front of him, kissed my neck softly. “I’m sorry he touched you. ”
I shrugged. Of all the stuff that had happened to me in the water, being grabbed by a drunk guy at a game didn’t even register. But Mark was clearly still upset. He kept me in front of him as we climbed the rest of the steps, his arms wrapped around my waist. We made slow progress as he stopped every few stairs to press kisses on my shoulder or skim his lips down my jaw.
“You look beautiful tonight,” he murmured against my ear.
I turned my head so that our lips were barely a few centimeters apart. “So do you. ”
He flushed a little. “Maybe we should get out of here. ”
“Maybe we should. ”
He was just lowering his mouth to mine when I heard a familiar voice crow, “Hey, man, get a room. Or better yet, pass her over here!”
I looked up in time to see Logan bounding over our other friends—as well as a middle-aged couple who was obviously there to cheer for their son—and down the crowded steps toward us. Then he was there, in front of me, and I was yanked into the hugest bear hug of my life.
“There you are, Tempest! About time too. It took every ounce of self-control I had not to storm your house this morning and drag you down to the water. ” His Australian accent was as heavy as ever, his eyes gleaming just as wickedly as I remembered. “I’ve missed you, girl. ”
He started to pull away, but I held on tighter, keeping him in place just a little longer. It was a purely platonic hug, without demands or expectations, and I was nowhere ready to end it.
Logan’s and my friendship just was. We could talk every day or once in six months; it didn’t matter. When we saw each other again, there was no guilt. No recriminations. Just pure joy with a side order of teasing thrown in to keep things interesting. Plus, he was the one who helped Mark save Moku when he’d nearly drowned the past summer. That wasn’t something I could ever forget.
I finally relinquished my hold on him, but it was hard. For me, Logan was everything fun and uncomplicated about my human life. Tonight, when I was feeling so uncertain about things, he was exactly what I needed.
“You’re still pretty,” I told him with a mock sneer.
“And you’re still mean. ” He wrapped an arm around my shoulder, guiding me up the five rows to where he and the others were sitting. Then I was in the middle of all my friends, and it felt so good I never wanted to leave. Smacking kisses from my surfer pals, Bach, Tony and Scooter, followed by hugs from Bri and Mickey, my two best girlfriends. After we’d chatted for a few minutes, Logan pulled me over all of them—and the middle-aged couple—so that I was seated between him and Mark.
On the field below us, they started introducing the football players from both sides, but I was too busy being interrogated by Logan and the other guys to pay any attention to it.
“So, why weren’t you outside this morning?” Bach demanded from his spot on the other side of Logan. “I’ve never known you to miss a chance to surf. ”
“Yeah,” Scooter chimed in. “We waited for you so long we were practically prunes by the time we got out of the water. ”
“I’m sorry. I was jetlagged,” I told them, embarrassed to admit that I had gone surfing—after they’d all left for school. I’d been lying in bed, staring at my ceiling when I’d heard the dawn patrol heading down the street toward the water at four thirty in the morning. Everything inside me had quickened with the need to join them, to run down to the water and throw myself into the surf, my favorite board clutched in my hands. I wanted to ride the waves, to surf for mindless hours where nothing mattered but getting covered.
I’d stayed in my room, in my bed, because I’d been scared. Scared of my reception from them and scared of looking like an ass after going months without so much as touching a board. When I was on my game and practicing regularly, I was one of the best surfers in the group. And since they all thought I was living in Hawaii and surfing daily, the last thing I needed was to look like a total frube in front of them.