“Tanner.” Rafe greets me, his tone curt and his impatience more than obvious.

“What gives?” I ask before realizing this is the first time we’ve actually spoken in more than ten days, and a part of me cringes at the sound of his voice.

“What the fuck are you trying to pull, Tan?”

Whiplash hits me full force because I have no idea what he’s talking about. “Come again?”

“You’re in Kansas?” He yells into the phone as my hand falls off the steering wheel and into my lap while the shock and confusion over how he knows I’m here rifles through me. “You couldn’t let it go, could you?”

“What in the fuck are you talking about?” I shout back, my mind coming up blank on how he knows I’m here. I didn’t tell anyone where I was going or what I was doing.

“Don’t try and play me for a fool, man. Beaux. You tracked her down? What in the hell were you thinking?”

I open my mouth and close it before something I can’t take back comes out of it. “Rafe… you don’t understand. I’m just —”

“You’re just getting a restraining order filed against you is what you’re doing.”

My head whips up in complete bewilderment because there’s no way he just said what I think he said. “What are you talking about?” I feel like we’re having two completely separate conversations, and neither of them looks promising for me.

“I just got a call from Beaux. She’s filed a restraining order against you.”

“What?” I feel like the word screams through my head in a tornado of bewilderment, but my voice comes out even and quiet.

“Yeah. She wanted you to know that if you show up at her house again you’ll be arrested because she’s already filed one against you.”

I laugh long and hard, the edges of the sound tinged with hysteria that I won’t even deny as I sag against the seat, my head dropping back as I attempt to fathom how we went from the intimate murmurs in the foyer of her house to the tearful good-bye after sex to me being threatened with arrest. I’m at a complete loss and in utter shock.

“She did what?” I finally say into the phone as I try to piece together what in the fuck she’s trying to prove here.

“I’m not joking, Tanner, and I don’t know what’s going on with you, but you’re scaring me. Forget what I said before when I was talking as your boss and ordered you to come home. Listen to me right now as I speak to you as a friend. Dude, you’re losing your shit. You just tracked down a married woman, visited her house when she didn’t want you there, and did who knows what, but whatever it was is bad enough for her to spend the last few hours taking legal action to prevent you from doing it again. It’s called stalking, Tanner.”

“Stalking?” I say as I run a hand through my hair. This entire conversation is comical on so many levels, considering I believe I accused her of the same exact thing those first few days after we met when she was everywhere I turned. The irony is just too good to be true. “Oh that’s rich.” I’m dumbfounded as the laughter won’t subside. “She’s out of her damn mind.”

“Yeah, well maybe you should knock it the fuck off. Honestly, dude, I think you’re way off base here. Not acting like the person I know at all, but what do I know? Maybe she’s the crazy one. Maybe you need to get the fuck away from her. What if she accuses you of something worse?” he says.

“Not Beaux. No way. She wouldn’t do that.” I reject his implications immediately. He wasn’t there, doesn’t know what just happened… but then again I was, and now she’s filing a fucking restraining order? I pinch the bridge of my nose, welcome the pain of it as I try to wrap my head around the incredible highs and staggering lows of the day, and shut out the thoughts that he’s planting.

“I sound like a broken record, but you need to get on a plane and get home. She’s banking on the probability that you’ll be rational and listen to me. That you’ll leave Kansas and her alone or else she’ll go to the boss men next time, and you know what that means.” He blows out a frustrated sigh.

“I’m trying to figure out when it became your job to manage my private life, Rafe.”

“Well when you keep risking your job for a piece of ass who’s obviously playing you and going to get you fired, then it’s my job.”

“Are you threatening me?” I shout incredulously, purposefully ignoring the first part of his statement and the need to defend that she was so much more than just a piece of ass.

“If she goes to the brass and it comes down to it, man… I’ll have to fire you.”

“Then fire me,” I challenge. The buzz is already gone for me anyway.

“Really, Tan? You’re going to throw away all of your hard work and killer career for a woman who doesn’t want you? Who lied to you?”

“She does want me, though.” I cringe when I realize I spoke my thoughts aloud. “Something’s off here, Rafe. My gut instinct tells me that —”

“Stop! Please just stop and come home. It’s one thing to throw yourself into the fire when you’re trying to save something, but there is nothing to be saved here. Do you really want to be burned at the stake for nothing?” he rants as I fall silent and try to digest everything and question parts of my own sanity. How long am I going to chase a woman who loves me but obviously won’t let me into her life? “Tanner?” Rafe’s concerned voice breaks through my musings.

“I’m on sabbatical, remember?” There’s resignation front and center in my voice as I end the call without another word. Let him worry about what I’m going to do next since it’s none of his damn business. Fuck. I blow out a breath and rest my head against the steering wheel to try to come to grips with my warring thoughts and what he said.

Nothing makes sense, and yet I gave it all I’ve got. I can’t keep throwing good after bad no matter how much it hurts to walk away.

But that’s what I’m going to do. It’s what I have to do. I’m not a man who grovels. I’m a man who falls in and out of love at the flick of a switch, a paradox as Stella called me, and so I’m just going to get my shit from my hotel room, hop on a plane, and leave everything I thought I wanted behind so that I can force myself to fall back out of love.

It can’t be that hard to do. I’ve done it a hundred times before.

Even I don’t believe my own lies this time.

Chapter 28




“Are you seriously going to pass up that wave, Thomas?” the voice calls out behind me in a tone that has me rolling my eyes and raising my middle finger to my brother-in-law when he paddles up behind me.

“It wasn’t good.”

“That’s what you said about the one before that and then the one before that. That photographer still have your dick in a twist?”

“Humph.” Even two weeks after my visit to Kansas, I still don’t understand things any better than I did that night. I can’t tell if the whole situation is killing me or making me stronger, but I know that the hurt’s turned to anger and the disbelief to resentment. The one thing I know for sure is that the unknown still looms like a weight in my chest that I’m slowly ignoring more and more, bit by bit, day by day.

But that twist? It’s still there.

“So more like kinked than twisted now?” he says, earning a smile from me.

“Something like that.” I exhale loudly, not in the mood to talk, not in the mood to surf either now that I think about it. But there’s nothing like getting out in the water to clear your head. The sun feels good on my face, and the water steadily lapping over my legs on the board unwinds me bit by bit. I almost don’t even care if I catch a wave or not because for the first time in forever it feels like I can relax – ironic in itself since I haven’t gone on a story in almost two months.

And usually that’s the only thing that can relax me.

“Kink can be good, brother,” he says, and lifts one eyebrow with a smirk.

I flash him a warning look. “I don’t want to know,” I say, drawing a laugh because I sure as hell don’t want to even remotely know anything about my sister’s sex life. Our eyes hold for a minute, and I can see him trying to figure out how to get to whatever he wants to say. “Just lay it on me, man,” I finally tell him. As much as I’ll take a day surfing at Trestles, I also know that Colton had an ulterior motive when he asked me to meet him here.

His was the same motive my sister’s had with every phone call she’s made in the two weeks since I’ve been back from Kansas: to see how I’m doing or try to get me out of the house. To make sure I’m not wallowing in whatever it is I’m supposedly wallowing in.

Oh yeah, heartbreak. That’s what it’s called.

“Lay what on you? Your brother-in-law can’t invite you to go surfing without a reason?” he asks, and earns a long, disbelieving laugh from me.

“Look, any excuse to get out in the water is a good one, especially here of all places,” I say as I look toward the renowned Southern California beach before looking back to him. “But remember, I grew up with my sister. I know from experience how well she can assert her will to get you to do what she wants.”

Colton throws his head back and laughs and doesn’t need to say a single word to tell me that I’m right. “Ah, God, she’s a trip, but I love her to death,” he says, making me smile because I feel the same way. And it’s good to know that he does.

I debate how to play this, wondering if he’s really going to go to that place men don’t go, to talking, and yet it feels good to be out of the house and hanging with someone I like since everyone else I know is still on assignment somewhere. “You don’t have to do this, Colton. I appreciate you inviting me to meet up, but if Ry wants to fish and see how I’m doing, she doesn’t need you to do her dirty work for her.”