Lorelie Brown - Riding the Wave

She needed to, on some level. Friends were safer than the strange animosity and lust they bounced between.

Ducking back inside the room, she set the Fuji down on the nightstand, next to a brass lamp. When he’d been living in this room, there had been a Hawaiian hula girl there. The first season he’d gone off to surf in Tahiti, Avalon snuck in nightly and swished the girl’s skirt. Not anymore.

She wondered what he thought about having been wiped out of what used to be his home.

It wouldn’t have happened if he’d stuck around. Sage’s room had stayed the same until she’d needed to come home. After Avalon couldn’t put up with Matthew’s whining anymore and came home, her room had been waiting. She’d thought her relationship with Matthew was headed toward an engagement at any moment, but they’d had a blowup instead. At least she’d had her own bed and the room she’d decorated to keep her company while she dealt with admitting her blindness. It had only been Tanner’s room that had been completely redecorated.

She slipped back out onto the tiered roof of the garage. The slope wasn’t too extreme, but it was certainly noticeable as she settled onto her ass. Tanner had the wall of the house to lean against, but she had to plant her hands flat at her hips to feel more secure. She settled into the feeling like she settled into a heavy slab of a wave.

“I knew you weren’t much of a party boy, but this seems extreme.”

“This actually isn’t about them. Not much, at least.”

He stared off past the roof of the house across the street. She followed his gaze. For a minute, all she saw was suburbia, neatly tiled and slated roofs all lined up in a row, and past that the dark glimmer of the water under a half moon. The water frothed white in the surge she loved so much.

Avalon didn’t poke. There was a special element to a summer night where the warmth never left the air, but the dark could fix problems. Or at least soothe them for a little while. Minutes stacked up in quiet companionship.

Tanner sighed contentedly. “Now I’m home.”

“What?”

“I used to come out here and sit when I still lived here. Watch the water. Think about that day’s waves. Feel exhausted or upset or whatever drama my teenage self was rolling around in. Just . . . process. Almost every night. Mom gave up on keeping a screen on the window.”

Carefully, slowly, she lifted her feet and folded her knees to her chest. She still felt fairly steady. In body, at least, since her mind was rolling. “Not surfing, not your mom, not the house itself. This rooftop. This is home?”

“Yeah. I guess in a way it is.”

“You, Tanner Wright, are an idiot.”

Tanner’s immediate reaction was to bristle. He hadn’t exactly invited her. Under no circumstances had he asked her opinion. Then he smiled. Leaned his shoulders back against the wall as prickly stucco caught at his shirt. “Jealous much?”

“Of you?” She gave a neatly dismissive huff. Two fingers flicked her bangs to the side. “No chance.”

He was struck with the sudden wish to see her hair damp and plastered to her temples again. No seawater needed; he’d make her work up a sweat. She had gorgeous legs that he could wrap around his hips.

He pushed all that down. No time, no place. He had a championship on the line. If that wasn’t enough, he had seen firsthand what happened to relationships broken by his hellacious travel schedule. Splitsville, pronto. The longest relationship he’d managed was six months. Nothing to brag about, but she’d gotten hella bored, hella fast being without him. “No, not of me. Of my family.”

Her smile looked a little smug. “Well, yeah. That’s a given. Have you met my mom?”

The hand he rubbed over the back of his head was pushed by chagrin. “Um. Maybe? I’m the first one to admit that I was fairly self-centered in high school.”

“I think you might have. At Sage’s sixteenth birthday.” She winced a little, curling her hands around her thighs. “That was a mess.”

God, he did remember that. It had been one of the last times he’d been home. At that point, he’d known about Mako, but he’d bought his dad’s story about it being a onetime mistake. He’d learned soon after how much Hank lied. The truth had been so much more painful, an ongoing betrayal of everything their family stood for.

As a matter of fact, that hot mess of a birthday party had somewhat propelled the situation along. If he remembered right, the bleached blonde had been Avalon’s mom. The distraction over the inappropriately dressed woman who’d brought along a boyfriend ten years younger than her enabled Tanner to hit the keg more often than he otherwise would have. He’d barely been able to keep his mouth shut around his mom. After his further discoveries in Tahiti a few months later, he’d known he couldn’t go home.

Her chin rose. “Yeah, I see it. You remember.”

“See what?”

“That look.” She turned her gaze back out toward the far line of roofs. “Anyone who remembers my mom gets it eventually. A little distaste, heavy on the disgust. And often some doubt. Am I like her? Will I turn out like her?”

“You asking me, sweetheart? ’Cause I don’t know you near well enough to answer that.” He waggled his eyebrows. The moment had gotten way too deep for his liking. “Though you give me half a chance and I’ll find out.”

Her laugh was pretty. Light, surprisingly musical. He’d have thought, based on her voice, that she’d have had more of a husky chuckle. “You keep trying, Tanner. You’ve got only your pride to hurt. Come on. There’s a party downstairs. Everyone’s waiting on you.”

She slipped back in the window with an easy twist of her hips. Inside, she dusted off the curve of her ass. Quite the pert curve, no less.

Drawn by that firm swell, he was in without thinking about it. But standing in what had once been his room, memories hit him all over again.

The weight of the secret threatened to drown him every time his mom smiled at him. And she was waiting downstairs to do a lot of that. Time was running out, in more than one way. It wasn’t enough that he was here again, dealing with the pictures of Hank everywhere he turned. Mako had given that damn interview. Everything was ticking down.

He wasn’t sure he could take it.

Somewhere along the years, he’d lost his way. Now that his dad was dead, it became harder every day to understand why he kept a shitty man’s secret. Except Avalon was pretty much proof of why, wasn’t she?

With no family of her own, she’d latched onto his sister and his mother. They’d welcomed her because they had that purity of spirit he’d been lacking all his life. They chilled and relaxed when he was driven to tear and shred his way through life. That was his father’s influence, pushing him to bigger and better. It wasn’t enough to have one championship; nail two. It wasn’t enough to have three sponsorships; you should find another. Drive. Ambition.

The strange thing was, he wondered if Avalon, under the surfer-chick front, had the same sort of buzz under her skin.

His hand darted out, almost without any conscious thought behind it. Her skin was smoother than liquid silk. Slicker than salt water between his fingers. He’d caught her by the waist, two fingers snaking under the bottom hem of her shirt.

Her lips parted silently. In the shadowy darkness of the room, moonlight picked out her eyes to make them gleam. Her head tilted slightly to the side. “What are you doing, Tanner?”

“I wasn’t kidding, you know.” He tugged her a little closer. A little nearer. Silence swirled around them, locking their breath together. Salt, sweet, the tiniest edge of a gasp. “Everything else aside . . . I want to know you.”

The smile she was biting back became something suspiciously like a snort of laughter. Lines cut under the apples of her cheeks as she tensed her mouth. “Has that line ever worked for you? Maybe when you snuck girls in here?”

“I didn’t,” he said, but it felt kind of like bluster, even to him. The back of his neck flushed hot. At least it was too dark for her to see the blush.

Her chin lifted even higher, but she didn’t step away. If anything, she leaned nearer. The cotton shirt brushed over his chest. Her eyes looked darker than normal, the pupils large pools. “Wanna try again? Liars don’t get in my panties.”

“Didn’t realize that was a possibility.”

“Possibility, yes. Guarantee, no. But lying to me’s the safest way to not get a shot.”

He followed the long, sleek line of her arms from her wrists all the way up to her shoulders. Then traced over the straight blade of collarbone hiding beneath her shirt. Most girls who showed up at circuit parties wore a hell of a lot less. Bikinis, most of the time. While Avalon could have totally gotten away with that, she’d worn a V-neck shirt that gave only a hint of her cleavage. He’d seen her body before at the beach, but he was still hit with a sense of wonder. Curiosity. What she’d taste like once he’d unwrapped her.

He swallowed, dragging his gaze back up to her face. “What am I not supposed to be lying about, again?”

“Girls. In this room.”

“Yes. A bunch of them. I got them to come up after dark or when no one was home.”

“Inez Montoya.” Her head tilted to give him better access as he traced over the satin work that made up her skin. She still hadn’t touched him in any way.

She rested within his arms, but not a part of him. Not yet. He’d fix that soon enough.

It was becoming rapidly apparent that getting through the San Sebastian Pro without tasting Avalon was a ridiculous goal. “Yeah, Inez was one of them.” He hadn’t thought of that dark-haired beauty in years. It had been about six weeks after he’d graduated high school, when he’d gone to his first official ASP event.