The slow pivot he did was all show. One more thing he was certainly good at, whether he wanted to admit it or not.

She snapped off a handful of pictures, the whir of the lens like a subtle raspberry at him. He wanted to play at being as mercurial as the ocean before a storm, fine. She could be as much of an ass in return.

“There’s one thing you ought to know,” he said. His voice was a quiet purr, half threat, half promise that would forever go unexplored, at least with her. “Hank Wright was no god. There are things you don’t know about him.”

“And you do? You’re the one who was gone. You don’t want me to ask, fine.” She stood as well. No way was she finishing this conversation from such a disadvantage, staring up at him. She’d never been much of one for doormatting. Her camera dangled, strap wound loosely around her wrist. She lifted it with a smile that felt only mean. Snapped off a couple more shots. “But I’m the one who was here. The whole time. So unless you’re prepared to spill about the dark and dirty? You don’t also get to rub it in my face.”

Out of nowhere, the wrinkles across his forehead cleared. He grinned. She didn’t want to admit how much she liked the shape of his eyes, the darker sweep of his brows above them. “It’s a damned shame,” he said.

She swallowed down her sudden confusion. It was so much easier to be annoyed. “What’s that?”

He leaned down and brushed a kiss across her mouth, too short to be much more than a tease. She didn’t even get a taste of him, and sure didn’t get any more than the shock of a tingle. “That we won’t get to follow up on this. Not anymore.”

Chapter 5

It hadn’t taken Tanner long to realize very little had changed in San Sebastian. The place was a funny mix of half organic-eating, biofuel-spouting, crunchy ex-hippies and half young, heavy-wave, cutting-edge surfers. The only difference from his last time in town was that both factions sported smartphones that they put to entirely different uses.

The surfer crowd filmed themselves doing wicked tricks and had it up on the web in less time than it took to dry their hair. The hippies flash-organized protests when the local grocery store was discovered to be passing off regular grapes as organic.

The downside meant Tanner had to weave and dodge through them all as they were nose-to-screen wandering down the main strip.

The good part was the eclectic offerings at the heart of the town, smack up against the beach, right where the street led inland from the pier. The rental house he’d taken was intentionally less than three blocks up the beach from the retail section. He’d pretty much planned on parking his SUV in the garage and walking all over town, the way he had when he’d been a kid.

So far, mission accomplished.

Late in the evening, he wandered his way toward some grub. His hands slipped deep in his pockets, it almost felt like he was slouching in an intentional reclamation of his teenage years.

He’d been such a shit. More attitude than one too-skinny body should have been able to handle. But no one had called him on it because he’d had the talent to back it all up.

His dad had told him plenty of times that nothing mattered but winning and making sure everyone knew you’d won—keeping up your image.

Hank had gotten that right, and lived up to it to the utmost. Even if it had left Tanner holding the bag when it came to guilt and secrets.

Tanner shoved those thoughts away and let everything else go. Nothing got through to him but the quiet shush of his sandals over the sandy sidewalks. The cool breeze coming in off the water, scented with the salt he’d always considered a vital part of anywhere resembling home. Now he had the real thing.

The front doors of his father’s store—no, now it was his mother’s—were propped wide open. A rack of cheap tourist T-shirts had been planted outside the threshold, but the quality goods were on the inside. All the last-minute essentials for a day of good surfing, plus Sage’s surfboard-making studio in the back.

Tanner strolled on by. He might’ve even looked across the street as he passed the lit-up windows, in case his mom was manning the front counter. He’d come back, and he was dealing with the fallout of almost a decade of choices. Seeing his mom and Sage in Australia and Hawaii had always been bittersweet. He’d wanted so much to tell them the truth of what Hank was like, about the secrets Tanner was forced to keep. But he knew how painful it was to have their father’s façade crushed. He didn’t want to inflict that on them.

The slot next door had been a psychic’s storefront when he’d been young. The place had always been draped in purple and gold, and Tanner had been fascinated with the dark-haired woman who’d run it. He’d never quite been able to figure out if she was a fraud preying on tourists or if she’d actually believed her spiel. Eventually he’d realized it didn’t matter. She was there, she did her thing, and no one seemed to get hurt. Good enough.

But Madame Rozamund was apparently gone. A candy store now filled the narrow storefront. Pyrex bins and giant tubes filled with brightly colored munchies lined three and a half walls.

Oh, he was totally getting some of that, though after the Sebastian Pro. Training was training. He couldn’t even say it sucked, not anymore. It just was. As much an ingrained part of him as the motions of surfing itself.

Though he passed a couple restaurants, he couldn’t seem to pick one. Instead, he wandered to the foot of the pier. The real wood of his childhood had been replaced with recycled material that sprung under his steps. He turned back to face the town he’d willingly abandoned for the better part of a decade.

Tiny streaks of light burned through the growing twilight. Mostly it was the main street, running east, that was still bright and populated. The houses to the north and south of the pier were lighting up, most of them with towels drying on the back railings. Expensive-as-hell beachfront property had racks of surfboards and wetsuits pinned up on clotheslines.

The slow-burn contentedness that swept over Tanner wasn’t as surprising as he’d have expected even two days ago.

He could practically taste the possibilities now. He was home. The town’s memory was starting to untie from his father’s. And Tanner dug that. They’d always been so intrinsically intertwined, the result of growing up in a small town where his father was a big shot. San Sebastian had always been Hank’s world. Sometime during the years of following the world circuit, Tanner had forgotten that it was his world too. His home.

The only thing better would be making new memories in the place. Taking down a championship would be the best start. Another good one might be spending time with Avalon. Though she was his sister’s best friend, they were all adults. Avalon could make her own choices. There was plenty of opportunity down that road for happy making. If it were up to him, it’d be her panties he’d be working on. If she was on board with the idea, naturally.

He smiled to himself as he leaned against the tar-stained railing of the pier. She wouldn’t mind. He knew women and Avalon was definitely a special one. Both clever as hell and also into him. It had been there after he’d stolen that superfast kiss. She hadn’t simpered, hadn’t gasped. She’d only flashed him one of the cheekiest grins he’d ever seen.

But he wasn’t allowed to continue his happy turn of thoughts. A dark, shadowy figure approached from the head of the pier. Tanner dismissed him at first, but then realized that that wasn’t going to work.

An accented voice came out of the darkness. “So here we are. In our father’s town and together.”

The disks of Tanner’s spine felt like they fused into one hard line of what the fuck? Small towns could bite it. Tanner’s jaw thrust hard and he kept his gaze locked down the street the way he’d been. “My father. And, yeah, maybe the asshole was your father too. You’re welcome to him. But there’s no ‘our father’ because there’s no us.”

Mako’s dark hair roostered up across the orange-streaked sunset behind him. It only got worse when he ran a hand through the mess. The narrow shape of his eyes bore very little resemblance to Hank Wright, but Tanner could still see the ghost of the man in the way Mako looked out sideways. All sly insistence that he could work things the way he wanted.

Hank had been insanely determined like that and willing to see only his own side, even if no one but Tanner seemed to realize it. Except he’d been more like a bulldozer than a snake. Slamming through resistance with smiles and jokes had been his specialty.

Tanner pushed away from the railing. He didn’t need this; that’s all there was to it. He had enough crap piling up in his life, and at some point he needed to make a choice as to what he was doing when he left the surf circuit. Mako simply didn’t figure in the picture.

“Look,” he said on a sigh. His bones felt weary, as if he were getting old before his time. He pinched the top of his forehead, where a sudden ache had set up. “I hope you have a very nice life, and I’m not being sarcastic. I don’t wish anything against you. But . . . dealing with you means dealing with all the shit my dad left behind. I figure it’s best to let the past stay buried.”

He didn’t want to be responsible for putting his mom through that pain, not if there was anything he could do about it. With Hank dead and buried, there was simply no reason to. As long as he could choke down the memories that being in Hank’s house would bring, everything would be totally covered.