I started to think that I was hurting her more than I was helping her, but I wasn’t yet sure what else to do.

I carried on with the security guard, trying to play off my tourist act as smoothly as possible while I waited on Bray. Though waiting on her for what, I didn’t know.

“Where are you from in Missouri?” he asked me.

“Springfield,” I said. “We come here every year.”

He nodded and shone the flashlight around on the sand again, probably looking for evidence of alcohol or drug paraphernalia. He wasn’t a heavyset man, but he was a bit out of shape, with a small beer gut that hung somewhat over his pants. I noticed when he moved the flashlight around, the skin under his bicep jiggled.

“How long are you here for this time?” he asked.

“We’re heading out tomorrow,” I said. “Been here since Wednesday.” I looked thoughtfully at him and added, “I didn’t see you around here last night. We laid out here for a while around this time.”

“I had two days off this week,” he said, and I was a little surprised at how well my improvising had played out. “But you should be careful out here at night. And you can’t be sleeping on the beach.”

“No sir,” I said. “That’s what we have the bed for.” I glanced back at the hotel.

Just then, I saw a figure shrouded by the shadows of the hotel’s massive pool deck, moving toward us. It was Bray and she was carrying something over one shoulder. As she got closer, kicking up sand behind her as she trudged through it, I saw that it was a see-thru mesh beach bag with what looked like a beach towel and other random items inside.

Where the hell did she get that?

I smiled—probably squeamishly—back at the security guard and then shoved my hands into my pockets.

“I’m surprised it didn’t get stolen,” she said.

She stopped next to me, somewhat winded, and reached inside the bag. “Here it is,” she said, holding up a card key to the security guard with the hotel’s name printed on it. “I’m glad you asked about it because I might’ve lost my whole bag over by the pool.”

The security guard shone his flashlight on the card key and then looked us over again.

My confidence in pulling this off shot up a few notches. We stood there in a long, stressful silence waiting on what the security guard would say next.

“Just be careful,” he finally said. “And remember what I said about sleeping out here.”

I smiled back at him. “Definitely.”

Bray and I let out our breath once he was out of earshot. We watched him until his dark figure disappeared around the side of the hotel building. We thought we were in the clear, at least for the time being. We sat down again, side-by-side in the sand, and looked out at the black ocean.

“So where did you get the bag?”

“Found it by the pool.” She laughed. “A serious stroke of luck. And we sure needed it, after everything that has gone wrong.”

Just as she said that, we heard voices approaching us from behind.

“That’s her!” a girl said.

Bray and I both knew the group of three were talking about us and coming right toward us. Even if we hadn’t been the only other two on the beach, we still would’ve known. I looked down at the bag and then our eyes met. We stood up together just as two girls and the tall tattooed guy walked up.

“There it is,” the blonde-haired girl said, pointing at the bag beside Bray’s feet. “That’s my bag.”

And that was how we met Tate Roth, part savior, part… something else.

Chapter Thirteen

Bray

I grabbed the bag from the sand and held it out to the girl. “Sorry about that,” I said. “I was just borrowing it.” Her hair was so damn long, tumbling like a blonde wave down her back and nearly past her waistline.

She snatched it from my hand and began digging inside to see if I’d stolen anything. The brown-haired girl standing next to her looked at me once unemotionally, but she never said anything. “Borrowing it?” the girl said with harshly narrowed eyes. “No, bitch, it’s called stealing.”

I stepped toward her in a challenging fashion and Elias put his arm between us.

“I didn’t steal it,” I said through my teeth. “We just… needed it.” She was completely in the right, but I couldn’t help but snap back after what she called me.

“Look, we apologize,” Elias said, surrendering. “Bray found it by the pool. The security guard was on our asses about being out here.”

The tattooed guy listened to all of us quietly, a faint smile resting in his hazel eyes. A part of me got the feeling he thought the whole thing was amusing.

“Don’t ever touch my shit—”

The guy hushed her by gently pushing her back a few steps with his muscular arm.

“It’s obvious what’s going on here,” he said in a pretend authoritative tone. “These two are trying to slum it on the beach.” He grinned and looked me over once before turning to Elias. “The question is why. Homeless or stranded with no other place to go. Or just looking to fuck in the sand. It is, after all, one of the things on the universal bucket list.”

“Tate, let’s just go before I beat this bitch’s ass,” the blonde-haired girl said.

I pushed my way past Elias’s arm and went toward her. “You can fuckin’ try,” I said mere inches from her face.

We were both dragged away from each other. Elias had his hands around my upper arms.

“Calm down, Jen,” the guy said, setting the blonde back on her feet. He laughed under his breath and added with his mouth on her ear, “Damn, baby, save it for me later.”

I yanked my arms out of Elias’s hands angrily, but I stood there rather than going after Jen again. Then Elias grabbed my hand and started walking with me away from them. I bent over at the last second to snatch my flip-flops from the sand.

“Hey, man, wait!” the guy said, and we stopped. “No harm done. Look, tell me what’s going on. Maybe we can help you out.”

“Thanks, but no thanks,” Elias said and started walking off again. “We’ve already been ‘helped’ by someone who relieved us of our car just over an hour ago.”

“No shit?” the tattooed guy said, coming around in front of us. We stopped. “Are you fuckin’ for real—someone stole your car?”

“Yeah,” Elias said. “So we’re fresh out of trust. But thanks anyway.”

“Help them?” Jen shouted from behind. “Tate, you’ve got to be fucking kidding me! They steal my stuff and now you want to help them?” She slung the bag over her shoulder, grabbed the quiet girl by the elbow and started tramping through the sand back toward the hotel. “Asshole!” She said and gave the guy the finger.

The guy just smiled and waved her off.

“Don’t worry about her,” he said, turning back to us. “She’ll forgive me later. Where are the two of you from?” Then he pointed at me. “Bray, was it?”

Neither Elias nor I had realized until now that Elias had called me by my real name. It was too late to try being John and Julia, so we went with the flow.

“Yeah, this is Bray, and I’m Elias.”

“Tate Roth,” he said, and shook Elias’s hand.

“And we’re from Indiana,” Elias added.

Good idea to keep with Indiana, at least.

“Indiana, huh? What brought you to Florida? Vacationing before the summer crowds?” Tate asked.

We didn’t answer.

Tate was tall, with short, blondish-brown hair that was somewhat longer on top, tousled and spiky, and it looked like he never really brushed it. But the look worked for him somehow. There was a full-sleeve tattoo down his right arm and tattoos on both of his calves. And he was built a lot like Elias, not too overly muscular where his shoulders dwarfed his head, but rather just right. He seemed harmless. Charming, even. The kind of person you can’t help but instantly like despite that cocky sort of grin he wore and his hot-tempered company.

“Why don’t you come up and hang out with us in our room?” Tate said. “No shady shit here. Just a friendly offer.”

“We’ll pass,” Elias said and interlocked our fingers.

“From the looks of it,” Tate said, “it’s either up there with us or out here with the sand fleas and the security guard who makes rounds every hour.”

Tate’s offer was enticing, despite our unfortunate run-in with Anthony and Cristina. But I could tell that Elias wasn’t up for finding out if Florida had a lot of Anthonys.

“Can you give us a second?” I asked Tate, putting up my finger.

“Sure thing,” he said with a nod and a confident smile. Then he lit up a cigarette.

I pulled Elias by the hand and we stepped several feet away from Tate.

“I think we should,” I whispered.

“Well, I don’t,” Elias came back. “That guy almost fucking shot you tonight and I couldn’t do anything about it. We’ll figure this out on our own, Bray. I’m not going to risk something happening to you again.”

“What other choice do we have?” I asked, my whisper becoming harsher. “And you’re right, you couldn’t do anything when Anthony had that gun on me, but that wasn’t your fault.”

“I let them in the car with us,” he said. “It wasn’t any different from picking them up off the side of the road somewhere.”

“We both let them in the car,” I corrected him. “Neither of us could’ve known he was going to pull a gun. He seemed perfectly harmless.”

“Like this guy?” Elias noted, pointing toward Tate with his thumb.

“Seriously, what are the chances that we’d get robbed twice in the same night? We don’t have anything left to steal.”