Finding Serenity (Serenity Beach) (4 page)

“I wouldn’t use responsibility in a sentence describing Kennedy and Brian.” Especially not Brian. He was practically allergic to responsibility.

“How did you meet them?”

We navigated our way through the crowd and I kept an eye out for my friends. “I met Kennedy at the Seabag. She works there on and off when she’s not in the city doing her modeling jobs. She’s been friends with Brian for years. They are pretty much a packaged deal.”

It was a bit overwhelming sometimes, to be perfectly honest. They had a lot of inside jokes, and often had entire conversations with just a few words. I’d had a hard time keeping up at first, and still struggled occasionally. But they were also an endless source of entertainment.  I wasn’t surprised when we found them just west of the beer tent, splashing in a fountain.

“Should they be doing that?” Nolan asked uncertainly.

“Probably not, but that’s never stopped them.” This was actually pretty mild behavior for them. “They’re really into shock value.”

“Jordyn!” Kennedy waved dramatically when she spotted us. “Come in! The water is just right.”

“I’m good, thanks.” My face grew hot as the crowd around the fountain all turned to look at me. I said to Nolan, “Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to track them down.”

Kennedy splashed her way out of the fountain and came charging over, shoes in hand. “You missed all the fun,” she complained. “And what are you holding?”

“Oh, this?” I proudly held up the baseball. “Just the winning pitch from the one and only Nolan Meyers.”

“You guys played baseball?” Her forehead wrinkled in confusion as she turned to Nolan. “I thought you were still recovering from that horrible injury? Didn’t you almost die?”

My eyes widened in surprise as I looked at Nolan. He carefully avoided eye contact and I knew this wasn’t the place to confront him about it so I changed the subject. “Does Brian realize that he’s alone in the fountain now?”

“Brian prefers to be the star,” Kennedy said, keeping a careful eye on Nolan. “He’ll come out when he’s had his fill of attention.”

“Are you alright?” I asked Nolan quietly. His face had gone hard.

“I’m not feeling so well, actually.” He gave me an apologetic look. “Would you hate me terribly if I took off?”

“No, of course not.” I wouldn’t hate him, but I sure was suspicious. “Kennedy will give me a ride home.”

Nolan nodded. “I’m really sorry. I’ll make it up to you on our second date.”

“Sounds good.”

He backed away slowly with his hands still tucked into his pockets. I watched him until he disappeared into the crowd.

“Did you scare him away?” Brian had finally gotten enough attention and was out of the fountain. His clothes were soaked through and water dripped everywhere.

“He was intimidated by my awesome friends,” I said, shaking my head as Brian twisted his shirt to squeeze water out of it. “He said he felt inadequate in comparison.”

“Rightly so.” Brian pushed his shoulders back and stood up straight. “No one stands a chance against a specimen like this.”

I rolled my eyes. “Are we done here? I’m tired.”

“Tired? More likely you are bummed you’re going home alone.” Kennedy winked playfully. “At least you’ve got that baseball to keep you company in bed tonight.”

“Funny.” But it wasn’t funny at all. Kennedy was at least a little right. Maybe I hadn’t been expecting to sleep with Nolan tonight, but I definitely hadn’t been expecting our date to end so abruptly.

“If you prefer, I can keep you company.” Brian was in rare form tonight.

“Thanks for the offer, but I’ll be just fine on my own.” At least I was used to that.

Because of the shortened date, I was home well before bedtime which meant I had some time to catch up on bad television. The first thing I did was change into an oversized cotton t-shirt, my typical lounge attire. Then I dug the remote control out from between the couch cushions.

Sports Uncovered was just beginning, and I settled on the couch with a cold beer in hand. It wasn’t the type of show I usually watched, but I wasn’t in the mood to watch anything that would require me to think. Thirty seconds into the show, I was hearing all about Nolan Meyers and his near brush with death.

When Nolan had mentioned his shoulder injury, I had just assumed he had torn something while pitching. It hadn’t seemed like that big of a deal. But the television was telling me a different story.

“In what has been called one of the most harrowing moments in sports history, Nolan Meyers was just three pitches away from a perfect game,” the show’s narrator said, showing a clip of Nolan on the pitcher’s mound. “But that was all about to end.”

I was glued to the screen for the next half hour. It was a nice summary of everything I didn’t know about Nolan and I almost felt guilty watching it on television rather than hearing it from Nolan himself. But my curiosity was stronger than my guilt.

Nolan’s background was just as he had told me. He came from a farm in Nebraska. By his junior year in high school, he had already drawn the attention of scouts. They drafted him after his senior year and he played three years of minor league baseball before being called up to the pros. In his very first year in the majors he won Rookie of the year. Over the next two years, his career had been beyond impressive.

Everyone in the MLB was calling him the greatest pitcher of the generation. His team was pretty much guaranteed to be the World Series champs. But then disaster struck. In the top of the ninth, just minutes away from completing a perfect game, Nolan delivered a fastball that was returned right up the middle. He never saw it coming and it drilled him in the head, just above his right eye.

I watched in horror as he dropped to the ground, already unconscious. The players that rushed to his side looked equally aghast. Eventually medics were brought in and he was loaded onto a stretcher. When they rolled him onto his back, his uniform was covered in blood.

The narrator went on to say that it took Nolan almost a year to recover from the injury. He had suffered internal bleeding and was in a coma for weeks. When he finally emerged from the coma, he had endured months of physical therapy to regain his motor skills. Then he’d had to relearn how to throw a baseball. Two months into playing for a low-level farm team, he injured his arm and decided to take a break from baseball.

Now he was in Serenity, hiding from the world. Just like me.

The television transitioned to a badly acted romantic comedy that I barely even noticed. My mind was still obsessing over Nolan, and what I had learned about his past.

It went against everything I had promised to myself in the last two months. I had come to Serenity Beach to get away from all of my mistakes, not to keep making them. Falling for Nolan could end up being my biggest mistake yet. He was damaged- broken even. He came from a completely different world.

He was everything I needed to avoid, so why couldn’t I stop myself from worrying about whether Nolan and I would have a second date?

My head was starting to hurt so I shuffled to the kitchen and dug through my junk drawer looking for some pain killers. I pushed aside a deck of cards and froze with my fingertips grazing my old school ID. Without thinking about it, I picked it up and studied the girl in the photo. Eighteen-year-old Jordyn Lewis looked more innocent and pure than I remembered. In just a couple of years, all of that would change for her.

I tossed it into the back of the drawer and slammed it shut. The girl in that picture didn’t exist anymore. She had been replaced by someone that knew better than to trust her heart to anyone else. The new Jordyn Lewis had been through hell, and now all she wanted to do was spend her days on the beach and her nights drifting off to sleep with waves crashing in the background.

That’s how I ended up on the balcony, staring up at the stars and rocking with the rhythm of the ocean. I closed my eyes and drew in a deep breath, inhaling the salty air. The waves were fierce tonight, pounding relentlessly against the shore. I was so caught up in them that at first, I didn’t realize I was no longer alone.

“Jordyn!”

My eyes flew open and I looked down. Nolan was standing below the balcony. He was nearly hidden in the shadow of the house, and at first I thought I was imagining things. But then he spoke again.

“You’re supposed to be saying, “Romeo, Romeo.”

“Shakespeare was a hack,” I replied.

“I don’t know about that. He made Peeping Toms cool.”

“Stalkers of the world, rejoice!” I refocused on the matter at hand. “Speaking of stalkers, why are you lurking outside my place?”

“Yeah, this does look pretty bad.” Nolan shrugged. “I’m not sure any answer can make this less creepy, but honestly, I just wanted to see you.”

I hated that my heart skipped a beat and that I felt myself blush. “Why?”

Now it was his turn to be embarrassed. “Because you make me smile.”

Nolan was either the most honest person I had ever met, or an expert at saying exactly what I wanted to hear. Either way, I was leery. “You’re not here to murder me, then?”

His laugh filled the air and the sound made my heart flutter in my chest. “If I was, do you think I would admit it?”

“Fair point.” I pointed behind me. “On that note, would you like to come inside?”

“No.” He smiled at my reaction. “I mean, yes, that’s a nice offer and I really would like to accept. But I shouldn’t.”

“Shouldn’t?” Even as I teased him, I realized that I was glad he hadn’t said yes. I needed to keep my distance from Nolan.

“I didn’t come by to get invited inside.” Nolan’s smile was utterly dashing. “I just wanted to apologize for taking off on your tonight.”

“I saw something about you on television,” I admitted. “If you won’t come up, can I come down there so we can talk?”

He hesitated, looking out over the ocean. “Alright.”

I was surprised by the tension in his voice, but I was pretty sure I knew why he was less than thrilled. I had learned the secret he had been trying to hide. “Just give me one second. I’ll be right down.”

Since I was still only wearing my nightshirt, I hurried to pull on a pair of shorts. Then I grabbed a blanket and two beers before heading down to the beach.

“In case you are thirsty,” I explained as I handed one to Nolan.

He smiled broadly. “You continue to impress me.”

I spread the blanket over the soft sand and took a seat, pulling my knees up to my chest. Nolan settled next to me, his body warm when it brushed against mine. “I think that you are easily impressed.”

“I’ve learned to appreciate the small things in life,” he said easily, taking a drink and sighing. “Being with a beautiful girl on the beach at night, cold beer in hand…that’s something to appreciate.”

“You didn’t tell me that you almost died,” I said bluntly. “I saw the footage. It looked really bad."

Nolan’s entire body moved as he took in a deep breath and then let it out. “It wasn’t as bad as it looked.”

“No?” I asked skeptically.

He turned to look at me, blue eyes completely guarded. “It was much worse.”

I wasn’t sure what to say to that. It was a completely honest answer and something I hadn’t been expecting. “You were in a coma?”

“Six weeks.” He turned back to the ocean. “I didn’t even see it coming. I was so far inside my own head, focused on nothing but closing out that game. A perfect game is incredibly rare in baseball. Most pitchers go an entire career without even getting close. I was three outs away… and then it all ended.”

“But you still had eight perfect innings.” I didn’t know much about baseball, but that seemed like a pretty big deal to me.

“No one gets into the history books for an almost perfect game,” he said with a wry smile. “At least I was in a coma when all the game recaps aired and the articles were published. I got to skip right over that torture.”

I studied his profile, looking for a sign of the injury. “Where did it hit you?”

He pushed back his hair, the long waves that I thought were some sort of attempt to not be noticed in public were actually camouflaging a deep scar just below the hairline.

“It was a lot worse right after I got out of the hospital. The ball hit me so hard it fractured my skull and caused bleeding around my brain. I had to give up all my dreams about becoming a model.” He tried to smile and failed, letting it land somewhere around a grimace.

I couldn’t stop myself from reaching out, touching the tips of my fingers to the scarred flesh. It was surprisingly soft. “You’re wrong. It definitely doesn’t take away from your beauty. If anything, it just makes you look tough.”

“So you’re saying ladies are turned on by this sort of thing?” he finally smiled.

“No. I’m saying I think the scar is beautiful because it’s part of you. It’s a powerful reminder of just how close you came to leaving this world for good. And I’m really glad you stayed.” I dropped my hand, feeling embarrassed that I had acted so boldly. “Anyway…you probably didn’t stop by for a deep conversation like this. Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. This is the first time I’ve talked about it with anyone.” He leaned his shoulder into me purposefully. “There’s something special about you, Jordyn Lewis.”