Wrecked (Sons of San Clemente Book 2) (13 page)

Fuck it Stop analyzing
. He let her have her way with him just as he always had. He was as predictable as the tide where Hollis was concerned.

“I
still think when the tide’s out, a scooter would work better,” Hollis said. “The crutches suck in the sand.” She looked over at him as he swung himself another long stride. “But you’ll never admit that, tough guy.”

“I think I’ve more than proved my prowess to you over the past twelve hours.”

Had he ever. They had made love twice more last night before finally falling asleep and before the sky had even begun to turn grey with the dawn, Kadan had woken her up by kissing a path from her breasts to between her legs. She felt so alive this morning, as if every part of her body were in perfect alignment, every nerve, every cell, healthy and communicating.

She’d already gone for a short, early run and then showered before making breakfast for herself and for Kadan. He’d been so restless this morning, accustomed to a lot of physical activity that he was finding it challenging to stay put. She’d given him some stretching exercises to work on while she’d cooked their breakfast burritos, but much like his claim last night that he could never do yoga with her, the stretching exercise had turned into an entirely different type of exercise.

And now the beach walk.

Hollis walked on the other side of him and stared at the rocky end of the cove rather than at the ocean. She thought about her breathing. And she focused on the brush of Kadan’s arm as they walked close together.

“How are you feeling?” He asked, surprising her.

“Wonderful.”

“No problems.”

She bit her lip. A million problems. But she didn’t want to burden him with anything. She’d always played it cheerful even when she was worried or sad. She hadn’t wanted to give him a reason to look anywhere else, when it was so obvious that he had every opportunity and encouragement to do so. His friends would even send women they’d met at the beach or at the bar or at a restaurant or during a surf lesson, to his house, even when she’d been home from college staying with him.

“Nothing major,” she said breezily, amazed that she could lie to him so naturally.

It seemed wrong, but it was a habit. Besides, how could she really explain what a fraud she was? What would happen if she were honest? Let him know she that she was scared. That she was lost. That she had no idea what to do with her life. That she was broke unless she went to her mother or grandmother. Her stomach churned sickly. How would he react? Problems weren’t sexy. Or fun. Women didn’t come to Kadan with problems.

She stomped down the mad impulse, hearing her mother’s voice drone on critically in her head. “Don’t bore other people with yourself or your problems.” Or the usual, “Remember, you are the least interesting person in the room. Let others talk about themselves. You’ll learn something for once.”

The silence thrummed between them. Comfortable but expectant. Hollis had to remind herself to breathe.

“Did you blame me for Holland?”

While the question seemed to come out of nowhere, really, it had hovered over them for half her life now.

“You never acted like it, never once, but he was your brother. Your twin. I was with him. You must have at least a little.”

She looked up into troubled blue eyes. She brushed his loose curls away from his forehead, but the breeze tumbled them back again.

“You weren’t with him Kadan. He followed you. I heard you arguing with him the night before not to even think about going out. And he always had to push everything, every button so when he showed up, you tried to send him back in.”

“Too late,” he said. “I thought he’d get scared and get the hell out of there. Those sets were—” He broke off as if remembering. “And then Holland—” Kadan stopped, and Hollis didn’t know what he had been going to say.

No one had really described Holland’s death to her. She hadn’t asked. She’d been so shocked. Surfers fell off all the time, especially in big storm swells, but they didn’t die. Hardly ever. And the fact that the one death in...she didn’t even know—decades—had been her brother, who’d been swimming and surfing in the ocean since he’d been five or six. It was almost unimaginable. It still seemed impossible. Holland’s death was almost a legend, no maybe myth would be a better word, whispered about, warned about but never mentioned to her. No wonder her mom had felt it necessary to move to a totally different coast.

Hollis had been in class. Had thought Holland was in geometry instead of trying to prove something to Kadan and the rest of his crew. She closed her eyes. She could still see her brother, thick, wavy blonde hair always falling in his eyes, eyes that had been the same color as hers with the same long, thick, curling eyelashes that made him look so endearingly alert and engaged.

“There’d been a big storm in Japan,” she said. “It nailed Hawaii. All the coast was so fired up the day before it was supposed to hit. I remember you were so high, so excited. I wanted to skip school to watch you. I wanted to video tape you, but I didn’t because I wanted to keep Holland away. You were worried about him and Zen and Cole getting in the way.”

Kadan nodded, his eyes looked far away.

“I just never really understood why you were at the... pier,” she said finally.

Kadan blew out a big sigh. Didn’t meet her eyes.

“I just assumed that everyone would be at Trestles.”

That was where so many of the regulars set up. Where
Surfer Magazine
shot much of their So Cal footage.

“That’s why I went to the pier,” Kadan said. “I wanted more space. To try some new moves. To get some different shaped waves to carve. I figured Health would follow me, but that once he got to Trestles, he wouldn’t be able to catch a ride back to the pier. No one was going to be able to give up those beautiful swells. Sorry.” He linked his fingers through hers. “I shouldn’t talk about the waves like that.”

Hollis squeezed his hand. “I know you tried to stop him, Kadan,” she said softly. “Everyone said you shouted at him to try to go in, that you gave up your spot to try to paddle to him. You missed your set.”

Kadan cursed. “A set, Hollis. I miss a fuckin’ ride, even if it’s one of the best swells in decades, and you act like I’m a saint.”

“You dove over and over to try to find him. You got smashed into a piling, too.”

By then it had been too late. Holland had been dead, sucked out to sea, and they hadn’t found his body until two days later and twenty miles south.

Other surfers had joined the search, putting themselves at crazy risk, two of them Holland’s best friends.

“He admired you so much,” she said.

“Too much. Showing off killed him.”

“It was the one time he was unlucky,” she said sadly. “But you were a wonderful role model for him. Your work ethic. Your support and advice.”

“You are too easy on me.”

Nothing about Kadan and nothing about losing her brother had been easy. She stared at her toes in the gravely sand and blinked back the tears that refused to obey and spilled out anyway. She wiped at them.

He stopped walking. Took her by the shoulders.

“Hey.” He waited until she looked up at him, reluctantly. “You don’t need to hide tears,” he said softly.

Hollis squeezed her eyes shut on a fresh, hot spurt. He so undid her when he was kind. The life he’d had, being kicked out of his mother’s mobile home time after time whenever she’d have a new boyfriend who didn’t like being reminded that she had a son. All the struggling in school to read, never giving up, working at the surf shops, cleaning out the bathrooms, washing down the rentals, re-waxing, anything to earn money for food and to ride.

She’d had everything handed to her, and she dropped it, over and over again. And he never had publicly criticized her in front of his friends, made her feel plain, shy, incompetent, too young to be hanging out. He had watched out for her and been kind and ensured that everyone else in his posse had treated her with respect or they had to deal with him.

And they had. Kadan was no stranger to fights. He went from quiet, easygoing to fierce in a second that would rob her breath. And sometimes scare her. Not many people had messed with him twice. And yet he always treated her with such warmth and tenderness. She touched his cheek. He was so beautiful. Inside and out.

They walked a little further in the sand. Hollis bent her head, absorbed the rhythmic sound of the ocean. Somehow if she didn’t look at it, it didn’t seem so terrifying. Ironic, really, because the sound of the ocean had always soothed her until a few years ago.

“I still think about Holland,” she said. “Every day. I wonder what he’d be like now. If we’d still be close. If he... If I would—” She broke off, overwhelmed by the possibilities of how different her life probably would have been if her brother hadn’t been so reckless. So brave. So confident. So full of swagger and a sense of immortality. He’d always been eager to show off. To do something first. To earn his mother and father’s continual adulation, and then the hero worship of his friends and, later, of girls. And, of course, he’d craved and courted Kadan’s attention.

“I wonder most about my mother,” she said softly, somehow speaking the words even though they hurt and wouldn’t offer any comfort to Kadan, except perhaps he’d know that he was not the only one his mother had loudly and endlessly blamed. “If Health hadn’t gone that day, if he were still alive, if I’d have a relationship with her. If my father and she wouldn’t have divorced.”

Hollis laughed a little at the ludicrous but wishful thought. “I mean it was never really good. She was always so critical. Nothing I did was right, but she had Holland, and he was so...her everything. I mean my mom and dad just worshipped him. I worshipped him. He was so smart and funny and kind and jokey and present, alive in a way none of us were. It’s like he was a planet, and we were satellites, and then he was sucked in a black hole and we all got knocked off our orbits and away from each other.

“Sorry.” She ducked her head. She really was becoming the biggest downer in So Cal history. “I got all astrophysics on you. Holland loved science. He was the scientist. He wanted to be a doctor.”

“Yeah,” Kaden said. “Orthopedist. He wanted to deal with adrenalin junkies and athletes, idiots like me.”

He tangled his fingers in her hair. “I remember you loved to draw. And write. You had a whole Sons of San Clemente surf comic book thing happening. You copied it and printed it at Pacific Printing and sold it at your middle school and to tourists on the beach during the weekends. You gave each of us an avatar. Wave Shredder was mine. I caught a lot of shit from everyone over your crush.”

Hollis blushed. She’d never thought about it from his perspective. A twelve-year-old girl following him all the time. Then as a fourteen-year-old teen trying to join him with his friends, pretend they were equals, that she was so mature. And then when she was sixteen trying to get him to notice her as a woman when she was still a girl. Her flirting must have been cringe-inducing. It was amazing he hadn’t ever cut her down cruelly just to get her out of his line of sight for a minute. She’d sat on his deck for hours sometimes, waiting for him to come home at night or to get up. Her home had become intolerable.

Kadan laughed. “Bone Crusher was Lane’s because he used to fall off all the time. Should have been mine,” he said ruefully looking down at his booted ankle. “Zen was Wave Rider because he was so chill and graceful. I always hated that asshole.”

“Why?” She asked remembering her brother’s best friend as quiet and easygoing. Fun. Kind. Letting her hang with them.

“He was everything I wasn’t. So much a better man, and he watched you all the time. He was perfect for you. Couldn’t figure it out that you didn’t see it.”

She laughed. “You’re wrong, Kadan. He ignored me. You tried hard, too. I was a pest. Bait, you called me.”

“I was being polite. I meant jail bait. Everyone else knew what I meant.

“Still, you never made a move until I was almost nineteen.”

“Maybe I am a saint?” He mused and nuzzled her neck.

She sighed happily. Amazed that in a few days she’d gone from feeling so desperately lost and alone to feeling a sense of belonging that had eluded her for...well, maybe forever. She bit her lip. It wasn’t real. She and Kadan weren’t real even though he felt real. He’d always been her one and only. She wondered what he’d say if she told him that. That he’d been her only love. Her stomach churned. He definitely wouldn’t want to hear that when he’d had dozens, probably more.

“I’d forgotten about the comics,” she said, grabbing onto that safer topic.

She still marveled that she could have so completely forgotten something she’d done for three years. She’d created a new page, sometimes more, each week. Long involved stories.

“Holland was Wave Runner,” she said and felt a pain through her like a stab. She looked down, surprised to see nothing sticking out of her chest.

“Yeah,” he said. “No one was surprised you stopped, considering,” he said. “But medical school?” he asked softly. “I never saw that one coming until you went. I remember you passed out on my deck one afternoon when you tripped on my grill and knocked your toenail off and it oozed blood.”