“You look pretty good yourself, Asher.” She reaches out and shuts my mouth with a hand under my chin. “Now please take me back. I’ve got to get going.”
“I just want to get this straight,” I say. “You’re planning to stay at Otto’s house, the log cabin, the same one you used to stay in during the summer.”
“Is there another house that I don’t know about?”
She’s not being snide, she’s serious, and I’m getting a really uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach. “Didn’t you talk to Dan Artega about the house?”
Her eyes narrow, and she crosses her arms over her middle. “You’re freaking me out. Stop it.”
“Laiyla, the house is gone.”
“What do you mean gone?”
“Have you been living under a rock for the last three years? You own this land, how could you not know what happens on it?” Anger I didn’t realize I’d been harboring explodes, and I push to my feet. “That was two years ago. That log cabin you said you loved so much has been sitting at the bottom of a mudslide for two fucking years.” I swing my arm toward the marina. “This place has been rotting away. What was so fucking important in LA that you couldn’t tend to a place you always said brought you so much happiness?”
Only right then do I admit to myself that when Otto died and I learned he’d willed Laiyla the property, I’d hoped she would come home. Only right then do I realize that her abandoning this property echoed the abandonment I felt when she left for Paris instead of coming back to me.
Her expression takes on an edge I can’t quite read before she leans forward and gets right in my face. “Don’t you dare assume to know what my life is like. I didn’t come back because I knew Grandpa wouldn’t be here. I haven’t gotten over losing him, and coming here was just too overwhelming for me to face, okay? Are you happy?”
I clench my teeth, caught between anger at her and anger at myself. And she’s so close, those bright whiskey-colored eyes snapping with pain and anger. I want to do things I shouldn’t, like feel her body against mine, sink into those lips, fall asleep with her head on my shoulder. Luckily, she turns her back on me before my stupidity can win.
She stands in the center of the boat, arms crossed, head down.
“Did you hire Dan Artega to watch over this place or not?” I ask.
It takes her a minute to answer, and when she does, her voice is raw. “My dad did.” She straightens and faces me, and the tears in her eyes make me feel like a royal ass. “Please take me to my car. I need to go see it.”
“The slide took out the road. You can’t get to it that way.”
She drops her face into her hands. “Fuck.”
I roll my eyes, drop into the seat, and crank the engine. “You can see it from the water.”
I steer the boat toward the cove where her grandfather’s home used to be. She stands behind me, and I can feel her there even though she’s probably not close enough to touch. When I near the shallow cove, I shut down the engine and let the boat drift around a corner until the devastated home comes into view.
Laiyla’s gasp is immediate. I don’t dare look back, not sure I could handle the pain I fear is on her face.
She lets her air out in a sharp exhale, and a wrenched sound fills the air behind me, one so deep and authentic, it makes my gut ache. There’s no way in hell I’m getting out of this unscathed, because I can’t just sit here and let her hurt, no matter how badly she let me hurt all those years ago.
Her hands hit the back of my chair, her nails skimming lightly against my back, and gooseflesh rises along my spine.
When I look over my shoulder, she’s got her arms straight, her head lowered between her biceps, like she can’t breathe.
“Oh my God,” she murmurs, barely audible. “Oh my God.”
And then she starts to cry. And fuck me to hell and back, the sight and sound rake my heart with knives. Even as I stand and turn, I’m telling myself what a fucking idiot I am. What a fucking idiot I’ve always been when it comes to Laiyla.
“Hey,” I say, taking her arm to turn her toward me. That’s all it takes for her to close the distance between us, slide her arms around my body, and lean against me.
Feeling her in my arms again: check.
And holy mother of God, this wasn’t just a stupid idea, it wasn’t just dangerous, it was fucking lethal. She’s soaking wet, her clothes clinging to her like Saran Wrap, and I’m shirtless. While her body is cold from the water, mine is burning hot, and I swear we sizzle when our bodies meet. Fuck me to hell and back, she fits perfectly against me, the way she always did.
And just like that, some lock pops open inside me, and all my old feelings for her flood back in. I’m suddenly and intensely aware of every pain in my body, mostly centered around my heart, the rest around my dick. In fact, now that my mind has gone there, I realize I’m getting hard, and that hasn’t happened this quick in, God, years.
I mentally fight old walls back into place, but her hot tears hit my skin, and she’s shivering in my arms. Fucking shivering.
“I’ll get you a towel—”
She releases me before I can and steps away, both hands wiping her cheeks. I immediately feel the loss, and I’m beating myself up for allowing this to happen. She’s in town less than a fucking day, and I’m already aching for her. This was nowhere in my carefully constructed plans to handle her if she ever returned.
“No, I’m fine. I’m sorry. That wasn’t… That was…” She shakes her head and finally meets my gaze. Her eyes are a subdued shade of amber now and shimmering with tears. “What happened?”
I clench my teeth, call myself twelve kinds of stupid, and drop to a seat on the bench. “You remember the wolf fire?”
She nods.
“And then all the rain after?”
She exhales and closes her eyes.
Honking comes from the direction of the parking lot.
“Sounds like your people are here.” I steer the boat back that direction, both disappointed our time together is over and thrilled to get the fuck away from her.
When we come into view of the parking lot, a red convertible Mazda Miata rolls to a stop beside Laiyla’s car. The woman behind the wheel is honking obnoxiously; another is sitting on the headrest of the passenger’s seat, waving with both arms.
I angle toward another dock in the marina that looks more stable than the one that collapsed under her feet.
“Laiyla!” they scream in unison.
A smile finally turns her mouth, but it’s sad and tired. She lifts her arm to wave back.
I draw the boat to a stop at the end of a worn deck.
“Hey,” she says, her voice and her gaze soft, exposing the girl I’d once loved more than life. “Thank you.”
I acknowledge with a chin lift. “I meant what I said about this place. Offer to me first, okay?”
She’s clearly skeptical, but she nods. By the time the other women run down the dock toward Laiyla, I’m a hundred yards off the pier and watch as the two women throw themselves at her, enveloping all three of them in a hug so strong, they stumble toward the lake, stopping just before they all end up in the water.