Home > REX (House of Lions #1)(8)

REX (House of Lions #1)(8)
Author: Shayne Ford

It’s a big dog with a red coat.

He jumps up and down, making me smile. They all disappear in a truck before pulling away.

I bring my gaze to the shore.

Most of the people are gone. The surfers are nowhere in sight, although I see their kites lying on the sand. The ocean is clear of people too, although the waves are higher, the water getting agitated.

Frankie must be swimming underneath.

The dark clouds push toward the land, chasing away the bright sunlight. It’s time to go, I guess.

We’ve stretched it as long as we could.

I look at the water again and move my eyes to my phone, checking the time when the wind suddenly picks up.

It all comes out of nowhere, although the signs of bad weather were everywhere.

The sky turns dark like a blotch of ink, the gusts tossing fists of sand in my face, rolling my towel, moving the backpack.

The fruit container flies away.

I leap up and start wrestling with the wind. Since when forty percent of rain chance translates into a storm?

Bent at the waist, I toss everything in the backpack and set it on top of our clothes before chasing the container. I catch it and turn around, running back to our things when I look at the ocean.

Oh, my God.

Monstrous waves rise furious crests, crashing and washing the land with peaks of foam.

“Frankie??”

The sky turns hazy in the background, looking like a curtain of fog. The rain must be coming down, advancing quickly.

“Frankie??” I shout, cupping my mouth, my voice drowning in the whirring of the ocean.

It sounds like a squadron of attack helicopters hovering over the beach. There’s no sign of her, and I begin to fear the worst.

The sensation has the feel of a knife slicing through my insides, scooping out my heart, disemboweling me.

What if she didn’t swim under the water a few moments ago when I thought she would?

I look left and right, my hair dancing in front of my eyes as I struggle to keep it away from my face.

I bring my hand to my wrist, slide the scrunchie off and try to tie my hair when one of the kites battling the wind takes off, heading my way.

“Rex??” someone calls.

The woman’s voice gets swallowed by the grinding sound lifting from the bowels of the ocean.

I can’t tell where it’s coming from, and I don’t know who Rex is.

I see nothing, the wind throwing sand into my eyes while the torrential rain starts falling, dragging a veil of cold water over the shore.

A gust blows the circle of fabric from my hand before I sweep my hair with one hand, securing it while trying to look at the water.

I call out her name one last time before a splash of color twists in the air, shifts, and bounces, yanked to me by the stormy wind.

I lift my arm to protect my face and tilt my head down, my eyes closed to stop the debris from getting into my eyes when the sand shifts beneath my feet, and I lose my balance.

The kite lands on top of me, the lines tangling with my hair and arms, my body tilting, heading to the ground.

I brace for the impact wrapped in the fabric when an arm snakes around my waist and swoops me up, mitigating the shock of impact, another arm separating the kite from my hair, protecting me from the bridle.

For a few seconds, I live in this tower of wind, swirling debris, and muscular arms, not knowing when, if ever, I can open my eyes and react to whoever saved me from death by kite.

“Are you okay?”

His low, raspy voice sounds close. His breath is close, too, as he probably looks at me, checking to see if I still have eyes.

He smells like something sweet and aromatic, as if he just had one of those whipped-cream topped iced coffees.

Have I lost my mind? Why does it matter to me right now? How come this insignificant detail registers with me?

He runs his hand over my face, cleaning my lashes and my cheeks, his body protecting me from the wind.

He must be looking at me while I only imagine him.

“Can you open your eyes?” he asks, unusually calm as if the world doesn’t come to an end all around us.

I nod before cracking an eye open.

The sky pours on us, the colors blending into his eyes. It’s the man with dark blonde hair and bare chest, only now, his wetsuit is zipped up, closed.

He looks at me with curiosity, not only with the fleeting sympathy expected for a storm victim.

“My friend,” I mutter, the flick of my lips attracting his eyes instantly. “She went into the water,” I mutter, looking at the ocean, hoping to see one living soul on the crests and feed my belief that nothing happened to her.

“Where did she go?” he asks, looking in the direction of my gaze.

“Over there,” I point to a huge patch of churning water.

He shifts his eyes back to me.

“Can you hold onto this?”

He connects my hand to the bridle of his kite, mainly to ground me, give me something to do, and stir my thoughts away from the possibility of a terrible outcome.

“Yes,” I say in a faint voice, squinting my eyes at him.

A faint smile sweeps his lips, brightening his features before he pivots away from me, runs to the ocean, and immerses into the dark gray madness a few moments later.

Please, Frankie. Please tell me that you’re okay.

Maybe she emerged from the water north of here. She must’ve noticed that the weather conditions were getting worse.

I can’t imagine her being so reckless not to consider this.

She’s a good, experienced swimmer. She wouldn’t put herself in harm’s way.

Despondently, I stare at the water, the man with the kite no longer in sight. I flick my eyes to the spot where he and his woman had their gear.

The surfboards are gone, so is the other kite.

I see no sign of the other two surfers–– the man in the distance or the sexy woman–– when a colorful flutter catches the corner of my eye.

No way.

The third surfer pops out of the water. His kite looks like a torn origami across the crest, fallen from the sky, morphed into a pile of crumpled fabric.

He pulls out, unfazed, dragging his surfboard along with his kite, gusts of rain breaking against his broad chest, water dripping from his ink dark hair.

He’s slightly bigger than the man whose kite I hold onto.

The same height, yet carrying more muscular mass, his wetsuit shinning across his muscular thighs, bulging biceps, and hard butt.

He doesn’t look in my direction or looking for his friends.

At least someone else was in the water in these trying moments and survived, although Frankie doesn’t weigh a fraction of what he does.

With a few clipped moves, he packs his stuff up and heads to the trail leading to the area where the cars are parked.

His calm pace bewilders me.

Unfazed, he doesn’t rush, seemingly unaffected by the mess swirling around him. Tearing my gaze away from him, I scan the parking lot.

Cars flash beams of light, their windshield wipers moving quickly, fighting the rain.

One by one, they pull away while the man climbs the trail and exits my line of sight, heading to his ride. The woman must be there waiting for him–– for them.

I jolt my stare back to the water, no longer sucked into the story of that stranger, weighed down by the sinister scenario floating in my head.

He made it out. I’m sure Frankie made it out too.

I almost convince myself that she’s not even in the ocean. That she must’ve gotten out. Maybe she’s up there in the parking lot, waiting for me, thinking that I had the brains to retreat when the rain began to fall.

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