With This Heart

  The moment I turned the shower off, I heard muffled chatter from the other side of the door. I wrung out my hair and then pulled it up into a towel before pressing my ear to the door to listen for other voices. If he wasn’t alone, my plan of seduction would come crashing down around me. I wasn’t going to prance around in a towel for multiple people. One hot guy was enough for me.

  With my ear pressed against the door, I realized that I could only hear his muffled speech. He must have been on the phone. Good, maybe I’d distract him and he’d drool onto the screen or something.

  I unwrapped the towel from my hair and then wrapped it around my body. It hit a few inches below my ass. A glance in the mirror reflected my long strawberry blonde locks still damp and flung sexily (or so I hoped) around my face and down my back. I still had a healthy glow from the sun. My scar was peeking out from the top of the towel, but I tried to ignore it. He could take it or leave it. That scar wasn’t going anywhere.

  As I creaked the bathroom door open, I heard him laugh into the phone, but as I rounded the corner, his laugh cut off suddenly.

  Success. I was indeed a siren. An unstoppable, sexy minx. My baby toe hit the edge of his suitcase and I howled. Motherfucker. Stubbing your baby toe is the face of true pain.

  I glanced over to him quickly, hoping my mishap hadn’t ruined the moment completely. His smile froze and then his features slid into a shocked gape.

  “ Oh yeah,” he nodded into the phone, never looking away from me. “That recipe is good, but my grandmother makes one with pineapple in it as well.”

  Silence filled the air as the person on the other end picked up the conversation. Why was he giving someone recipe advice? What guy even knew a recipe by heart? His eyes drifted down my body in a lazy manner, taking in my neck and chest, then drifting down the towel to the few inches of my creamy thighs exposed at the very bottom.

  “ No, not the whole can. I’ll have her send you the recipe. She’s right here actually; do you want to talk to her?”

  Why would he ask that? Why would I want to talk to whoever was on the other end of the phone?

  “ Oh, okay. I’ll tell her. Bye. Nice talking to you, too,” he said before hanging up.

  That’s when I realized that the phone in his hand wasn’t his. It was mine. God damn technology companies. Did we all need to have the same rectangular black phone? What happened to being unique individuals?

  I stepped closer to him without even considering the fact that I was practically naked. “Who was that?” I demanded.

  “ Your mom,” he answered casually before standing up. His height towered over mine and I clutched the towel tighter.

  “ What?! Why were you talking to my mom?” I reached around him and grabbed my phone.

  He didn’t move away. There was barely an inch between our bodies and I could feel his warm breath on my bare shoulder.

  “ She called back twice while you were in the shower. I didn’t want her to worry, so I answered.” I know it didn’t seem like a big deal to him, but it was. My parents were already suspicious of me.

  “ Beck! I’ve never introduced them to a guy before OR even mentioned a guy to them for that matter!”

  I hated that there was amusement flashing across his heavenly features. Why wasn’t he taking this as seriously as I was?

  “ You should give your mom more credit. I explained that I was your friend and that you were in the bathroom. She was confused at first, but then I introduced myself and we started chatting. I think she likes me.”

  I didn’t have anything to say to that, so I wiped a hand down my face and stared up at him. If anyone could charm my mom, it was Beck.

  “ Were you giving her a recipe at the end?”

  His lips unfolded into a confident grin. “It was for my Grammy’s banana bread. Your mom wants you to send it to her.”

  I couldn’t help but smile then. He took me by surprise at every turn. There was no limit to Beck Prescott; he couldn’t be pushed into a mold. Of course he would talk to my mom about banana bread, because why the hell not?

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  “ So how did you meet this girl?” I asked as we made out our way out of the hotel lobby toward the beach. The sun had set an hour ago so the bonfire was most likely in full swing. I’d thrown on a cotton striped dress that hugged my meager chest and waist before loosening out into a mini-skirt. On any other girl, it would’ve look sexy and short, but on me it just looked like a sweet dress a toddler could pull off.

  “ She bumped into me on the way out of the hotel earlier, after my run,” he answered, scanning his eyes down my outfit. I instinctively reached up to run a hand through my hair. It was falling in loose waves down my back. There was no point in trying to do anything else with it while we were standing out in the salty night air.

  “ Physically bumped into you?” I asked, trying to clarify the encounter.

  He laughed and narrowed his eyes on me playfully. “Yes, she was walking next to me and tripped or something.”

  I stopped walking and gawked up at him. “Oh my god, you’ve got to be kidding me.”

  He paused and stared back at me. It wasn’t the safest place for us to stop, considering we were walking across the street that separated the beach from the hotel, but there weren’t any cars in sight.

  “ What?” he asked, scanning for traffic. “Do you have to stand in the road right now?”

  “ She did it on purpose! She was flirting with you.” The thought annoyed me because he told me he liked me, he yelled it in fact, so the universe should have listened and turned all the other pretty girls away. I couldn’t compete with them.

  “ So what if she was? Girls have flirted with me before,” he answered with a strange tone.

  I grunted and walked past him. If only I could have said, guys have flirted with me before as well. ALL THE TIME IN FACT. But since that would have been a big ol’ lie, I walked past him and headed toward the giant fire now burning a few yards away on the beach. I couldn’t hear his footsteps in the sand behind me, but I assumed he was following me. If not, he’d stayed out on the road and had probably been run over by now. I told myself I didn’t care either way.

  The bonfire was blazing and crackling through the dark night. It was the centerpiece of the party with groups mingling all around it. Off to the side there was a grill and a few coolers lined up. As I stepped closer, I tried to inspect the scene quickly and decide which area looked the least intimidating. There were more people there than I had expected, at least twenty or thirty. They all looked around my age or a little older.

  “ Beck! You made it!” the girl from earlier called. I never did catch her name, so I dubbed her She Who Shall Not Be Named in honor of the Dark Lord. I’m sure they had a lot in common. I knew Beck was a few feet behind me, so instead of waiting for her to make her way over and tackle him into the sand, I headed over to the drinks. I couldn’t have alcohol because of my transplant, which sort of sucked in that moment. It would have been nice to take the nervous edge off a tiny bit, not to mention everyone would assume I was fifteen if I walked around all night with a coke can in my hand.

  As I was reaching in the cooler for a bottled water, a shadow fell behind me and blocked the fire’s light. I twisted around to find Jason, the surfing instructor from earlier, standing behind me. He looked surprised to see me, but definitely happy about the coincidence. Huh.

  “ Abby, right?” he asked, reaching past me to grab a bottled water and a beer. He handed me the water and then popped open the can of his beer so that it echoed through the night.

  “ Yup. Jason?”

  He smiled wide and motioned for us to move so other people could grab their drinks. I followed him a few feet away, trying to take in more of his appearance. He was really cute in a slacker way: kind eyes, easy smile, messy hair. He had on board shorts and a surfing competition shirt. I tried to guess his age, but I had no clue. He was some
where between 15 and 45.

  “ I didn’t realize you’d be here,” he offered, taking a sip of his beer and then tilting his head to the side.

  “ I wasn’t really invited. Beck was invited and he brought me along,” I admitted.

  “ Ah. Are you guys together or just friends?” he asked over the brim of his beer. His posture hinted that he might have hoped it was the latter.

  What an interesting question. I glanced over to where Beck was standing with She Who Shall Not Be Named. He wasn’t smiling, but he nodded at whatever she was saying.

  “ We’re just friends on a road trip,” I answered truthfully, I think.

  I didn’t miss the smile that took over his features. “That’s great.”

  “ How old are you, Jason?”

  I think my direct question surprised him. “Twenty-three.” Not too old.

  “ How long have you been surfing?” I asked before he could ask me my age. I didn’t want to admit to being nineteen.

  “ My whole life. I grew up on the beach in California and then moved here to go to school for marine biology.”

  So he wasn’t really a slacker, just looked like one.

  “ That’s so cool!” I answered, because I instantly pictured him befriending dolphins. Oh wait, I think that’s only people who work at Sea World. Alright, I had no clue what marine biologists actually did.

  He nodded and took a microscopic step closer to me. Smooth . “Are you in school?”

  I almost answered truthfully, but then I remembered how many details were involved, and I just decided he didn’t really need to know about my life. We were having fun at a party, so I lied.

  “ I start in the fall.” Damn, that sounded truthful. I was getting pretty good at this whole deceit thing.

  He nodded and then we awkwardly stood there for a moment. We’d pretty much exhausted all of the small talk I could think of. What was Beck talking about with the Dark Lord? Did they have a lot in common? More than he and I had in common? Was she explaining how hard it was to have big boobs? Fuck girls.

  I peered over to the spot where I saw them earlier, but they weren’t there anymore. A sinking feeling developed in my gut like my insides were being ripped out. Did they go back to the hotel? Were they making out on our bed?

  Jason took another step toward me and I could smell the ocean on his clothes. Or maybe I could just smell the ocean in the air. My head was spinning with images of Beck with another girl.

  “ Did you like surfing? You were really good at it.” He was practically an inch away from me then and I could smell beer on his breath.

  I forced myself to look up into his brown eyes. “Yeah, it was really fun. I’d like to do it again.”

  “ I could take you again. Maybe in the morning?” His voice held so much promise of what else we could do in the morning.

  I nodded and smiled up at him because I felt like crap and I wanted him to flirt with me. I liked the way it felt and I told myself it was okay because he was cute.

  “ Abby, there probably won’t be time to surf before we hit the road tomorrow,” Beck stated behind me with a sharp tone. My heart leapt into my throat and I turned to find him staring past me, toward Jason. She Who Shall Not Be Named was staring past Beck at me. Oh please, enough with the stare off.

  “ What? Last time I checked, our itinerary was fairly loose .” I crossed my arms over my chest, wondering what his motive was. If he liked me then he should do something about it, not just stand there.

  Beck answered me simply with, “Not tomorrow.”

  Interesting .

  I pulled my gaze from him and looked toward the girl behind him. “I don’t think we’ve met. I’m Abby,” I mentioned, extending my hand out toward her. She looked down at it with a puzzled expression before reaching to shake it.

  “ I’m Lia,” she answered with a genuine smile. I was offering her a truce, and in that moment, the tension in the air started to melt away. Slightly.

  As soon as we released our handshake, a random drunk girl shouted from the other side of the bonfire, “Let’s play Drink or Dare!”

  I laughed because it seemed so cliché, but to my surprise everyone instantly agreed and started shifting chairs into a circle. I’d never been to a party, but it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out the premise of Drink or Dare. Luckily, my drink of choice would be H2O. Everyone scrambled to position their collapsible chairs by their friends, and at the end of it all, I was stuck by Jason while Beck and Lia ended up on the other side of the bonfire. The hint of a smirk on her face told me she was pleased with the arrangement. Maybe she was a wizard. Witch. Whatever. Maybe she’s a dude.

  If this were a movie, that’s the moment where I would have taken a big gulp of some kind of alcohol. Instead, I untwisted my water bottle cap and took a long sip. The same drunk girl that initiated the game a few minutes ago jumped up and clapped her hands.

  “ I’ll go first! If you choose Dare, you can’t chicken out and choose Drink after you hear the dare! Those are the rules!” she instructed with what she probably thought was a cunning stare, when in reality it looked like a she was a winking pirate. Argh. Maybe being the only sober one would have its advantages.

  After she’d perused the entire circle, her gaze landed on the guy to my right that was swaying back and forth in his chair. I leaned away from him, which brought me closer to Jason. He smiled down at me and propped his arm on the back of my chair.

  “ Ian! Drink or Dare?” she called, stepping closer to him.

  Ian grunted and stood up, obviously choosing dare. The entire ring of partygoers cheered and scooted to the edge of their seat in anticipation of his dare.

  “ Strip your clothes off and jump in the ocean!” she demanded. Wow, this girl was going for the full monty right off the bat. What would this game end with? A giant orgy on the beach?

  Without a moment’s hesitation, Ian turned to me and held out his beer, as if I was his assistant during his dare. I took it because I didn’t really have a choice, and then he gave me a loose grin and started to strip. This guy was less than a foot away from me and he was literally giving me a strip tease like I was a bachelorette. Best bonfire ever. He unpeeled his shirt and then flung it around his head like a helicopter before tossing it to a girl across the circle. She caught it with a wild cheer while he started on his pants. He let them drop onto the sand, as if they weren’t the second to last thing concealing his member from my gaze.

  “ I’m a GROWER!” he yelled as he dropped his boxers and took off in a wild run toward the ocean. Everyone was laughing, but I just sat there, holding his beer and looking down at his Star Wars underwear, thinking how he’d regret not having them once he resurfaced from his wild dare.

  Jason leaned in and whispered in my ear, “That was quite an introduction to Drink or Dare.” I heard him say it, but just as he began to speak, I shifted my gaze from Ian’s boxers up to Beck. He was watching me with his trademark grin, except the bonfire shadowed its appearance so that his features were masked in a mysterious glow. Staring at each other over that bonfire, it became clear that there were one million ways to view the world, but that Beck and I saw everything in the same wavelength. Like life was one big private joke that we got to share.

  Ian didn’t return from his swim, and the girl that caught his shirt had wandered off after him, so the game had to continue without them. A girl sitting a few seats away from Lia volunteered to pick the next contestant. She stood and spun in a circle, but stopped on a dime when she reached Lia. Lia, of course, chose dare. The entire show seemed a little too rehearsed, and when her dare surfaced, I knew that it was.

  “ Lia! Kiss one of the people sitting on either side of you. Your choice!” My stomach contents felt like they were about to surface all over the bonfire. Her choice my ass. There was a stoned guy practically asleep on the left side of Lia and perfect, amazing Beck on the other s
ide. Lia did a wonderful show of feigned innocence, cupping her hand over her mouth and giggling. Best actress ever .

  Beck was trying to catch my eye over the bonfire, but I couldn’t pull my gaze from Lia. She tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear and shifted her body toward Beck. I wondered if she ever played the Virgin Mary in any church plays. She definitely had the act down pat.

  “ You okay there?” Jason asked, breaking me out of my daze. I looked down to see my hands wringing out the plastic bottle in my hand. I’d completely destroyed it while I’d been staring daggers at Lia.

  “ Oh, yeah. I’m fine,” I lied, dropping the bottle onto my lap in an attempt to look normal.

  I didn’t watch the kiss; I stared at the crackling flames and listened to everyone’s cat calls. It was a strange experience to behold. Fiery jealously didn’t sit well in my stomach and the longer I sat there while the game continued around me, the longer I thought I might explode. Jason got called on, but he opted to chug a beer rather than accept a dare. I was grateful for that. But then Beck was called upon.

  The same girl that started the game off stood and pointed at Beck. “You have to give someone a lap dance. The hottest guy or girl here!”

  I laughed, cracked up in fact, and the people around me shifted and gave me awkward stares. I admit that I looked crazy, but I just couldn’t let the universe off on this one. It needed to know how God damn funny it could be at times. Lia blushed and her friends cheered and gave her encouraging words. Everyone assumed Beck would give a lap dance to the girl who had kissed him and who was clearly the prettiest girl at the party. Predictable . But then Beck stood up and started walking around the bonfire toward me and I started laughing even harder. A nervous laughter mixed with all the jealousy that had been building inside.

  I hated Beck in that moment, but I almost felt like he was giving me the most thoughtful gift in the world. He was telling a group of strangers that he thought I was the one that deserved a lap dance. He stopped walking right in front of me and I stared at his stomach, hidden beneath a sexy black shirt.