“She did what?” I finally say into the phone as I try to piece together what in the fuck she’s trying to prove here.

“I’m not joking, Tanner, and I don’t know what’s going on with you, but you’re scaring me. Forget what I said before when I was talking as your boss and ordered you to come home. Listen to me right now as I speak to you as a friend. Dude, you’re losing your shit. You just tracked down a married woman, visited her house when she didn’t want you there, and did who knows what, but whatever it was is bad enough for her to spend the last few hours taking legal action to prevent you from doing it again. It’s called stalking, Tanner.”

“Stalking?” I say as I run a hand through my hair. This entire conversation is comical on so many levels, considering I believe I accused her of the same exact thing those first few days after we met when she was everywhere I turned. The irony is just too good to be true. “Oh that’s rich.” I’m dumbfounded as the laughter won’t subside. “She’s out of her damn mind.”

“Yeah, well maybe you should knock it the fuck off. Honestly, dude, I think you’re way off base here. Not acting like the person I know at all, but what do I know? Maybe she’s the crazy one. Maybe you need to get the fuck away from her. What if she accuses you of something worse?” he says.

“Not Beaux. No way. She wouldn’t do that.” I reject his implications immediately. He wasn’t there, doesn’t know what just happened… but then again I was, and now she’s filing a fucking restraining order? I pinch the bridge of my nose, welcome the pain of it as I try to wrap my head around the incredible highs and staggering lows of the day, and shut out the thoughts that he’s planting.

“I sound like a broken record, but you need to get on a plane and get home. She’s banking on the probability that you’ll be rational and listen to me. That you’ll leave Kansas and her alone or else she’ll go to the boss men next time, and you know what that means.” He blows out a frustrated sigh.

“I’m trying to figure out when it became your job to manage my private life, Rafe.”

“Well when you keep risking your job for a piece of ass who’s obviously playing you and going to get you fired, then it’s my job.”

“Are you threatening me?” I shout incredulously, purposefully ignoring the first part of his statement and the need to defend that she was so much more than just a piece of ass.

“If she goes to the brass and it comes down to it, man… I’ll have to fire you.”

“Then fire me,” I challenge. The buzz is already gone for me anyway.

“Really, Tan? You’re going to throw away all of your hard work and killer career for a woman who doesn’t want you? Who lied to you?”

“She does want me, though.” I cringe when I realize I spoke my thoughts aloud. “Something’s off here, Rafe. My gut instinct tells me that —”

“Stop! Please just stop and come home. It’s one thing to throw yourself into the fire when you’re trying to save something, but there is nothing to be saved here. Do you really want to be burned at the stake for nothing?” he rants as I fall silent and try to digest everything and question parts of my own sanity. How long am I going to chase a woman who loves me but obviously won’t let me into her life? “Tanner?” Rafe’s concerned voice breaks through my musings.

“I’m on sabbatical, remember?” There’s resignation front and center in my voice as I end the call without another word. Let him worry about what I’m going to do next since it’s none of his damn business. Fuck. I blow out a breath and rest my head against the steering wheel to try to come to grips with my warring thoughts and what he said.

Nothing makes sense, and yet I gave it all I’ve got. I can’t keep throwing good after bad no matter how much it hurts to walk away.

But that’s what I’m going to do. It’s what I have to do. I’m not a man who grovels. I’m a man who falls in and out of love at the flick of a switch, a paradox as Stella called me, and so I’m just going to get my shit from my hotel room, hop on a plane, and leave everything I thought I wanted behind so that I can force myself to fall back out of love.

It can’t be that hard to do. I’ve done it a hundred times before.

Even I don’t believe my own lies this time.

Chapter 28




“Are you seriously going to pass up that wave, Thomas?” the voice calls out behind me in a tone that has me rolling my eyes and raising my middle finger to my brother-in-law when he paddles up behind me.

“It wasn’t good.”

“That’s what you said about the one before that and then the one before that. That photographer still have your dick in a twist?”

“Humph.” Even two weeks after my visit to Kansas, I still don’t understand things any better than I did that night. I can’t tell if the whole situation is killing me or making me stronger, but I know that the hurt’s turned to anger and the disbelief to resentment. The one thing I know for sure is that the unknown still looms like a weight in my chest that I’m slowly ignoring more and more, bit by bit, day by day.

But that twist? It’s still there.

“So more like kinked than twisted now?” he says, earning a smile from me.

“Something like that.” I exhale loudly, not in the mood to talk, not in the mood to surf either now that I think about it. But there’s nothing like getting out in the water to clear your head. The sun feels good on my face, and the water steadily lapping over my legs on the board unwinds me bit by bit. I almost don’t even care if I catch a wave or not because for the first time in forever it feels like I can relax – ironic in itself since I haven’t gone on a story in almost two months.

And usually that’s the only thing that can relax me.

“Kink can be good, brother,” he says, and lifts one eyebrow with a smirk.

I flash him a warning look. “I don’t want to know,” I say, drawing a laugh because I sure as hell don’t want to even remotely know anything about my sister’s sex life. Our eyes hold for a minute, and I can see him trying to figure out how to get to whatever he wants to say. “Just lay it on me, man,” I finally tell him. As much as I’ll take a day surfing at Trestles, I also know that Colton had an ulterior motive when he asked me to meet him here.

His was the same motive my sister’s had with every phone call she’s made in the two weeks since I’ve been back from Kansas: to see how I’m doing or try to get me out of the house. To make sure I’m not wallowing in whatever it is I’m supposedly wallowing in.

Oh yeah, heartbreak. That’s what it’s called.

“Lay what on you? Your brother-in-law can’t invite you to go surfing without a reason?” he asks, and earns a long, disbelieving laugh from me.

“Look, any excuse to get out in the water is a good one, especially here of all places,” I say as I look toward the renowned Southern California beach before looking back to him. “But remember, I grew up with my sister. I know from experience how well she can assert her will to get you to do what she wants.”

Colton throws his head back and laughs and doesn’t need to say a single word to tell me that I’m right. “Ah, God, she’s a trip, but I love her to death,” he says, making me smile because I feel the same way. And it’s good to know that he does.

I debate how to play this, wondering if he’s really going to go to that place men don’t go, to talking, and yet it feels good to be out of the house and hanging with someone I like since everyone else I know is still on assignment somewhere. “You don’t have to do this, Colton. I appreciate you inviting me to meet up, but if Ry wants to fish and see how I’m doing, she doesn’t need you to do her dirty work for her.”

“I know,” he says, and ruffles a hand through his hair to shake the water from it. “Look, it’s none of my business, but what the fuck, man? You’re a good judge of character… Didn’t you see crazy coming from a mile away?” he asks incredulously with a half laugh.

“I don’t know what to believe anymore.” I shake my head, still at a loss over everything but slowly moving on.

“Dude, we are talking about women, right?” he jokes, and garners an amen from me. “When it comes to women, what you believe gets thrown out the window and whirls around in a little eddy I call the estrogen vortex. It sucks you into their crazy and spits you out completely dazed, confused, and questioning why you ever stepped close enough to begin with… well besides the tits and ass and curves…”

“You can say that again.”

“It’s the mythical blooming onion.”

“The what?” I question.

“You know… She’s got all kinds of layers you can’t wait to taste, but then once you peel them away, your gut feels like shit and you’re left with a bad taste in your mouth.”

I snort and roll my eyes while we fall into a comfortable silence as the set of swells on the horizon dies down some.

“Bad taste is right. Shit, I didn’t see any of it coming, Colton, not at all. I feel like a fucking chump. No idea she was married. Didn’t realize the sneaking away in the middle of the night to take pictures was a cover because she was calling her husband. Not the text she sent me where I tracked her to Kansas, thinking she was leaving me a goddamn clue to come and save her. Not the sex we had when I found her that she used as a final good-bye before filing a fucking restraining order against me…” My voice trails off, incredulity in my tone and frustration reflected in my posture.

“That’s cold, man,” Colton says with a shake of his head. “I had a woman do that to me once. Have sex as her way of saying good-bye.”

“What did you do to get over her?” I’ll admit I’m surprised the infamous ladies’ man Colton Donavan was played like I was. Makes me feel a little better.

“I married her,” he deadpans, causing my head to whip over to meet his eyes as he throws his head back in a laugh.

“Rylee did that shit to you?” I ask, completely surprised by the ballsy move on my sister’s part. “You probably deserved it, though.”

“Yes, I did.” He smirks at a memory, but the way his face softens tells me that it was a good one and that he wouldn’t want it any other way because he got the girl in the end.

“For some reason, though, I think the restraining order tells me that I won’t have the same ending.” I laugh at myself because there’s not much else I can do.

“Would you really want one, though? Legal action is kind of an extreme move to play in the game of hard to get.”

“True,” I murmur.

“What’s her deal? I’m assuming you dug into her background.”

“Couldn’t find anything. Not even mortgage records for the house, nothing. So either they have a friend on the force who buried their information, or I’m getting rusty. I’ve got to be careful, though. Don’t want to get caught snooping between losing my job at Worldwide and the restraining order… so who knows…”

“You should have checked the asylums.” His comment earns a snort from me in response. “I mean the only advice I can give you is the next time you fall in love, make sure that you’re the crazy one.”

My laugh comes out long and deep. Such a typical comment from the former playboy himself. “Well some say love is a serious mental disease,” I say with a shrug. “Guess that proves something I’ve spent a lifetime trying to prove.”

“What’s that?” he asks.

“That my sister is crazy,” I state matter of factly.

He laughs and shakes his head before staring out to the ocean around us. “Look, man, I know how hard it is… but everyone’s life is like a story. Maybe that chapter of your book is closed…,” he says, his voice fading off. “Then again, maybe you need to open the damn book back up and rewrite the shit you didn’t like. Don’t accept it, Tanner. Some people say you can’t change your fate. I’m living proof that you can. If you don’t like the ending, change it,” he finishes with a shrug before duck-diving under a wave as I’m pushed toward shore, my mind toying with the truth in his words.

Colton’s analogy rings in my ears but brings a smile to my lips as I make the drive home down the coastline. My mood is the best it’s been in a while, so I’m glad I took the offer of a day on the water to get away from my doldrums right now. After the guy talk, I feel like my head is back on straighter than it has been in the last month, an affirmation that I need to hold on to the anger a little tighter and let go of the want a little more, because what I need to do is forget all about her.