His jaw tightens briefly. “It wasn’t you. The Citadel is a sore spot for me.”
“You don’t want to go?” I remember what Pete said.
“It doesn’t matter what I want.” Pain flickers across his expression.
“It matters to me,” I say.
His thumbs run underneath the bottom edge of my bathing suit top. Sand rubs between us, scratching the skin on my stomach, and the heat of his body spreads an ache from my chest to my toes. He buries his face in my neck and I laugh, squirming in the sand.
With a glimmer in his eye, he captures my wrists and asks, “What do you want, Summer Barnes?”
“From you?” I reply. The laughter and lust make it hard to catch my breath.
“Yeah,” he says between kisses, each one deeper than the one before it. “From all of us.”
“This is pretty good,” I say, not wanting to give more. “Just having a bit of fun before the realities of life hit again, you know?”
He doesn’t reply but I know he gets it. I know they all do and I can think of worse ways to spend my summer than with hotties like Whit. We’ve all got something we’re trying to run away from. Hold off.
Whit stands suddenly, towering over me with his perfect body, covered in wet sand. He raises an eyebrow and offers me a hand.
“Don’t make me go back out there,” I say.
“Nothing dangerous, just fun,” he replies, lifting me into his arms and carrying me back in the water. My heart beats like a drum, racing with fear and excitement. I want to argue that what we’re doing isn’t dangerous, but for once I’m having too much fun to care.
Chapter 12
My mother waits in the camper when Whit drops me off. It’s mid-afternoon and I expect her to be busy at her computer, but it’s closed and pushed aside. Instead, a half-full glass of wine sits on the table.
“Hi,” I say, leaving my wet towel outside along with the cheesy grin I know will reveal my beach-side make-out session with Justin. “Productive morning?”
“I got a couple thousand words down,” she replies. I duck into the bathroom and start the shower. I’m peeling off my bathing suit when she says, “But then Sugar came to visit.”
I stop undressing and step back into the main room. “How did that go?”
She holds up her glass of wine. “Not bad—but not good either.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means wounds from the past are hard to heal.” She takes gulp of wine.
“I’m glad you two talked,” I tell her, stepping back in the bathroom. “It’s been a long time and you need to patch things up.”
“You sound like Richard,” she says. I step into the shower and wash the sand and salt off my body. My mind wanders to Whit and our time on the beach. Things got hot and heavy between us—fast. I snap out of my daydreams when she asks from outside the bathroom door, “So what’s going on with you and these boys?”
I pause. “Ummm…we’re hanging out? Why?”
“They’re all very handsome.”
“Yeah, I guess.” Obvious understatement of the summer, I think. I squirt a glob of shampoo into my hand and start scrubbing out the sand. There’s a lot of it embedded in the back of my hair, from, well, basically dry-humping Whit on the beach. I wonder briefly if she noticed, and scrub harder. She doesn’t say anything else, so I finish my shower, making sure to get the sand out of all the places it managed to travel today.
I’ve got my towel wrapped around my body when I come out. She’s still there, just watching me. I notice the glass of wine on the table is full again. “Okay, what’s going on?” I ask, curtaining my ‘room’ off so I can change.
“I’m just curious,” she says, from the other side. “Justin in particular seems like a nice boy—young man. Richard really did a fine job with him.”
After putting on shorts and a tank top, I pull back the curtain. “Justin’s really appreciative of everything Richard has done to help him. He struggled a lot as a kid, from what I understand.”
“Cute and damaged. Those are the dangerous ones. Watch out,” she says with the touch of a slur. She waves her wine glass in the air and continues to ramble. “He’s probably like Richard, always there when you need him—except when he’s not.”