Secure Love (Wet & Wild 3)

Kallie bit down onto the inside of her cheek to try and hide the smile creeping across her face.

“Talk about your family a little bit. When do you feel yourself spiraling with them?” she asked.

“Whenever I talk to them. My mother is a selfish, Botoxed bitch, and my father is a narcissistic, womanizing billionaire.”

“And when you engage with them physically, it makes you upset.”

“Very,” he said. “I have a plan for my life. Would you like to hear it?”

“I’d be interested in anything like that, yes,” she said.

“I want to uproot my life from New York completely. I want to find somewhere that I can be treated like a local. With certain perks, of course. I want a simpler life, but still a first-class one. And it’s possible. Many people with statuses similar to mine lead those kinds of lives. Stepping out and living on the island was my way to try and jumpstart that life.”

“So your solution to all of these issues you’re experiencing is to run away and live a topical life,” Kallie said.

“I wouldn’t consider it topical. But it did work. I plan to give up the city altogether and put roots down somewhere new.”

“Roots. That’s good. It implies permanence,” she said.

“I want to be somewhere new. Somewhere secluded, with wonderful surfing opportunities and the freedom to be myself without everyone knowing who I am and how much money I have sitting in banks around the world.”

“Like you had on the island,” she said.

“Like I had on the island.”

“My next question then is this: If you already have your plan in place, then why ask me for help?”

“Because I’m terrible at the execution,” Ash said.

“From personal experience, you seemed to

be thriving well on the island. Why not just go back there? You have a bungalow. You have people who know you but treat you how you want to be treated.”

“The island is a little tainted for me,” he said.

Kallie nodded her head as she chewed on the inside of her cheek.

“Any more questions?” he asked.

So many more, Kallie thought.

“So we’ve pinpointed two facets of your life that you want reorganized. Your love life and your family life. Now we pinpoint goals within the two. We need to talk through three major goals for each section. So, six in total,” she said. “What are your three goals for your love life?”

She watched Ash squirm in his chair. She knew something was up, but she didn’t know what it was. If he thought he could use this as a way to convince her to leave with him, he was sorely mistaken. This was a professional endeavor. Not a passionate one. If this was the only way to get honest answers out of him, then so be it.

“I want to plant roots with someone,” Ash said.

“So you want to dedicate yourself,” Kallie said.

“Yes, but not in the city.”

“Okay, so you want dedication. We need two more goals.”

“I want to learn how to trust,” he said.

“Dedication and trust. We need one more goal and try to make this one tangible. Not emotional. Sometimes sifting through the emotional can get overbearing, so having a tangible goal with visibly measurable results helps to take the edge off when we refocus.”

She watched Ash take a deep breath before he cleared his throat.