“Hey,” I say, shocked that he’s here. “What are you doing here?” When I get closer, he stands, shaking the sand off him. He’s in a plain white T-shirt and khaki cargo shorts. His face is freshly shaved, and his brown hair is messy.
“You look amazing out there, Lex.” He smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes like it usually does. I wonder how long it will take for him to smile like he used to before his dad died. It’s probably selfish, but I hope it doesn’t take too long. It’s only been four days and I already miss his real smile.
“Thank you.” I push my board into the sand.
“Can we go for a walk?” He worries his bottom lip nervously.
“Sure.” I reach behind me and pull the zipper on my wetsuit down, shrugging out of it and leaving me in only my bikini.
“Do you have clothes?” he asks, his eyes raking down the front of my body.
“Oh, yeah. In the car.”
Alec’s hand rises behind him, and he grabs the back of his shirt, pulling it up. My eyes dart to his muscular torso and up to his hard chest as his shirt rises higher and higher, until it’s off his body. He hands it to me, and I take it, throwing it over my head. Immediately, the signature cologne Alec wears hits my nostrils, and I force myself not to bring the material to my nose to inhale it like a crazy person.
I drop my board onto the ground and throw my wetsuit on top of it, then call out Ricco’s name. “Can you keep an eye on my board?”
He’s sitting on a blanket with a bunch of our friends, smoking a blunt and listening to some oldie’s rock. He nods once and smiles, taking another hit. My eyes land on Jason, who’s also sitting there, only he isn’t smiling. He’s shooting daggers my way. At some point I’m going to have to speak to him, but right now Alec needs to come first.
Alec looks like he wants to say something, but he doesn’t. Instead, he starts walking in the opposite direction toward the pier. Nervous as to why he came here to talk to me, I stay quiet and wait for him to speak first. When we reach the pier, he stops in his tracks and faces me. The sun is just about gone, and the only light shining on us are the pier lights.
“The last few days have been hard,” he starts. I simply nod in response, letting him speak. I can’t even imagine what he’s going through or how he feels, and I’m not going to pretend like I do. “When we got home today, my first instinct was to push you away.” Now him shutting his door makes sense. “I called Lacie to see how she’s doing, and she’s a mess. She’s pushing everyone away: my mom, me, her sister…” He stops speaking, and I’m not sure if I’m supposed to say anything, so I don’t. I have no clue what’s going through Alec’s head right now, but he obviously drove over to the beach because he has something he needs to say to me.
Taking a deep breath, his eyes meet mine. “I called Mason, worried about Lacie, and he said when his father died, his mom did the same thing. She pushed him away, not knowing how to deal with the grief. Then he said something that made me think.” Alec takes my hand in his, and I look down at our fingers intertwined. His large, masculine hand swallows my smaller one whole.
“He said the dark, ugly moments, like death, have a way of pushing people together or tearing them apart.” Alec’s voice cracks, and in the faint light I can see his eyes are glossy with unshed tears. “I don’t want my father’s death to tear us apart, Lex.”
I start to shake my head because there’s nothing that could tear us apart. Before I can voice my thoughts, though, Alec presses two fingers against my lips, stopping my words from coming out. He runs them across my lips then smiles softly.
“Life is too short. Too uncertain. My dad didn’t find his soul mate until he was in his forties, and his time with her was cut short because of a clogged artery he didn’t know about. He left to go get breakfast and will never return home. Now, only a few years after meeting my dad and falling in love, Lacie is alone again.”
Alec’s grip on my hand tightens as he pulls me closer to him. “I don’t want to one day die with regrets. I’m in love with you, Lex, and I’m done pretending that I’m not.”
“Alec,” I breathe. He’s saying the words I’ve longed to hear for years, but I’m scared he’s only saying them because he’s grieving over the loss of his father. He just told me the other day the kiss shouldn’t have happened.