All the fun and games drain out of me, and my heart takes on weight. “Are you serious right now?”
She pushes to her feet and releases a frustrated exhale. When she turns to climb over the edge and into the boat, I get one long exquisite look at her, clothes clinging to her dripping-wet body, and all my brains fall to my feet.
Curves, curves, and more curves. Way more than I remember. Her breasts are full and heavy, her stomach flat and toned, her waist small and tight. And water is still streaming down those legs that always did go on for-fucking-ever.
“You look pretty good yourself, Asher.” She reaches out and shuts my mouth with a hand under my chin. “Now please take me back. I’ve got to get going.”
“I just want to get this straight,” I say. “You’re planning to stay at Otto’s house, the log cabin, the same one you used to stay in during the summer.”
“Is there another house that I don’t know about?”
She’s not being snide, she’s serious, and I’m getting a really uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach. “Didn’t you talk to Dan Artega about the house?”
Her eyes narrow, and she crosses her arms over her middle. “You’re freaking me out. Stop it.”
“Laiyla, the house is gone.”
“What do you mean gone?”
“Have you been living under a rock for the last three years? You own this land, how could you not know what happens on it?” Anger I didn’t realize I’d been harboring explodes, and I push to my feet. “That was two years ago. That log cabin you said you loved so much has been sitting at the bottom of a mudslide for two fucking years.” I swing my arm toward the marina. “This place has been rotting away. What was so fucking important in LA that you couldn’t tend to a place you always said brought you so much happiness?”
Only right then do I admit to myself that when Otto died and I learned he’d willed Laiyla the property, I’d hoped she would come home. Only right then do I realize that her abandoning this property echoed the abandonment I felt when she left for Paris instead of coming back to me.
Her expression takes on an edge I can’t quite read before she leans forward and gets right in my face. “Don’t you dare assume to know what my life is like. I didn’t come back because I knew Grandpa wouldn’
t be here. I haven’t gotten over losing him, and coming here was just too overwhelming for me to face, okay? Are you happy?”
I clench my teeth, caught between anger at her and anger at myself. And she’s so close, those bright whiskey-colored eyes snapping with pain and anger. I want to do things I shouldn’t, like feel her body against mine, sink into those lips, fall asleep with her head on my shoulder. Luckily, she turns her back on me before my stupidity can win.
She stands in the center of the boat, arms crossed, head down.
“Did you hire Dan Artega to watch over this place or not?” I ask.
It takes her a minute to answer, and when she does, her voice is raw. “My dad did.” She straightens and faces me, and the tears in her eyes make me feel like a royal ass. “Please take me to my car. I need to go see it.”
“The slide took out the road. You can’t get to it that way.”
She drops her face into her hands. “Fuck.”
I roll my eyes, drop into the seat, and crank the engine. “You can see it from the water.”
I steer the boat toward the cove where her grandfather’s home used to be. She stands behind me, and I can feel her there even though she’s probably not close enough to touch. When I near the shallow cove, I shut down the engine and let the boat drift around a corner until the devastated home comes into view.
Laiyla’s gasp is immediate. I don’t dare look back, not sure I could handle the pain I fear is on her face.
She lets her air out in a sharp exhale, and a wrenched sound fills the air behind me, one so deep and authentic, it makes my gut ache. There’s no way in hell I’m getting out of this unscathed, because I can’t just sit here and let her hurt, no matter how badly she let me hurt all those years ago.
Her hands hit the back of my chair, her nails skimming lightly against my back, and gooseflesh rises along my spine.
When I look over my shoulder, she’s got her arms straight, her head lowered between her biceps, like she can’t breathe.
“Oh my God,” she murmurs, barely audible. “Oh my God.”
And then she starts to cry. And fuck me to hell and back, the sight and sound rake my heart with knives. Even as I stand and turn, I’m telling myself what a fucking idiot I am. What a fucking idiot I’ve always been when it comes to Laiyla.
“Hey,” I say, taking her arm to turn her toward me. That’s all it takes for her to close the distance between us, slide her arms around my body, and lean against me.
Feeling her in my arms again: check.