He took my hand like it was the most natural thing in the world, then tugged me toward the stairs leading to the beach.
I pulled away as we descended the stairs. I couldn’t make out Jude and Rafe from the other surfers sitting on their boards in the water, but I knew they were out there and I wasn’t about to let them see me holding hands with Nolan like he was my boyfriend.
Which he wasn’t.
One of the other surfers — a woman with long silver hair — caught a wave as we hit the sand, and I watched her ride it sideways as it rolled toward shore with a roar.
I followed Nolan across the sand, the wind stinging my face in spite of the sun shining bright overhead. A month ago I would have said I couldn’t believe the Bastards wanted to surf in these temperatures, but I was starting to figure out that the Bastards liked to push the envelope — their own and everyone else’s.
I was also starting to worry I was more like them than I realized, because what could be more envelope-pushing than making out with one of the guys who’d taken advantage of me as a drunk teenager, then texted my nudes to the whole school?
I stopped at the water’s edge and Nolan turned to look at me as he walked backwards toward the surf rolling onto the beach.
He flashed me a rakish smile, his dark hair flopping over his forehead. “See you on the flip side, sweetheart.”
Then he was running into the waves, lifting the board over the incoming surf like it weighed nothing at all, mesmerizing me the same way the Bastards had done everything they’d done to me — against my will.
24
LILAH
I satat the bar and tried not to feel like a child as I nursed my third Shirley Temple. To be fair, I’d wanted coffee or tea or literally anything hot that would thaw my bones after the two hours I’d spent watching the guys surf, but the bar didn’t have coffee and I didn’t drink (I’d learned my lesson), so Shirley Temples it was.
It wasn’t a hot drink, but the heat of the bar and the bodies crammed into it — surfers who’d exited the water with the Bastards when they’d finished riding waves and a bunch of random locals — had finally warmed me up.
After the last month, I never wanted to be cold again.
Not that I gave Rafe the satisfaction of hearing me complain. My teeth were practically chattering when Nolan emerged from the water, asking if I was freezing, but I’d forced a smile and said I was fine, then tried to ignore the smug expression on Rafe’s face that called me a liar.
Now we were at a local dive bar, the Bastards laughing it up by one of the pool tables with a group of guys wearing swim trunks and flip-flops like it was July instead of April.
The Bastards looked like they were having fun — except for Rafe, who never looked like he was having fun — but they were obviously not cut from the same cloth as the carefree beach bros in the bar. The beach bros were lean and wiry, their faces open and optimistic.
Rafe looked like he was expecting trouble at any second, and every few minutes, Nolan’s gaze slid to the entrance of the bar like he was some kind of bouncer. Even Jude — curious, open, quiet Jude — had a wary stance, his body slightly coiled, like he was ready to spring into action. They looked like what they were — former soldiers — although I wondered if anyone else could see it.
I lifted my glass and drank from the straw in my Shirley Temple. It was watered down from the melting ice but I didn’t want to ask for another. I was kind of hoping we were almost done, but as far as I knew, the Bastards still hadn’t talked to their cyber contact.
I looked around the bar, trying to find the silver-haired woman who’d emerged from the water with them. I didn’t know for sure she was the one they’d asked to access the cameras around the Dive, but they’d used the pronoun “she” when talking about their contact and the silver-haired woman had been the only woman in the bunch.
Except whoever she was, she was gone now, and I was stuck in another dive bar in another town, reliving the way Nolan had made me come while I drank my weight in ginger ale and grenadine and hoped for extra cherries.
Oof.
I guess it could have been worse. The bar was warm at least, and so far everyone had been well behaved, although that might have been because of the way the Bastards had surrounded me on the way in.
The message had been implied but clear: hands off.
I was outwardly annoyed, but inside? Well, inside I had to admit to feeling a little flush of pleasure. It was dumb — the Bastards had clearly taken some kind of protective interest in me because of what they’d done in high school — but sometimes feelingsweredumb and there was still nothing you could do about them.
The bar didn’t have a sign outside, but inside a big blue neon sign screamed BREAKERS from one end of the large main room, a wave underneath the word like it was being carried on the surf.
There was a smaller room in the back, but almost everyone was crammed into the big front room, its walls made of rough-hewn wood, an array of ocean-related miscellany mounted to them — license plates that looked like they’d been battered by the sea, fishing nets, driftwood, even an actual jaw with razor-sharp teeth that looked like it might have belonged to a shark.
An older guy worked the bar, his dark hair streaked with gray. He watched over the place like a wary parent, his piercing blue eyes roaming the crowd like a beacon looking for potential trouble.
His eyes met mine and he walked the length of the bar to where I sat at one end, like he’d read my mind and knew I’d been cataloging him. “Want another?”
“Um… no, thanks,” I said. I already had to pee.