“The police are moving in,” I said. “We need to get to the truck.”
“Through the alley,” Lana said immediately. She already knew the back routes. We’d all grown up running them.
We moved through the narrow gap and came out the back into the service alley that ran parallel to Front Street. We walked fast because we didn’t want to attract attention. I was innocent, but my friends were making me feel very guilty.
We made it to my truck and piled in. Capri hooted with laughter. I understood why they were so excited. It had been satisfying, but I did feel bad for Colt. He was an innocent bystander. Well, mostly innocent. He didn’t deserve to get egged, at least.
CHAPTER 18
COLT
The water ran cold before I was ready to get out, but I stood there anyway, letting it finish the job on the last of the egg dried in my hair. My arm was stained pink. I worked the shampoo through my hair a second time.
I’d been trying not to think about Summer’s face when I climbed those steps. The way she’d looked at me with disappointment. She’d been watching and hoping I’d make a different choice. I hadn’t. I’d stood up there and let Judd Mathers shake my hand in front of everyone.
I deserved the eggs. I turned the water off and stood there dripping. She’d asked me to look at the crowd and I had. I’d looked at all of them and I’d thought about the data I had collected. The economic projections and revenue forecasts. The employment numbers. I’d been running those numbers in my head for months. The data was clear that the port would help the town, which I actually cared about, contrary to what the angry mob thought.
I thought about the egg hitting Judd. The genuine, open-mouthed shock on his face. I didn’t see who had thrown it, but they had great aim. I’d stood up there covered in someoneelse’s breakfast and I’d grinned like an idiot because part of me thought he had it coming.
I kept coming back to Summer. Not just the protest, not just this morning. I kept thinking about all of it. The whole picture of her that I’d been trying to put back together since I got back. The pieces I knew from before and the new ones I’d been collecting without meaning to.
She wasn’t the same woman she’d been seven years ago when I first met her. I thought about everything she’d been through and now she was looking at losing her town. The place that had been her entire support system her entire life.
She’d lost her mother too young. Summer had been seventeen. She had managed to hold herself together and I knew a lot of that was because of the community. She had told me many times about the meals the women in town delivered. The offers to do laundry and sit with them when they were having a bad day.
I thought about the first night I saw her. She’d come from somewhere up the beach at a dead run, hit the water without hesitation, and went in after a kid twice her size who was going under in the dark. I hadn’t known her back then. She was a beautiful hurricane. I hadn’t known anything about her. But I’d watched her put her life on the line to save him. And even when she should have been furious with him for being such a damn fool, she’d comforted him. Dealt with his stupid flirtations.
Summer took care of people. It was who she was. She was doing it now by taking care of her sister and her kids. She’d stepped in when that situation fell apart. She gave up her place with Capri to move in and help take care of her niece and nephew.
I thought about the students she taught how to love the water and not be afraid of it. She was something else on the water but watching her teach was a different thing entirely.
She was extraordinary.
I smiled thinking about her standing up to me. Feet planted. Chin up. Arms crossed like she was daring the whole world to try her.
That was the image I couldn’t shake. She hadn’t yelled or thrown anything. She’d just stood there looking at me with that particular brand of disappointment that was so much worse than anger. Anger I could argue with. Disappointment just sat there and made me feel like I was two inches tall.
The project couldn’t happen.
I could not look into those eyes and see her look at me like I was the biggest piece of shit she’d ever encountered. The next time I saw her, I wanted her looking at me like she had that night on the beach. She didn’t come right out and tell me she was thinking about our time together, but I felt it. I knew that look in her eyes.
I groaned thinking about the woman I’d never been able to stop thinking about. I braced both hands against the tile wall, letting the water beat down on the back of my neck. Seven years. Seven goddamn years and she still lived in my head like she owned my very soul.
The steam rose around me, pulling up a memory of one of the hottest showers of my life, and it had zero to do with the temperature of the water.
The memory of her hit me full force. My cock hardened. Being near her had left me with the worst case of blue balls. I needed relief. I wrapped my hand around myself slowly, exhaling hard through my nose.
I thought about her mouth first. The way her bottom lip was slightly fuller than the top. The way it had felt between my teeth. She liked when I did that. Made the sweetest sound I ever heard.
I stroked slowly, remembering that low, involuntary catch in her breath when my hands skated between her legs. I always liked to tease her.
Damn.
My grip tightened on myself. I reached for the bodywash, squirted some on my hand, and stroked faster. I thought about her hands on my chest. The way her fingers had spread wide while her mouth latched on to my neck. I thought about the way her nails had dragged down my back and then dug into my ass when I pushed inside her.
I thought about her body under my hands. The dip of her waist. The flare of her hips. The way she’d arched into me when I’d dragged my mouth down her throat. Her body was so responsive.
My hips rolled forward against my own fist, the water running hot down my spine.