“We kept it free.”
“Well, think about it. I’ll send you the details.”
“Cool, bro. You should come to Nashville for Christmas. We could finally have that reunion we keep talking about.”
“Yeah, I’ll see.”
“Good luck with the new business. She’s fucking gorgeous, by the way.”
Gage smiles down at me, still holding my hand. “Yeah, I know. And thanks.”
Wow. To think that Travis Tucker and his investment prodigy cousin—who also happens to be a GQ cover model and who also happens to have just given me a supernova of an orgasm that basically blew my mind—are discussing me like this is … bizarre. Things like this don’t happen to me. I’m usually too busy making sure they don’t happen to me.
I feel dazed.
We walk a little further and I’m glad to have Gage’s hand to hold onto. I feel woozy and unsteady. In fact, the further we walk the more drunk I seem to be getting. I should know better than to drink champagne and then pound two shots of Jack on an empty stomach. The endorphin rush—which is, to be honest, epic—isn’t helping.
The last thing I want to do is faint or stumble or need rescuing by Doctor O over here.
“Gage, I might go and sit on the beach for a while. You don’t need to come with me. I like chilling out on the beach at night sometimes. I can make my own way home. I had fun tonight. Thanks for the ticket.”
He laughs, and holds my hand tighter when I try to pull it free. A lock of his hair has fallen across his forehead, somehow adding to his rogue, cavalier beauty in a way that quite literally stuns me. “I’ll come with you.” Like there’s no alternative.
I don’t know if I want him to come with me. I feel reckless and out of control.
But it’s a public beach and there are a lot of people milling around, enjoying their holiday weekend. It’s not like we’ll be alone.
We get down to the sand and I take off my shoes. “I love Key West sugar sand,” I tell him. “There’s something so enchanting about it, don’t you think? It feels like fairy dust.”
He doesn’t reply, he just watches me with that steady, riveted intensity he has.
We get to the far end of the beach where there’s a cluster of palm trees and no other people. I sit down on the sand and Gage sits next to me. It’s a warm, clear night and the stars are out.
They’re spinning.
The silence settles around us and it doesn’t feel awkward or heavy this time. The gentle sound of the waves on the sand and the faraway laughter filters through it.
“What holds you back?” Gage asks softly in his deep, baritone drawl as he weaves his fingers through mine. “What are you afraid of?”
His hair is dark and thick, curling lightly against his collar from the humidity. The starlight and the moon on the water only amplify the blue glow of his eyes and the intent, open compassion that has nothing to do with the places he’s been or the life he’s led: it’s mine. He’s saved this piece of himself just for me. I don’t know how I know that but I do.
He’s shining his blue light into the cracks in my soul, igniting dark, impossible-to-reach places.
Which is not a good thing. Because I’ve drunk too much, I’ve just had one of the most intense experiences of my life and I tend to talk too much even at the best of times. “You,” I hear myself confessing. “I’m afraid of you.”
“Why?”
“Because you’ll hurt me.”
“Why do you think I’ll hurt you?”
“It’s just who you are. And I don’t want to be hurt like that.”
“What if I told you I wouldn’t hurt you.”
“You’d be lying.”
He doesn’t answer right away. “What if I promised I wouldn’t hurt you?”
“You’d end up breaking your promise.”
“Tell me what happened to you.”
I blink at him. “How do you know something happened to me?”
“I have a brother who suffers from PTSD. I know the signs.”
Damn it. I feel the sting again behind my eyes. “I don’t have PTSD. I’ve never been to war.”
“You don’t have to go to war to suffer from things that have been extremely difficult in your life. Most people have emotional scars of one kind or another.”
I guess that’s true. “What are your scars?”
He’s quiet for a few seconds. Then, as though he’s just made the decision to be honest with me, he says, “My mother died slowly and horribly from pancreatic cancer. My father couldn’t live without her and hung himself a month after we lost her.”
A tear draws a warm line down my cheek. “I’m so sorry, Gage.”
He rubs his fingers along the soft surface of my arm like he’s fascinated by the feel of it. “It was a long time ago.”
“How long?”
“Five years. I sort of lost control, I think, after it happened. I tried to block it all out by … getting my fix wherever I could. I medicated with money and sex.”
Wow. Psychology is pretty interesting. The things people do and why they would. “Did it help?”
“Not really.”
A group of people walk past and keep walking. We wait until their voices fade away.
“I want to know what happened to you,” he says. “So I can help fix it.”
I don’t know why I even admit it. “You can’t fix it. Josie couldn’t. I can’t. I don’t know why you could.”
“Does Josie know what happened?”
“Josie was there through all of it.”
“Did you talk about it?”
“What do you mean?”
“Did you get therapy or talk through the things that happened with Josie or anyone else?”
“No. I don’t like talking about it.”
“That’s how I know I can help. It’s the talking that breaks it loose. Once it’s loose you can start to heal.”
I stare at him. “How do you know that? And why do you want to heal me anyway?”
“Because I think I could make you happy and I’d like you to let me try.”
Here he goes again. “Gage—”
“My parents met at a party their junior year of college. My father said he looked at her once and his world literally slid off its axis. That’s the way he described it. I always thought he was crazy, of course. I knew for a fact there was no way anything like that could ever happen to me. It’s ridiculous, to think you can know something that fast, or that instantly. I used to tell him you can’t know a person from one glance.”
“You did?”
“Yes. And you know what he said?”
“What?”
“That you can never really know a person. You can only try and have faith and give the best of yourself. That’s what he did and she never let him down. Not once. She just kept on amazing him every single day.”