Jill Sorenson - Crash Into Me

James nodded miserably.

“That’s how I felt yesterday. Do you get me?”

“Yessir,” he replied. He held out the box containing the watch he’d never worn. “Just give this back to her for me, and I won’t bother her anymore.”

The watch was probably worth more than the truck James was driving, but Ben didn’t bother to take it from him. “Carly,” he yelled, turning toward the stairs. “James is here.” With that, he cast an averse glance over his shoulder and walked away. It wasn’t a good-luck wish, but it was better than getting a door slammed in his face.

Carly came down the stairs, looking so fantastically beautiful that James’ heart threatened to burst from his chest. Her black eyes flashed with defiance and her hair bounced jauntily with each step. She was wearing jeans and a faded T-shirt with gold lettering across the front. TRIUMPH, it said. Even James knew it was some kind of motorcycle, but that detail paled in comparison to the way her breasts moved beneath the soft cotton.

On the last few steps she slowed down, sticking her hands into her pockets and hunching her slim shoulders in a way that was irresistibly tentative. A silky strip of midriff was visible between the hem of her T-shirt and the low waistband of her jeans. Less than an inch of taut, smooth skin, more than enough to send his pulse skyrocketing.

He jerked his gaze from her belly to her face. She stopped in the entryway, waiting for him to speak.

All the words he’d practiced on the way over, everything he’d imagined saying while he lay in bed awake last night, every carefully constructed explanation flew from his mind in that moment, and he could only stare at her.

Incredibly, he felt the burn of tears behind his eyes. He’d cried a little last night, but it had been a painful, awkward release, as if his heart wanted to keep the agony locked away inside, holding him prisoner. Now, in front of the one person he wanted to be strong for, he was breaking down like a baby.

She pulled the door shut behind her. “James?”

He shook his head, unable to reply. He desperately tried to deny his emotions, to hold it together, to keep the tears from falling.

He wasn’t up to that task, either.

She took the box from his trembling hands and set it aside. Then she put her arms around his neck, let him bury his face in her shoulder, and held him there while he cried.

Ben had misgivings about letting Carly go with James and his hoodlum brother to scatter his mother’s ashes, but the poor kid was so emotionally wrecked that Ben couldn’t help but feel sorry for him, and Carly was brimming with renewed love.

Trying to keep those two apart at this stage would only encourage a disaster of Shakespearean proportions.

Maybe he was being naïve, but he didn’t think Carly could get into too much trouble on a boat in broad daylight with Stephen “chaperoning.” He made sure her cell phone was charged and told her to get home before dark. When he reminded her to take a sweater, he grimaced, sure he was turning into his mother.

If he was honest, Ben would have to admit his attitude toward James had changed. He didn’t hate Carly’s boyfriend anymore, or pity him, or think he was trash. Begrudgingly, he’d actually come to like him.

“Ugh,” he muttered, shuddering with distaste. He needed to go surfing.

Instead of walking outside, he climbed the stairs to his bedroom. What Sonny had said about the killer having a connection to Olivia and Lisette had been bothering him, niggling at the corner of his mind. Like his complex feelings for the elusive special agent, he didn’t think a few hours on the water would solve this problem.

Frowning, he crossed the room, moving toward the sliding glass doors facing the ocean, drawn inexorably to the Pacific.

After Olivia had been murdered, Ben had considered selling this house, and the decision to stay had been a difficult one. Her death had been so tragic, so pointless, so impossible to make sense of. O’Shea’s confession had brought no closure, no relief. The police had called the incident a home invasion murder. A random act of violence.

Moving had seemed like the only option in those first few weeks. He and Carly had stayed with Nathan and at his parents’ house more often than in their own home. He’d been like a zombie during that time, the only extended period of his life, since the age of ten, that he hadn’t given in to the lure of the waves. He hadn’t deserved it.

Surfing had always been more than a job to him. It had been his religion, his drug, his ever-faithful panacea, curing what ailed him without the pesky hangover or drunken misbehavior. Quitting had been the ultimate punishment, and he’d earned every minute of it for letting Olivia die.

A month after the funeral, Carly returned to school and Ben went home for what he thought would be the last time. He’d wanted to memorize every detail, to remember how Olivia had looked in every room. He wanted to see her in the living room, laughing as she put up Carly’s homemade Christmas ornaments. He wanted to revisit the kitchen, to run his hand along the granite countertops she’d selected. He wanted to lie down in the bed where they’d slept together every night. He wanted to say good-bye.

The instant he walked through the door, he was assaulted by images more horrific than sentimental, from the nightmare morning he found her dead. Stomach lurching with nausea, eyes brimming with tears, he rushed through the house and ran outside, desperate to escape the overwhelming sadness.

He hadn’t been able to. On the sand below the steps at the base of the cliff, he’d fallen to his knees and sobbed like a madman. It had been the only time he’d broken down completely. Holding his grief inside had been painful, but this uncontrollable outburst had been worse. Cathartic, perhaps, but an agony to experience.

James’ reaction to his mother’s death reminded Ben of that feeling, one he still wasn’t comfortable reliving.

After a long while, eyes burning and throat raw, hands buried deep in damp sand, he came to grips with himself. And had some kind of epiphany. Leaving his home, abandoning his profession, denying what his soul needed to carry on…it was wrong.

He wanted to stay in the house he’d loved Olivia in. That Carly had grown up in. His wife may have been taken from him, but no one could steal his home, his past, his memories.

Ben remembered staring out at Windansea Beach and noticing the wave conditions for the first time since Olivia died. He didn’t go back to the ocean that day, but he knew without a doubt it was where he belonged. He’d always known.

Surfing had been his downfall and his salvation.

Looking out at the same scene today, standing in front of the sliding glass doors in his upstairs bedroom, he still felt the same way.

He’d made some major changes over the past three years, to his house and to himself. He’d had a security system installed. The bedroom and master bath had been remodeled because they reminded him too much of Olivia, but the west-facing wall remained the same.

Open to the ocean. Visible from the beach.

He rarely bothered to close the heavy curtains. He liked the view. It was one of the main reasons he’d bought the house.

Now he couldn’t help but think someone had been looking in.

James was having trouble driving. He’d taken the bandage off his hand, and the swelling had gone down, so his injury wasn’t bothering him. The problem was that every time he shifted gears, the back of his right arm brushed Carly’s left breast, and he had a sneaking suspicion she wasn’t wearing a bra.

She was squashed between him and Stephen, straddling the gearshift console because the pickup truck had a narrow bench seat. When he put the truck in reverse, to back out of her driveway, he practically had to place the stick right up against her crotch.