Unforgettable Summer: Wild Crush, Book 1 (25 page)

When Summer emerged from the bathroom with the white plastic stick in hand, Jasmine shot to her feet. “What’s the verdict?”

“One line.” Her voice was flat. “There’s only one pink line, not two.”

“That’s good, isn’t it? One line means no?”

“It means no. I’m not pregnant.”

Jasmine threw both hands up in the air, evangelist style. “Halle-friggin-lujah!”

Summer stared at her sister’s minicelebration and wondered why she didn’t feel like joining in. It was the oddest thing, but her eyes started leaking again.

Jasmine stopped dancing around the room and frowned at Summer. “Tears of relief—right?”

“I don’t know.” Summer sniffed. “I think I was hoping it went the other way. It would have been an excuse.”

Comprehension dawned on Jasmine’s face. “An excuse to see him again.”

Summer nodded. “To be in his life somehow. He would have wanted to be a part of it. He’s like that. He cares about all the people in his life. We would have been connected. Forever.”

“So who says you need a baby to be connected to him?” Jasmine asked. “You love each other.”

“Is that enough?”

“It’s a place to start. Call him. Or better yet, go see him.”

“He’s in Victoria, at a title event,” Summer said, wiping the wetness from her cheeks.

“There is this new invention,” Jasmine drawled. “It’s called the airplane.”

Summer shook her head. “He asked me to try and I said no. He won’t give me another chance.”

“Not if you go in with that attitude he won’t.”

Summer scowled. Jasmine’s words almost precisely echoed the ones Ty had voiced that last day, when they’d been out surfing and Summer had insisted she couldn’t get up on the board. He’d blamed her attitude for her struggles, instead of her diminished skill level.

And he’d been right, Summer acknowledged in a flash of insight. After that she’d gotten up. She’d pushed herself harder, risked a little more, and she’d succeeded. She’d surfed, and it had been amazing.

Yet she’d chosen to focus on the dunking she’d received immediately after. She’d gotten angry that Ty hadn’t seemed concerned. No, he’d been focused on what she
had
achieved, instead of what was, now that she thought about it, a minor incident. She hadn’t drowned—had never been in danger of doing so. The wave had carried her into shore, safe and sound, as Ty must have known it would.

He hadn’t been worried about her safety because there’d been nothing to worry about. And he’d been too busy being proud of her anyway.

“I made a huge mistake,” she croaked, finally understanding that the end of her affair with Ty had been entirely her doing. All of it
her fault.
He hadn’t wanted to let it go, to let them go, but she’d been too afraid of hanging on in case she fell. “I’m a wimp.”

“I wasn’t going to say anything, but since you put it that way…”

“I have to try again.” During that phone conversation not too long ago, Jasmine had reminded her she was strong enough to handle whatever life threw at her. When had she forgotten that? “I think I have to go to Bells Beach.”

Jasmine beamed. “Too right you do.”

“But… How am I going to do that?” Summer started pacing the carpet. “I have a business to run.”

“Penny seems pretty capable, in a ditzy kind of way.”

“Sure, she’s qualified to do all the things I do. But we have more clients than she can handle on her own.”

“I could help with the phones and stuff. Maybe help her look for someone to fill in for you.”

Summer stopped pacing. “You?”

Jasmine shrugged, appearing sheepish. “I find myself between jobs right now. And subsequently in need of a place to crash since I was also kinda living with my boss.”

“Oh, Jas. Again?”

“What can I say? I’m only into following orders in the bedroom, not out of it. It’s amazing how many men have trouble making that distinction.”

“Ugh. Too much information.”

“I owe you, sis, so let me do this.” Jasmine’s voice turned beseeching. “I’ll water your plants, get your mail, and help out with your business until you decide what to do with it.”

“What do you mean, do with it?”

Jasmine shrugged. “You could always sell it for travel money. What’s keeping you in Leyton’s anyway?”

Summer studied her sister, her mind whirling. Why had she come back to Leyton’s Headland after her divorce? To try and patch things up with her father? That hadn’t exactly worked out. Maybe she’d done it because the town was familiar, safe. Or perhaps she’d been making a subconscious attempt to stay connected to Ty, the boy she never forgot.

The man she would always love.

What was the point of being safe if it meant you had to live without the man you loved?

Elation began to expand inside her like a helium balloon. She hadn’t had more than two days off in a row since she opened Summer’s Retreat. She was overdue for a holiday, and she’d certainly saved up enough money to take a break from work without having to make any firm decisions about the business right away. She could afford to go for a few months at least, and then…

And then she could decide not to come back if she chose. Her skills were portable, she could practice them anywhere. Her business meant a lot to her, but mainly because it was a symbol of how she’d broken free of her past and made her own decisions, her own life.

Now it was time to make new decisions. A new life.

With Ty.

Summer looked at Jasmine. “You wouldn’t forget to water my plants?”

Jasmine made a motion across her chest with a finger. “Cross my heart.”

“And you’d be nice to Penny?”

“I’m always nice.”

Summer cocked a brow.

Jasmine merely grinned. “You’re going to do it, aren’t you?”

A smile broke out on Summer’s face as the world seemed to open up right before her. It could get addictive, this risk-taking behavior. It tasted very much like freedom. “You know what I just realized, Jas? My life is my own.”
Mine and Ty’s. Please let him forgive me for being an idiot.
“I can do whatever the hell I want with it.”

As he’d been doing for the past ten days, Ty focused on the surf and nothing but the surf. A wave crested beside him and every instinct went on alert. He lay down on the board, ready to paddle into the fray. At the last minute, he pulled out and let the wave go without him.

It hadn’t been the right one. Ty knew he didn’t have many chances left to catch his last ride of the day, his last ride of the entire competition, but he had to trust his instincts. They’d gotten him this far.

He’d made it through ten days of grueling heats in sometimes murderous conditions, and now he was in the final of the Rip Curl Pro at Bells Beach, one of the biggest and longest-running events on the tour schedule. The rain of yesterday had cleared to give him a perfect sunny day in the blue ocean off the south coast of Australia. Slater was out, so only Ty and another Aussie, Chris Olsen, remained. Olsen had scored well on his last ride. Ty had to make better than eight point five to beat him and take out the trophy.

Another wave came and teased him with a nice-looking crest, but Ty shook his head and let it pass by unridden.
Wrong wrong wrong.
Ty could almost feel the tension coming off the onlookers lined along the beach and up the steep hillsides. He only had a limited amount of time to catch a wave or the buzzer would sound and he’d be out of the comp without having taken his shot. But if he took a chance on a wave he couldn’t do anything with, he was sunk anyway. Ty was looking for the perfect curl. He was an all-or-nothing kind of guy.

All or nothing.
He’d demanded the same kind of commitment from Summer, and it had backfired.
Not everyone is like Ty Butler.
He’d gone for broke, made demands she wasn’t willing to meet, and he’d blown the whole thing to smithereens. Why hadn’t he even tried to compromise? He knew the kind of life he led wasn’t very relationship-friendly, that at heart Summer was a traditional girl who wanted all the traditional things. He couldn’t give them to her right now, yet he’d expected her to put her life on hold until he was ready to change his enough to make a normal relationship feasible.

He’d gone all in and now he was bust. There was an emptiness inside that chilled him despite the sunrays beating down. But he couldn’t think about it. If he’d let himself think about it at all in the past week, he wouldn’t be here. He’d filled up the emptiness with surfing, with an almost obsessive focus on bagging barrels and performing wild aerials that had made him a fiercer competitor than ever before.

The blue ocean rose up behind him, a pristine right-hander presenting a curl that gave him goose bumps.
That’s the one.
Ty put his head down and paddled like a demon. He found the lip of the wave and dropped in, soaring down the face until he saw the break ahead forming a flawless tube. Ty crouched and entered what some called “the green room”, a beautiful, perfect pipe. Inside all that existed was the roar of the ocean and his thumping pulse. The walls of the tube were as exquisite as blown glass. Mother Nature’s art. Ty came out of the tube and performed a three-sixty off the lip, landing on the face of the wave and finding himself lined up with another barrel, this one bigger than the last.

Even before it was over Ty knew he was being taken on the ride of his life. By the time she was done, the wave had given him a rare three barrels. Three. In a final. It was like finding the holy grail of surfing. When Ty came off the end of the wave and dove into the water, he already knew he’d won.

He came up for air and sat astride his board. Over the loudspeaker, the judges’ score confirmed what he already knew. The Bells title was his.

Olsen paddled over to offer grudging congratulations, and a few awestruck comments about the wave. He paddled off again with a promise to bring Ty down at the next ASP event in Brazil, punctuating his threat with a muttered “lucky bastard”.

Ty knew it. He was the luckiest son-of-a-bitch on earth. That wave had been a freak of nature, a three-barrel ride that came along at precisely the right time and place. He lived what a lot of people saw as a charmed life, and in many ways it was. He got to travel to some of the most scenic places in the world doing what he loved and making a decent amount of coin in the process. He was living every surfer’s dream, the one they all chased after.

Endless summer.

Summer.

The one word encompassed everything he loved, and everything he’d lost as well.

Putting his head down, Ty started paddling into shore. He caught a small breaker the last distance and was lifted out of the water before he could hit sand. His trainer, his manager and a few others hoisted him up on their shoulders and carried him through the cheering crowd. Ty held his arms aloft, riding the high of winning. The commotion enabled him to ignore the little niggle of dread that left a cold spot somewhere in his chest. He was hitting a peak, and after a peak there was always a comedown. Since he’d left Leyton’s Headland, he’d put an almost maniacal focus on achieving his goal of winning at Bells, a focus that allowed him to put every other thought and feeling to the side.

Now he’d made it. He’d won. And in the inevitable downtime after the party was over, he knew he’d think about
her.
Ty’s gaze passed over the crowd, so thick it almost obscured the sand. So many people, all cheering him. He was damn lucky. So why didn’t he feel as fortunate as he should?

The crowd parted as Ty’s team carried him toward the podium. In the reshuffle a familiar face appeared. His heart stopped.
It couldn’t be.
But her face was imprinted on his memory, on his heart, which skipped another beat as the crowd shifted like a rolling wave and swallowed her up again. Like she’d never been there.

Perhaps the ride down to confronting what had happened with Summer had already started. Would he spend the rest of his life searching for her face—or at least one similar enough to fool him? Would he have to wait another ten years, until he was ready to retire and settle down, and hope she was still single and willing to give him another shot?

The next few moments passed in a blur of cameras and microphones being shoved at him. He made it to the podium only to have champagne sprayed on his head. A guy came at him with a microphone, asking him how he felt. They always asked that, as if you could possibly describe it. As usual, Ty gave the expected answers, the true ones.

It feels awesome. Bells is one of the events all the guys want to win.

Competition was tough, I was lucky to pull this one out.

I’m not thinking about the world ranking yet, I’m just stoked to be here.

Actually that one was half bullshit. Slater was unexpectedly eliminated in the third round of this event, which meant his ranking would slip while Ty’s shot up. As of ten minutes ago, Ty Butler had become world number one.

“Ty is there anything you want to say to your fans?”

Ty took the microphone off the media presenter. He thanked his sponsors and his trainer and the other members of his team. “I also want to thank my parents, who always believed in me before I made it, and who’ve constantly reminded me since I started winning that I’m just a regular guy from a small town who got lucky. I know they’re watching at home in Leyton’s, so hi Mum and Dad. And thanks.”