Rogue Wave, Isabel Jolie [ink ebook reader .TXT] 📗

you.” I didn’t know what else to say. She wasn’t saying anything new to me. The adoption agency also recommended a therapist. Cali had been a godsend for me. Gratitude for her help, for having someone else to weigh in, overflowed. I said thank you to her every single day. The word felt woefully inadequate, but I didn’t know what else to say. I squeezed her hand that rested on my shoulder, trying to silently convey all the appreciation I felt.

Movement outside the screen door caught my attention, and I looked over Cali’s head in time to see Luna running. Her hair whipped in the wind as she sprinted away. A heavy weight held me in place. I hadn’t done right by Luna. In typical Tate fashion, I’d closed the door and not looked back.

Cali patted my shoulder and inched away, her movement bringing me back to the living room.

“We’d better get going if you’re to make the next ferry.”

My thoughts ran rampant as I drove to the marina. When I returned to the island, I’d expected she’d be dating someone else by now. Life at twenty-two went like that. Or, well, twenty-three. I’d missed her birthday.

But twenty-two and twenty-three were both the same. One door closed and another opened. Sometimes all in the same week. Hell, more than once I’d said goodbye to a girl on a Saturday, moped around on Sunday, and discovered a new girlfriend on Monday. That was life in a place with summer renters on constant rotation.

It wasn’t like Luna and I were meant for forever. But I’d be lying if I said relief didn’t fill me when I found out she hadn’t yet returned. I didn’t want to see her with someone else. I also didn’t want to have to face how I’d left her. Saying goodbye sucked. But hello after pretty much running away had the potential to suck more.

When I pulled up to the marina, Cali tucked her hair behind her ear as she stepped off the cart. “Are you okay?” she asked.

“Sure. So, I’ll pick you up tomorrow morning?”

“I’ll text you confirmation when I’m on the ferry, but my plan is to catch the nine a.m.”

“See you tomorrow.”

I didn’t wait for the ferry to dock. I drove straight to Luna’s. The way she turned and fled bugged me. She deserved an explanation.

As I drove up the familiar Long Wynd Road, it occurred to me she might have thought something was going on with Cali and me. I was sure if I walked up to her cottage and a man was standing close to her, I’d assume the same thing. But Luna and I…we were supposed to be carefree. A relationship in the moment. She could be upset for how I left, but not if I were dating someone else. Not now. Months later. But that didn’t mean I didn’t owe her an explanation.

Once she learned about my new responsibility, she’d understand. She wouldn’t want a part in raising a teenage daughter. She’d broken up with her first love because he wanted to settle down, and that wasn’t the life she wanted. I saved her the pain of having to be the one to end it. Because, without a doubt, settling down with a kid in tow wasn’t anywhere on her agenda.

The ache that had become my normal lessened as I approached her home. Nerves fired off. My breathing quickened through the bite of the bitter cold wind. I had missed her far more than I’d anticipated. More than I’d missed anyone, and given my past, that said something. A day didn’t go by that I didn’t think about her. We weren’t building toward forever, but we were more than a series of hook-ups. I owed her more than my cop-out note. I owed her both an explanation and an apology. The way I acted, you’d think I was the twenty-two-year-old in our relationship.

I’d known this day would come—if she returned. Haven Island was too small for avoidance to be any sort of solution. Even if it had been a metropolis, Luna deserved more.

I parked in front of the lifeless board and batten cottage. I’d walked by it almost every day since my return. The garage shed remained closed. I bent down and tugged on the silver handle. The door stuck, and with an extra heave, it lifted, exposing a dusty golf cart.

I knocked on her doorframe. The screen door remained shut, but the heavy wooden door was ajar. I peeked inside. Two suitcases and an open tote bag with towels spilling out rested against her bed.

I ventured along the sandy path out to the ocean, searching. Far down the beach, close to the point where the ocean and the inlet crashed together, I found her. Her long blonde hair blew behind her, just as I’d remembered for these months away. The frigid ocean air gushed down the beach, and she gripped her coat tightly around her, huddled as she rambled along the water's edge.

I caught up to her and slowed, letting my feet fall into her sand indentions.

Sensing a person approaching, she glanced back. Her hair whipped around in the wind, flowing toward me and partially covering her tear-streaked face. Her honey brown eyes raised to meet mine. Deep inside, warmth and remembrance surged.

I shoved my hands in my pockets to prevent myself from reaching out to her and pulling her against me. My throat constricted, and my eyes burned. My chest ached. An urge to crush her against me and breathe her in, to comfort her and dry away those tears grew, and I fought it. I hunted her down to explain, not to reunite.

“Who is she?”

It took me a moment to place her question. “A tutor.”

Her forehead wrinkled, and she stepped back.

“My daughter’s tutor,” I amended. I looked around the vacant beach and gestured to a dry location closer to the shelter of the dunes. “Sit? I’ll explain.”

She crisscrossed her legs, taking a space about a foot away from