Malibu Rising: A Novel, Taylor Reid [best fantasy books to read TXT] 📗

despite the fact that he had never aspired to complexity. “Complicated, huh? I don’t know about that.” What had happened to all the artificial indifference he normally relied on? Maybe this was the new him. Maybe he was becoming more like Hud.

Hud was always better with women than Jay. Jay slept with more women, hotter women, too. But Hud knew how to love them. Jay hadn’t known to be envious of that kind of skill until now. Until all he wanted was to know Lara, earn her trust.

Could they take vacations together? Would she come to Hawaii? His days surfing the North Shore were probably over but could he teach her to surf in the gentle, nonthreatening waves of Waikiki? He wanted to bring her to his favorite café in Honolua Bay. He wanted to order her haupia.

“I’ve been trying to impress you,” Jay admitted.

“Impress me?” Lara said. There was delight in the wrinkle of her eyes, in the curved edges of her lips.

“Yeah,” Jay said, nodding. His head was down but his eyes were up and focused right on her. “Ever since …”

“That night,” Lara said.

“Yeah, ever since that night, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you.”

“You haven’t?”

Jay knew he was a fish on a hook, that she was reeling him in. He wanted to be reeled in. It felt good to be drawn in, to become intoxicated. It was the first time he’d ever desired someone so strongly, and he liked the feeling, the sweet ache of this specific wanting.

“I can’t stop thinking about you,” he said. “I’ve … I’ve gone into the Sandcastle I don’t even know how many times, trying to run into you.”

“I know,” she said, smiling. He had been exposed and it thrilled them both.

He leaned toward her and put his lips to the spot on her cheekbone that bumped right up to her eye. It was hard like bone and smooth like velvet.

“Is it crazy to think I might love you?” Jay whispered in her ear.

“It sounds a little crazy, yeah,” Lara said, laughing. “You don’t know me all that well.”

Jay was barely listening to her. He was lost in the commotion of his own heart.

“I don’t know …” he said, kissing her collarbone and running his hands up her legs. “I think I know enough.”

He kissed her on the mouth and held her in the front seat of his brother’s truck. He thought of what they were about to do as more than just sex. It was a way for him to show her what he felt for her. It was a connection, a sacred act. He put his hands slowly up Lara’s shirt, unbuttoned his pants, kicked off his shoes. Lara’s skirt was pushed up to her hips. And Jay slipped his hands underneath. He gingerly, and with great appreciation, slipped her underwear off, leaving it hanging at her feet.

“Do you have a condom?” Lara asked.

He didn’t. But he figured Hud might have some in the car. He turned to the dashboard and grabbed the keys from where the valet had left them. He took the smallest key and fit it in the glove box. With a turn, the box fell open with a thud. And there were condoms. Three. All in a row, in their shiny foil packets. Jay picked them up, ready to tear one off.

But then.

Jay grabbed the photo in the glove box that had now entered his field of vision, only to see that it was a full stack of photos. Photos of his ex-girlfriend blowing his brother.

Photos that broke his already malfunctioning heart.

Hud and Ashley had taken their shoes off and neither one of them knew where they’d left them. They had walked so far down the beach that they did not exactly recognize where they were in the dark.

Hud had already asked her a list of questions. “How long have you known?” Three days. “How far along?” Seven weeks. “Was it the weekend we went to La Jolla?” I think so. “Are we ready to be parents?” I don’t know how to know something like that.

And now, as they walked hand in hand along the water, they were both quietly considering two futures: one with a baby and one without.

Hud was thinking about renting a house; an Airstream was no place to raise a child. He was thinking about a two-bedroom and he imagined himself painting a nursery yellow. He thought of the sort of master bedroom his mother had. He had always liked that it had two sinks in the bathroom. He had always liked the idea of a mother and a father, together, at those sinks, every night.

Hud suddenly stopped, and Ashley stopped with him.

“What’s the first thing you thought?” he asked her. “When you found out? When the test tube turned whatever color it turns.”

“It’s a ring that appears at the bottom.”

“Well, then, when the ring appeared. What was the first thought that popped into your head?”

“Well, what was the first thing in your head? When I told you?” Ashley said.

“Honestly?”

“Yes.”

“I thought, How is it possible to love something that fast? Because I feel like the minute you said it, I felt it. And that doesn’t make any sense at all.”

Ashley’s eyes started to water and when she smiled, a tear fell.

“You didn’t think, Oh shit, or Fuck, or How do I get out of this?” Ashley asked, wiping her tears away.

“No,” Hud said, pulling her toward him. “Did you?”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “Not once.”

“So we’re having a baby,” Hud said, holding her.

“We’re having a baby.”

And they stood there, the cold water swirling up and chilling their ankles, smiling at each other.

There would be rocking chairs and swaddles, mashed bananas and high chairs, the pride of a first step. There would be a wild and beautiful future.

But for now, right now, Hud had no choice but to stop dancing around a lie. His families, old and brand-new,