The Wrong Mr. Right (The Queen's Cove Series #2)(68)

My bookstore.

Being with Wyatt made me feel that life was worth it. Pacific Rim was in a few weeks and he might be leaving but memories of us camping and surfing and sitting at the bar, watching karaoke, would last forever.

My heart squeezed up into my throat. I opened my social media and posted the picture of myself that Wyatt took.

The girl behind the books, I typed.





20





Wyatt





Hannah beamed at me the next morning, looking back to see if I had watched her catch another wave. I grinned back and rested my torso on my board as I bobbed up and down in the water. The sun had just risen and it was going to be a beautiful day.

For days, what Hannah and I had done while camping replayed in my mind. Her soft, sweet moans as I touched her. How she arched against me. How she tasted. The way she clamped down on me hard. Her dazed, sated expression after. That dreamy, lazy smile she had shot me as she sunk back into the pillow.

How fucking incredible it felt when she wrapped her pretty lips around me.

I groaned and leaned my head on my board. Her eagerness and enthusiasm far surpassed any skill required and I had jerked off many, many times in the past few days thinking about her.

This was a problem, but I’d deal with it in the future, when it didn’t make my chest hurt to think about not doing this every morning. All things came to an end, but they wouldn’t end today. Today was all for us.

This morning, a registration email appeared in my inbox for a surf competition in California in December. The conversation with Hannah over the fire while camping played in my head, where I had spilled my dark secret to her.

I watched her on the water, brilliant blonde hair catching the morning light. California wasn’t that far away. I could go down for a weekend.

Hannah had never been to California. Would she want to come with me? I pictured us going out for Mexican food, sipping margaritas and while she swatted my hand away from her food.

I rubbed the back of my neck and tried not to smile so hard at the thought. It was her birthday in a few weeks, on the last day of the Pacific Rim competition, and I’d been wracking my brain for a gift for her. It had to be perfect, but everything I had come up with so far wasn’t good enough.

She paddled back to me, pushing the wet hair out of her face with a big smile.

I winked at her. “You’re getting good at this, bookworm.”

She flushed under my praise and my heart squeezed.

She nodded over my shoulder behind the break, further out in the ocean where the waves were bigger. “I want to try one of those.”

The waves crashed hard as they broke. We didn’t do lessons out there unless they were intermediate surfers we had worked with before. Those waves required comfort and intuition with the ocean. I frowned, studying their height. They were a big level up from the baby waves she had been learning on. The period in between waves was long enough that she would have a decent recovery time if she bailed.

If she bailed.

I frowned and shifted on my board. She would likely bail. That’s what life was about, though, wasn’t it? That’s what I always told her. Something pinched in my chest but I ignored it. Hannah wasn’t a glass doll that couldn’t be taken out of the case. That’s what we were doing together, showing her she could get messy and fall down and still be okay.

I sucked in a deep breath and nodded once. “Okay.”

Her eyebrows lifted with her smile. “Okay?”

That smile of hers filled my chest with warmth and made me feel like a fucking king. “Mhm. Let’s go.”

We paddled to the area where I’d hang out while she rode waves. It was louder over here since the waves were bigger, and she chewed her lip, but there was determination in her eyes. Pride hit me straight in the heart.

I knew it. Under all that shyness, buried under all those books in her brain, was the heart of a fucking lion.

“Have at ‘er, bookworm. You got this. Trust yourself.”

She nodded eagerly. She waited, watched a wave approach, and paddled as it caught up with her. Her arms dipped into the water in quick succession. She was so much stronger than a couple months ago. I thought about us laughing in the car yesterday about the entire town organizing a search party for her. She had laughed so hard tears rolled down her face. She was gasping for air. Two months ago, she would have disappeared into the ground with humiliation. Now, she just laughed about it.

That put a big smile on my face as I watched her paddle.

I didn’t care if the town knew we were fooling around. Let them. Let every guy in town know to stay the fuck away from Hannah because she was mine.

Mine?

The thought jolted through me. Mine. Of course she was mine.

Hannah glanced over her shoulder at the wave. Her hands flattened on the board as she readied herself to snap up.

A bad feeling hit me. I shook my head. It was too early. The wave was going to—

The wave crashed over Hannah and she disappeared under the surface.

Fuck. Fear rattled through my veins.

I paddled hard, my head pounding with blood as my heart raced.

“Hannah!” I called, eyes darting around. Where was her board? “Hannah!”

Fuck. Fuck. Fuckfuckfuckfuck. My throat knotted and my heart was about to explode. This was my fault.

She gasped for air behind me and I whipped around. Blood dripped down her forehead. She blinked the water and blood out of her eyes and her chest heaved hard for air. Her board floated behind her, tethered to her ankle, and she reached for it.