Butterflies in Honey (Growing Pains #3)(116)

“But it was a miss. I am okay. I made it—thanks to you. There is no sense replaying everything that might have gone wrong. The fact is it didn’t.”

“I thought I lost you when you left San Francisco. But I didn’t. Not really. I shrugged it off the other day when you said all those things to me. I didn’t think you were really gone. Not for good. I work with you—I’d still see you every day. But today, when you weren’t breathing on that beach, and I couldn’t revive you…” his voice hitched. He clenched his jaw as a tear leaked out of his eye. “I almost lost you. For real. And it is killing me.”

Sean’s voice broke. He stood rigid, trying to be the man of the 1940’s when the rule was, men don’t cry. All he needed was a soft wind and his card house would come tumbling down. Krista knew she was that wind, and she needed to go to him. Problem was, she was hooked up to a freaking IV even though she could just drink some water and problem solved.

“But you didn’t, Sean. You didn’t lose me,” Krista said softly. She gestured for him to come to the bed, but he didn’t budge. This wasn’t over. He wasn’t done purging.

“This is my fault because none of this should have happened. You shouldn’t have been alone. Not for any of it. Not the car ride down—I bet you didn’t even sing along to the radio because you were thinking about my not calling you…”

He was right. She didn’t even have the radio on. She hadn’t been in the mood.

“You shouldn’t have had to talk to that reject at the bar. You shouldn’t have been at that beach—which is the number one spot in San Diego for drowning, by the way. The waves there are unpredictable, as you saw. You shouldn’t have been surfing alone. And you shouldn’t have been planning to drink yourself into a stupor tonight. I swore that if I got you back when I got to L.A., I would hang on to you. I would do everything in my power to make you happy. And look, I nearly killed you.”

“Now, that is just stupid. You had nothing to do with my near miss, as you call it. Sometimes I get into fixes, but I don’t need you to be my shadow to keep me safe. Except for today, obviously.”

“Don’t you? It seems to me like you have a habit of doing foolhardy things. Kate, Jasmine, and Ben all know this. But it seems to escape your notice.”

“I’ve made it this far.”

“Barely. All I am trying to say is, I need you to keep me level, and you need me to talk some sense into you when you stop relying on logic. If I change, if I work less and spend more time with you, will you consider coming back?”

Sean stood five feet from her, his eyes still glistening from unshed tears, his hands limp at his sides. He was a strong, powerful man that currently looked so fragile, he might topple over and shatter.

“When I was down in that water, I thought of two things I gave up on that mattered. Only two in my whole life. One was the fight to survive that…predicament.” Pain flashed across Sean’s face. “The other, and the one that made me so unspeakably sad I still hate thinking about it, was the fight to keep you. Not ever. Not when I left San Francisco, and not when you were working all the time. I just let it go. Let you go. I once told you that you were a coward. Well, you weren’t the only one. I was afraid you didn’t want me. It was easier to leave than to hear it.”

“I do want you, Krissy. I want you forever. I want to add your name to my property and my bank accounts. I want to share my life with you. And most importantly, I want to stop hurting you.”

“Well…that’s a bit overboard. Would you have come if Tory didn’t hint about it?”

Pain lanced Sean’s face again. “Yes. But not as soon. I would have sat and thought about it some more. Thought about what I would say. How wrong I was. Tory took the thinking out of it. Thank God. He saved your life.”

“No actually, you did. I saw your rescue on the news. You might be a celebrity. It was risky, though. You might have gone down with the ship.”

“I’ll tell you the story once, and then I would prefer never to talk about it again, okay?”

She nodded mutely.

Chapter Thirty-Three

“I went straight to the beach that idiot sent you to. Because of the currents and tides, also because of the unpredictability of the waves because, as I said, it is an intermediate surf spot. Great waves, but they come at a price.

“I had a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach. From the time you walked out of my house earlier in the week, I had a bad feeling, and this heightened it. You tend to lose sense of yourself when you have things on your mind. Judging by the frosty reception I was getting from your friends, you definitely had things on your mind. I can always tell how the winds blow with you by how Kate responds to me. You have loyal friends.

“Anyway, I saw your car at the beach and knew two seconds of relief. When I got to the top of the path, overlooking the beach…”

Sean paused, his eyes glistening again. He was fighting to keep back emotion. “I saw the group of people at the water’s edge. I looked where one of the guys was pointing. You had just bobbed up. I knew it was you the second I saw your head. It was a long way away, but I just knew it was you. Then that enormous wave came crashing down on you…” Sean paused to quickly wipe his eyes.

“I started jogging down the path. I didn’t know you had been stuck in the waves for a time. I thought it would sweep you up and spit you out near shore. You’ve gotten better at diving the waves, I guess.”