Lana(20)

He glared at me. “You shouldn’t have been fighting in the first place,” he told me with his best lecturing tone.

I glared back. “You think I started that? I was just defending myself. Your ex is a psycho, but I still won.”

His face tightened harshly enough that I felt it pull at the strings on my heart. I could see, just from his face, that he was blaming himself for the whole sordid fiasco. “It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have left your side. I was so sure she wouldn’t show. I warned her that if she came to the bar while you were in town, or laid so much as a finger on you, that she’d lose her job. I thought surely that would be enough to keep her from trying to harm you, but she either didn’t believe me, or just didn’t care.”

I was shocked. “So you fired her?”

He nodded, his face hard. “And you need to press charges. She needs to know that she can’t touch you.”

I mulled it over. Our fight had been unwelcome, and my arm hurt like hell, but Milena losing her job over it seemed like enough of a punishment, to me. “I’m not going to. If you fired her, I think that’s enough of a punishment.”

He looked like he wanted to argue with me, but he stayed silent, pulling me to the hospital entrance. “I still hate her guts, though,” I continued. “I’m so jealous of her that I can barely stand it.”

He looked genuinely surprised by my confession. I couldn’t imagine why he’d be surprised by it. “Why on earth would you be jealous of her?” he asked.

“She told me she’d had a thousand nights with you, and I only got two. One and a half, rather. I hate her guts for that. And knowing you two, you’ll probably reconcile again in a week.”

He gave me a very annoyed look as he opened the door for me. “That’s ridiculous, Lana. We’ve been broken up for years. Though I guess you wouldn’t know it by how she still acts. I can’t understand why she can’t get over it. We were never good for each other, and over the years, we only got worse. She resented me for what I couldn’t feel for her, and if I’m brutally honest, I only stayed with her for so long because I thought that I didn’t deserve better. I ended it years ago, though, when I realized that I’d much rather be alone than with someone who brought out the worst in me. Milena is a bitter woman who can’t grow up enough to let go of the past. The very distant past, at that. You have nothing to be jealous of.”

I mulled that one over. She wasn’t the only woman who couldn’t let go of the very distant past. His assessment wounded me, because even though he’d been referring to Milena, I knew that I was no different. I wanted to let go, but I didn’t seem to have that ability. I wished to God that I did. Unwillingly, my mind wandered back to the past.

CHAPTER TEN

8 years ago

When Akira had asked me what I wanted him to get me for my eighteenth birthday, I hadn’t even had to think about it. I wanted him. Though I was smarter than to tell him that. Instead, I had asked him to spend the day with me. He agreed without hesitation, though he stubbornly insisted that I couldn’t call it a date.

He hadn’t had to ask me how I wanted to spend the morning. That one was a no-brainer. We spent it in the ocean, catching waves for endless hours. I had straddled my board a lot, practicing provocative poses, trying to tempt him, as I had taken to doing a lot recently. But today, it was different. I was a grown-up today, and there was no reason for Akira not to touch me now.

I arched my back when he looked at me, thrusting my full br**sts forward in my tiny lavender bikini. It was literally the tiniest one I could find, barely covering the essentials. He gave me his stern, ‘knock it off’ look, and went back to studying the waves.

When he’d seen me walk out wearing the minuscule suit, he’d just raised his brows and said, “I guess you want to watch me get into some fights on your birthday.” His tone had been dark, his face forbidding, but I had beamed at him, taking it as a good sign.

He watched the waves for a good ten minutes after he’d given me ‘the look’, then finally, I’d resorted to drastic measures. I had gone to great lengths to assure that I didn’t have a tan line for tonight, wanting my body to look perfect for him. I’d been tanning naked in my back yard, so the feeling of the soft breeze on my bare chest was not all that foreign to me as I untied the top of my suit, letting it fall down to my waist. I studied the waves, as Akira did, pretending not to notice the slip.

I felt my br**sts tighten the second that he saw what had happened. He started cursing. “Lana, your top!” he snapped at me.

I looked down at my chest, acting baffled, as though I couldn’t imagine what could have happened to it. He was still cursing as he straddled his own board, paddling over to me to fix it himself, since I was being too slow about it. I glanced around as he covered my br**sts with the tiny triangles of material. I tried to look worried. “Do you think anyone saw?”

He glanced around, his face thunderous, ready to stare down, or possibly pound, any poor fool he caught looking. But there was no one. We were virtually alone, all of the other surfers far enough away that they couldn’t have gotten a good look.

“Will you tie it for me, Akira? I guess I didn’t tie it tightly enough.”

He tied it at my neck without a word. The triangles didn’t fall into place on their own though, so I was still exposed. I made no move to cover up, so he did that too, moving the thin material over my hard ni**les, cursing all the while.