Page 109 of The Temporary Bride

“Did you put sticky notes all over our house?” I drop the surfboard in the sand.

“I did,” he says, looking extremely pleased with himself. “And by the looks of it, you found all of them.”

He crosses the sand toward me, slides a hand around my waist, and kisses me. I can taste sunscreen on his lips, and his sun-heated skin feels warm under by hands.

“I’m going to teach you to surf,” he announces when our kiss breaks.

Nerves kick up in my chest immediately, even though I pretty much guessed that’s what this was going to be about. “Um… are you sure?”

He laughs and kisses me again, his hand tightening at my waist. “Well, I’ve never taught anyone before, but I think I can do it. I’ll be right here with you the whole time. If you fall, I’ll catch you.”

“And if a shark comes?”

He lifts one shoulder. “Then I’ll fight the shark.”

I snort. “You’d fight a shark?”

“For you? Absolutely.” He says it straight-faced, and as I laugh, the lingering icky feeling in my gut from my lunch with Genevieve dissipates.

We wade in together, boards under our arms, and the cold Pacific water comes up around my ankles, then my calves, and then my waist all at once. I make a sound that’s somewhere between a yelp and a hiss, and Tristan grins sideways at me.

He actually is a really good teacher, patient and detailed with his instructions, happy to explain the same thing three times without making me feel bad about needing it. He shows me how to position myself on the board, how to paddle with my arms cutting through the water rather than splashing around uselessly, and how to read an approaching wave by watching the horizon rather than the water right in front of me.

I’m bad at it, which is unsurprising. My strokes are uneven, my balance is horrible, and the waves seem to come out of nowhere. But Tristan takes it all in stride, making adjustments to my form and offering little tips here and there, and after a while, I stop being embarrassed and just focus on getting incrementally less bad.

We’ve paddled out a little farther, the water dark and cold below us and the shore looking smaller behind us, when my hearing suddenly changes.

A sudden ringing fills my right ear, cutting through the sound of the ocean and Tristan’s words mid-sentence.

For a few disorienting seconds, the whole world goes muffled and wrong. The waves sound far away. Tristan’s voice becomes indistinct, like someone turned the volume most of the way down. I grip the sides of my board and go still and wait, my jaw tight, my heart thrashing hard in my chest.

It clears after about thirty seconds. The ocean sounds rush back in, Tristan’s muffled voice turns back into words, and the ringing fades. I let out a slow breath through my nose, trying to banish the unpleasant surge of adrenaline that shot through me.

“You good?” He’s watching me, his brows pulled together.

“Oh, yeah.” I shoot him a shaky smile. I’m not quite sure why I don’t just tell him what happened. Maybe I don’t really want to admit it to myself. “Sorry. I think I got water in my ear.”

He looks at me for a beat as if trying to figure out if there’s more to the story, but I manage to turn my smile into something more natural. Finally, he nods and we keep going. I force myself to focus on what he’s been showing me, on the angle of my hands and the horizon line, and not on what just happened.

He shows me how to catch a wave, and I try, then fall off immediately. I go under and come up sputtering, salt water up my nose and my hair plastered across my face. Tristan’s arm is around me before I’ve finished coughing. I drag the hair out of my eyes and we try again. When I fall once more, he’s right there again, pulling me up before I’ve even fully registered that I’m going under.

We do this several more times, and somewhere in the middle of it I stop being scared and start feeling a little of the joy he described when he first talked to me about being on the water. At one point, I actually manage to ride a wave in. It’s small and wobbly and has none of the grace of when Tristan does it, but it’s one of the best feelings in the world.

“That was incredible,” Tristan declares, grinning.

We stay out until the light turns golden, the sun dropping toward the horizon. By the time we pack it in and start carrying our boards back up the beach, I’m exhausted in a good way, my arms tired and my legs slightly shaky.

At the top of the steps, I glance back at the water and the last bits of daylight glinting off of the waves. For a brief second, the memory of that horrible ringing in my ear hits me, the way everything went muffled and wrong. Then Tristan says something that makes me laugh, and I turn around as he follows me toward the house.

By the time we get inside, I’ve forgotten about it entirely.

Chapter 41

Tristan

I sit at the head of the polished mahogany table opposite Chloe, who shuffles through a pile of hefty film scripts. Flanking us on either side are our team, from Thorne Enterprises and MediaSphere respectively.

The meetings to discuss the future of Eclipse Studios have been productive, and the creative energy in the room is obvious. Today, we’re finally taking on the parts of our decision-making process that I know Chloe has been most looking forward to—the content.