All it took was seeing her. Here. In person.
And he lost it.
His mind, his heart, his breath.
He'd had an entire speech planned. They needed to talk, get the confusion out of the way.
But all of his plans faded to the distant background the second he was in the same room with her.
They'd been so far away. Far enough to feel it. A distance made worse by his lack of communication. But only until this moment, when he was closing the gap between them. The missing, the loss, the frustration, it needed to be gone. Abolished.
Just like their first meeting, he was drawn to her wild beauty. The danger in her eyes and in the taste of her lips. The current of her nature pulled him, surrounded him, drowned him.
All the words in the world couldn't save him. He was tumbling, tumbling, tumbling, tumbling. The rush, the loss of equilibrium. His heart crashed against his rib cage and he held onto her tighter.
She was it.
His risk.
His reward.
She took his hand and led him out of the resort bar. Her fingers tangled surely in his and he held on. He was always going to hold onto her.
By the time they reached the door to the villa, he had a fraction of his initial focus back. He took a deep breath and stood close behind her as she unlocked the door.
“We need to talk about things,” he said, curling a hand around the back of her neck. He needed to apologize. He needed to make certain she understood he was sorry. So very sorry. And selfish. And stupid.
“Yeah,” she agreed.
The door swung open and he followed her in, closed it behind him, and then pulled her right back into another frantic embrace.
They needed to talk, but he couldn't seem to stop touching her.
He wanted her in his arms, her hair in his face, her scent all around him. If only it were possible for them to talk about all the things they needed to while he also made love to her. Until they both felt anchored, secure, and heard.
He backed her against the door and his hands roamed over her body.
Remember. Review. Renew.
It may have only been a couple of weeks, but it suddenly felt a lot lot longer. His skin caught fire where it touched hers, his pulse began anew as soon as his lips found hers on her neck.
He was intent. And he was going to love her with intent.
“I missed you,” she gasped as his lips traveled down her neck and he tugged the strap of her tank top off her shoulder.
He pulled back and found those translucent green eyes. They shimmered in the low light of the villa, blazing. He didn't know how long he could last in her gaze. He was ready to come apart, shredded at her feet, just to have her in his arms.
“You make me weak,” he confessed. He nipped at her bottom lip, the sensation filling him with heat and purpose.
She ran her hands over his shoulders and down his chest. “Nothing about you is weak.”
Her words ignited him, desire coursed through his limbs, and a low growl escaped as he took her mouth again. Hungrier than before. He wanted to be the man she thought he was. He wanted to be the man he saw in her eyes.
He lifted her and she wrapped her legs around his waist.
“Which way?” he asked between heady kisses.
“To the left,” she pointed, dipping her head to work her mouth down his neck.
He moved to the bedroom and kicked the door shut behind them. He put a knee to the bed and laid her down. This. This was what his bed, his life, his days had been missing. The look of trust and want in her eyes, the touch of her, the weight of her in his hands, her smile, her voice, her presence. He'd been half of a person for two weeks and now he was whole again.
“Wait, we should talk,” she panted, her fingers tangled in his hair as his lips found her neck. “I'm actually really mad at you.”
“Okay. Tell me why you're mad while you kiss me. I'm totally listening.” He wasn't.
“I forget.” Her hands slipped under the hem of his shirt and found the sensitive skin of his lower abs. He sucked in a sharp breath.
“No, you didn't,” he argued against her collarbone. “You're mad because I asked Shane to assign you someplace safe.”
Her hands came out from under his shirt and planted firmly on his shoulders. And she pushed. He lifted his head to find her narrowed green (still absolutely gorgeous) eyes. He tried a smile. Her eyes narrowed further.
“I can't believe you did that,” she said, all the passion gone from her voice.
“Would it help if I said I felt really bad about it?”
He had no idea a person's eyes could actually get that narrow. She gave a small shove and he rolled off her, rubbing the heels of his hands in his eyes.
“You promised. You said no more tricks or games. You said it would be a clean competition.”
When he opened his eyes he saw her sitting beside him on the bed, back to him. “Yeah, but that was before I fell in love with you.”
She shot a glare at him over her shoulder and then stood up. Her hair was a mess of tangles, her lips and collarbone still flush from his kisses. She tugged her tank top down and paced across the room. Brady sat up and laced his finger together with his elbows on his knees.
“You can't keep doing that. Manipulating my life and then using your own personal feelings to justify it.”
“Why didn't you tell me you'd ridden Mavericks before?” he asked directly.
The red in her cheeks came back for a different reason now.
“Don't change the subject, Brady,” she said tightly.
He shrugged. “I'm not changing it. I'm trying to get through all the things we need to talk about before we decide to kiss and make up.”
Her laugh was incredulous. “More manipulation.”
He sighed and rolled his lips together. “Fine. Okay, yes. I don't like the idea of you being in any kind of danger. So I 'manipulated' the situation.”
“Don't use air quotes for something that's actually a big deal to me. If you don't understand how big of deal this is, than I don't think I can trust you to not do it again.”
“I haven't promised not to do it again.”
The silence that followed his admission rang in his ears. But he wasn't going to lie to her.
Her eyes widened. “You think what you did is okay?”
“Look, I don't know, okay?” Brady shrugged and rubbed his hands on his jeans. “It was sneaky and underhanded and I knew it would piss you off and...” He crossed his arms over his chest. “I didn't care.”
“You didn't care.”
“No. Not about pissing you off.”
She glared. “Making me mad didn't bother you?”
Brady wanted to laugh but he had a feeling that wouldn't go over well. “C'mon, Lo. You really want to be with a guy who operates on whether or not you're going to get bent?”
“No. I want to be with a guy who respects me enough to let me make my own decisions.”
He sighed and dropped his gaze to the floor at her feet. “I do respect you to do that, but it's complicated.”
“Not from where I'm standing. I was terrified of you riding Mavericks and I didn't do one damn thing to stop you. I told you how I felt and let you make that choice for yourself. Because I. Respect. You.”
Brady tilted his head to the side and grimaced. “Right. About that. Why didn't you want me to go there again?”
Lo licked her lips and placed her hands on her hips. Her eyes flashed with fire. “Because I care about you, dummy! Or maybe you haven't been paying attention.”
She was so beautiful, standing there upset and rigid and not running away. He wanted to have all of his fights with her.
“I couldn't do it your way,” he confessed.
She frowned. “What?”
“I couldn't tell you what I was afraid of. It was easier to be sneaky.”
“But you knew it would make me mad.”
“Yeah. And I knew we'd fight about it. And I knew we'd fix it.”
Her stunned silence reminded Brady why he was there. Because she was it. His Lo, his one. His perfect partner. The passion, the intensity, the fights, all of it.
“This is better.”
“What do you mean?” Her voice carried an ominous quality he thought was adorable. Because it was unwarranted and needless.
“Do you really believe you're so ordinary I wouldn't have noticed what life was like without you?” he asked. “You must know how incredible you are. You must have some idea of how much of a wreck I am when you're not around.” He cracked a smile and chuckled. “And then I get here and everything makes sense again. This is better. Even fighting with you is better than being without you.”
Her mouth fell open and moved to make words, but none came out. She shook her head and squeezed her eyes together. “No, you're not allowed to confuse me right now. I'm mad at you for what you pulled and I'm not ready to let it go yet. You haven't even apologized!”
“I'm sorry.”
A humorless laugh burst out of her. “That's not funny.”
But the light in her eyes said it was kind of funny and Brady grinned, determined to push his luck.
“Life is weird without you, Lo. It's hard. And it sucks. And I don't like myself. I'm grumpy and dickish. But the way you look at me makes me feel like I can do anything. And maybe it makes me an even bigger kind of asshole because I prefer the way I look through your eyes. I want to be that guy. I want to be that guy more than anything in the world. I want to be the kind of person that makes you smile and makes you laugh and gets you excited and drives you crazy and makes you mad. I want to be the only person in the world who gets to you.
“You hold back with other people. I think I get it. I'm trying to understand. Only the ocean gets that piece of you and I'll wait my turn, I will. But I'm next. Me. I want your heart. I want your soul. I want your wild and your calm and all of the things you're afraid of feeling. If that means letting you put yourself at risk so that you feel free, fine.”
Her eyebrows went up in surprise.
“That doesn't mean I'm not gonna take a backseat though. I'm here, participating in this. You and me. We're gonna make this work.”
She took in a deep breath and swallowed.
“I surfed Mavericks because I was angry. Miller had begun to treat me like I was...” She sniffed a laugh and looked away. “Just another pretty face. He didn't take me seriously in surfing... or in anything for that matter. I was mad. And instead of talking about it or telling him how it made me feel, I took off. I decided to make a point.” Her eyes came back to him. “I didn't tell you, because I was ashamed of my reasons.”
And just like that, the balance shifted. The feeling Brady had been carrying around on his shoulders, in his gut, in his head that he was the only one risking anything by putting himself out there, it moved. It was unexpected. He had made peace with carrying that weight. Had begun to think of the weight as his. Maybe he was the one better equipped in this relationship to keep things open.
But there she went again, blowing his expectations away.
The scales were balanced. They probably always had been. He'd have to be careful in the future about how he perceived their emotional show-and-tell.
It was hard for her to admit what she'd just confessed, he could see the conflict of wanting to take it back in her eyes. But she wasn't. She was trusting him.
She was trusting them.
Of course she had interpreted his manipulation as disrespect. It's all she had to compare it to. But Brady wasn't Miller. And he wouldn't make the mistake of not taking Lo seriously. Though, this entire trip to Fiji made sense all of a sudden. She was repeating her actions, same as before.
To prove a point.
“I'm not here to stop you,” he said. “I'm here to watch you.”
His declaration confused her. “But I thought —”
“I was wrong.” He held his hands open, palms up. “I wanna ride with you. Whether it's at Cloudbreak, or to visit in-laws, or to buy tacos. I wanna ride every wave with you. I don't want either one of us ever left on the shore.”
“Teammates,” she whispered roughly.
“Damn right.” He nodded the affirmative but before he'd finished, she had tackled him backwards onto the bed.
She straddled him, pushing herself up on his chest so she could look down at him. One of his hands gripped her waist while the other cradled her face. He ran a thumb along her bottom lip, which was curved up in a smile.
“I love you, you know,” she said, looking like the angel she was, hair falling down and warmth in her eyes.
“I know it.”