Chapter Thirty-Three

Adam finds me at the beach where I am standing arms out, eyes closed, pressing myself against the wind.

“The beach is closed, Lola,” he says, coming to a stop a few feet away from me.

“I know.”

“Should I even ask how you got down here?”

“Celebu-spawn superpowers,” I say, risking a sideways glance at him. “Should I even ask how you found me?”

He cocks his head. “Mentor superpowers.”

I’m doing my best to act normal, to pretend I didn’t just practically declare my love for him in front of everyone, and then admit I’m a huge liar and a fake about everything else. Another thing I have to live with.

“I came to say thank you,” he says, rather formally. “And wow. You left Koch in such hot water he forgot all about firing me. You probably saved my job…”

“Yeah, but then there’s Jade in the hospital, Talia relapsing, Wade bullshitting when recovery is all about being honest.”

“They made their choices. It’s not all about you.”

I choke back a laugh.

“What?”

“I just hear that a lot.”

“Maybe I should have said ‘on’—it’s not all on you,” he says. “It’s a pretty wild swing—you’ve gone from never taking any responsibility to taking all of it. By the way, your parents are up at the mansion waiting to talk to you.”

“Oh God.”

“No, I think it’s good. They seem… I don’t know them, but they seem okay.”

“Keep in mind, my mother’s an actor and my dad’s a very charming guy when he feels like it.”

“But they seem subdued. Kind of the opposite of all that. And they weren’t fighting. Don’t be scared.”

I roll my eyes.

“Don’t try to tell me you’re not,” he says.

“Don’t make me say I am.”

I turn back out to face the water, and he does the same.

The silence is awkward and full of all the things we’ve said, all the things there’s no point saying. I’m under no illusions—this is good-bye. I’m grateful, at least, that I’ll get to say it. Hopefully I’ll manage not to cry my face off.

“Why’d you do it, Lola?” he asks after a couple of minutes.

“Which part?” I say, still not looking at him. “I seem to have done a lot.”

“Why’d you come here? I mean, why would you want to if you’re really not an addict?”

“You saying you believe me now?” At this, I can’t help turning to study him.

“Can you just answer the question?” he says in his bran muffin voice.

“I came to make life miserable for my mentor, apparently.”

“In that case, you succeeded.” He crosses his arms over his chest to show me he’s still waiting for my real answer.

“And I wanted a tighter ass.”

His eyes narrow.

“And a better tan.”

“You could get both of those at home. Don’t you live on the beach?”

“Okay, honestly, Adam? It’s so fucking stupid, I’m not going to tell you.”

“More stupid than a tight ass and a tan?”

“Much more. Okay, let me put it this way: I was trying to recover something I lost. Something I thought I lost. But I couldn’t really get it back because it wasn’t what I thought it was. And maybe I never had it in the first place. Deep, huh?”

“Not to mention cryptic.”

I laugh.

“But not stupid,” he says, eyes finally softening a little. “It doesn’t sound stupid at all.”

“Oh, believe me, I gave you the positive spin. I have changed, though. Learned a few things. Kind of an uphill battle, but still.”

“Well, you’ve grown. I don’t know about changed. You’re still very much…you.”

“Yeah,” I say, flushing and looking down at the sand.

“What’s wrong?”

I shake my head, refusing to look up at him because I might start sobbing. And that would suck.

“Lola,” he says, coming closer, which is torture. “What?”

“Just…I’m guessing I’m about to be kicked out, so this might be the last time I see you.” I stop, swallow hard, stare at the sand. “I would have liked it to be more…I would like not to have fucked everything up so thoroughly.”

“Ah, that,” he says. “You know what the thing is about you, though?”

“Mm?”

“Look at me, Lola.”

I look up.

“As thoroughly as you tend to fuck things up, you have a pretty extravagant way of…fixing them, or making up for them, anyway.”

I allow myself a tiny smile and blink back the tears.

“So I have good news and bad news,” he says.

“Go ahead,” I say, bracing myself. “Tell me.”

“You are being kicked out, and your parents are going to take you home.”

“Is that the good or the bad?”

“Both,” he says.

“And that’s because…?”

He comes closer, holding my eyes captive with his superpower gaze.

“Because you’re so kicked out that you’re not even going to have outpatient privileges.”

“And that’s good news because…?”

“Because I am only going to be your mentor for about…five more minutes.”

The circus starts up again in my stomach.

“And?” I say. “Last I checked, you considered it kind of a lifetime position.”

“I did, yes.” He nods, then reaches out and takes my hands in his. “But I’m allowed to change my mind.”

“You don’t want to be my lifetime mentor, then?” I’m staring at him, searching his face for confirmation of what I think, hope, he’s saying.

“I want a lot of things,” he says, voice husky. “But no, I don’t want that.”

“All right then, Adam.” I grip his hands, feeling like I might burst, feeling like I could go up in smoke at any moment. “In that case I’m totally firing you. I’m firing you right now. Because five minutes seems like a really long time to wait for—”

I don’t get to say anything else because all of a sudden Adam is kissing me. One second we’re standing there holding hands and talking, and the next he’s swooped me up into his arms and his mouth is on mine, hot, deliberate, and full of a million pent up emotions.

If I thought my clothes were going to melt off last time, this is a whole other level of melting—melting and melding, drowning and flying, my entire sense of reality dropping away so there is only this moment, and there is only him, me, us.

We kiss until we are gasping and I think I might be crying and really it feels like we both might fall down if we didn’t have the other person to hold us up because we are dizzy, drunk, on fire.

He holds my face to his so we are forehead to forehead.

“We have to stop,” he says, clearly no more ready to than I am,

“Not again,” I almost wail.

“No, no. So you can go up there and make this official.”

“Oh. Official, huh,” I say, trying to get my brain back online and pull myself together.

“Officially not professionally connected,” he says, still holding me. “Not to mention, you’ll be free to invite me to your house for lasagna from New York City.”

“I’m inviting you to my house to lock you in my bedroom,” I say. “I may or may not feed you first.”

He gives me a boiling-hot look, pulls me even tighter up against him again, gives me a hard kiss, then steps away with obvious reluctance, keeping his eyes on me.

“Real world,” he says, his back to the ocean and jerking his thumb toward the stairs.

“Give me a minute,” I say, coming back to him, sliding my hands up his (very chiseled) abs, up to his shoulders, and slowly walking him backward as I kiss his lips, his cheeks, his neck.

“A minute…for what?” he says, trying to focus but not succeeding.

I slip my hands up under his shirt, around to his bare back, holding onto him and kissing him deeply, hoping to keep him distracted as our feet enter the water.

“Lola?” he mumbles, his mouth against mine. “What are you doing?’

And that’s when I use my body weight against his to tumble him backward, with me on top of him, into the ocean.

“What the hell…?” He’s roaring and laughing and trying to pin me in the sand. “Now you’re really in trouble.”

I kiss him fast, then escape, grinning like a fool. “I told you I’d do this when you didn’t expect it.”

“You’re right, I did not expect that.”

“If you’re going to be scandalized you should close your eyes,” I say, and then I pull my T-shirt over my head and throw it onto the sand.

He almost chokes, then covers his eyes with his hands. “I’m not scandalized,” he says. “That’s not at all a description of what I am right now. But what exactly are you doing?”

“If I’m getting kicked out anyway, I’m going skinny-dipping first.”

“I don’t suppose you’d listen if I forbid you to—”

“Forbid me?” I howl with laughter, then go deeper into the water so I can wriggle out of the rest of my clothes discreetly. “Good luck with that, Cupcake. And by the way, I am going to mock you so hard every time you use that voice. I fired you, remember?”

“Oh, I remember. I think it’s pretty much seared onto my brain matter,” he says, peeking out of one eye, then opening them both when he realizes I’m underwater from the neck down.

“Plus, I don’t want you to think I’ve stopped being me.”

And with that, I toss the rest of my clothing onto the beach and swim out into the deep water.

On the shore, Adam gets to his knees and watches me, seeming to know I need a minute alone.

The wind has dropped, leaving the water calm, smooth, and cool while above me the sun is hot, and for this moment in time, everything feels amazing.

Yes, I’m still sick about Jade, embarrassed about being unmasked, and I feel stupid about holding a four-year torch for a guy I never really knew. But I’m happy to have met Talia, and even Jade, because they both helped me learn a few things—about myself and about life. And at least in the end I managed to stand up and do one decent thing.

Plus, out of it all came Adam, who’s real, and loves me for real, even if he hasn’t said so yet.

I breathe deeply, swimming in wide circles, feeling my muscles flex and extend.

Yes, the rehab project turned out to be an epic freaking disaster.

But I wouldn’t trade it.

And come to think of it, once we’re away from here, I could probably get Adam to bounce a quarter off my butt cheeks—if only to humor me.