There was no reason to panic, but I couldn’t help the way my chest tightened.
Where. Was. Dagny?
Every woman that walked by and wasn’t her or Victoria sent me into another little spiral. Had Victoria found her? Had she run off for some reason? I kept an easy expression on my face and a beer in hand as I skirted the edge of the party. Sand slipped through my toes. Waves crashed. People laughed. My heart sped up even as I tried to calm it down. We were on a literal island—there was nowhere for her to go that I couldn’t find.
Aside from that massive ocean.
Thoughts of Victoria so close by were not reassuring.
Regret for not immediately introducing Dagny to my friend Jameson, and then pulling her to my side to keep her anchored near, kept me on high alert. Maybe Victoria got to her. Maybe Dagny didn’t want to be here. When a warm hand touched my back, right between my shoulder blades, I whipped around.
Dagny stood there, color high on her cheeks despite the perfect temperature. She smiled, slipped closer, and slid an arm around my waist. My heart thudded in my chest as she pressed her cheek to mine and whispered, “Play along?”
With a little encouragement from her, my hand slid around her waist. Instinctively, I pulled her closer, but there wasn’t far for her to go. My thoughts only extended as far as the heat of her breath on the sensitive part of my neck, right below my earlobe.
Play along?
“V-victoria and I just m-m-met,” she said quietly, so only I could hear.
My arm tightened around her, but before I could demand an answer, she kept speaking. This time without stuttering, her voice a smooth melody.
“Everything is fine, but I think Grady was wise to warn you. She’s on your path. I think, for your sake, we retract my plan and move to yours, boyfriend.”
Like it had a will of its own, my other arm wrapped around her. Her breath escaped her in a little gasp of surprise when I tightened her against me, her chest pressing into mine. The hitch of her breath against my neck sent my stomach into a tailspin. I only vaguely wondered how she spoke without breaking the words apart. My mind was too occupied with the feeling of her smooth dress against the palms of my hands.
“You okay?” I whispered.
“Fine,” she murmured brightly. “Victoria doesn’t frighten me, nor does she fool me.”
Relief followed her statement like the flash of heat from a shot of whiskey. Had I been worried that Dagny would believe Victoria? The thought was insulting, but I couldn’t dismiss it. The tips of her fingers played with the hair along the back of my neck and scattered my thoughts like breaking glass. After this, my heart would never be the same.
Shadows moved behind Dagny. I glanced up to see Bastian standing a few steps away, his travel backpack slung over his shoulder. He held a small laptop in one hand, the same one he carried everywhere, but no one knew what he did with it. He jerked his head in greeting and I returned it. My gaze trailed back to his bag.
“You brought it?” I mouthed, then gestured to the bag. He grinned and gave me a thumbs up.
“Taken care of, boss,” he said quietly.
Operation Prank Out the Groom was on its way.
“Remember,” Dagny whispered, oblivious to our conversation as she pulled away from my too-close embrace, “we’re l-l-lovers now, not f-f-friends.”
As if I needed help pretending to be stunned by her.
Bastian stepped up, slapped my back in a man hug, and muttered, “Saw the whole thing. Talk later.”
When I returned to Dagny, I put my arm around her shoulders and kept her tight to my side. I didn’t like that any interaction happened between her and Victoria that I’d missed, but at least Bastian had been there. Victoria was too much of an unknown, and Dagny wasn’t safe with her alone.
Dagny glanced at the food table as my stomach gurgled. She laughed and patted my stomach.
“Let’s f-f-feed that b-beast.”
Bastian growled and dropped his pack into the sand with a thud.
“Food.”
Fifteen minutes later, we sat at the table. Bastian wolfed down food while I kept an eye on the bar for Vikram. Dagny didn’t require much conversation, and I was too preoccupied trying to calm my instincts. Crowds. Alcohol. Beaches. Fire. All of it added up to an interesting cocktail of danger that could explode at any moment.
Not on duty, I reminded myself. Not in charge here.
Didn’t matter, I felt on high alert anyway.
Dagny put a hand on my arm and pulled me out a spiral of thought. I blinked and looked over, wondering if I slid so far into memories or possibilities that I’d missed something she said. Was I ignoring her? This was exactly why I didn’t date. Because my attention was always everywhere.
She held a piece of pineapple between two fingers.
“T-try it. It’s gr-r-rilled.”
My lips parted to say something, but my brain stalled again. She sat beneath the light of a nearby tiki torch, and shadows flickered over her skin, turning it a golden shade. With a charming, quick smile, she held the fruit closer. A teasing expression followed with a dash of challenge.
“S-scared?”
In one quick move, I grabbed the whole piece, then sucked the sweet juice off her fingers. Her eyes widened but she didn’t retract her hand. Instead, she smiled wider, dropped her hand, then leaned back. As if this were the most natural state in the world for her. As if we’d always done this. That was something I could get used to. Dagny at my side. Flirty Dagny at my side, teasing me with that smile and fruit.
Why hadn’t we done this?
Bastian stared at us, one eyebrow lifted.
“How was the flight, Sebastian?” I asked, just to wipe that look of contemplation out of his eyes.
“Call me Sebastian again,” he muttered, “and I’ll run a kabob through your pretty eyes, Hernandez.”
Riling him up always made me feel better. I laughed as he chugged half a glass of ice water.
“You missing any good fires?”
“A 100,000 acre inferno in Nevada.” He crunched some ice between his back teeth, then lounged back. “So . . . not really.”
“The h-hot s-sun here must be just w-what you want during the m-middle of fire season,” Dagny quipped. Bastian’s lips twitched. He glanced behind him, where the ocean crashed, and set his empty cup down.
“Not exactly,” he said, “but I’ll take that endless body of water anyway. Can’t wait to crash into it and swim for days.”
A mob of people let out a cry and drew my attention instantly to the bar. Flashes of Grady’s obnoxiously flowered shirt were obvious through a gathering crowd. In the sea of faces, I thought I recognized Helene’s parents as they joined the dinner. Both of them appeared to have lei’s around their necks.
Bastian motioned to them with a tilt of his head. “Who’s that?”
“Helene’s parents.”
“The Dunkins?” he asked.
Dagny stiffened when I nodded. “Yeah.”
Bastian made a sound in his throat. “That guy has more money than we’ll ever see in our lives.”
I shrugged. “If he keeps holding parties here and Grady invites us, I’m good with that.”
A low laugh rolled out of Bastian, disappearing as fast as it came. Dagny stared at the amassing crowd as it quaked with laughter. Her nostrils flared a bit in a glazed, half-terrified expression that was becoming all-too-familiar. I reached over and put a hand over hers. The contact sent a jolt through her. She blinked out of her thoughts and turned to me.
“You good?” I asked quietly.
She let out a long breath. “F-fine. S-sorry.”
“No problem.”
“L-l-lost in thought.”
Her gaze had dropped to the tablecloth, darted back to the Dunkins, and then down to the tablecloth again. The base of her neck pulsed with a fast, thrumming heartbeat. My mind turned over the obvious evidence of distress and I kept a wary eye out. Something about the Dunkins made her nervous, but I couldn’t imagine what. She seemed fine with Helene earlier, albeit a bit . . . off. Did they have history? Her acceptance of my offer came after I’d slipped Helene’s name into the conversation.
Then again, why would Dagny know anything about a Texas oil tycoon?
Before I could dive too far into my thoughts over it, Bastian pushed his plate away. “Can I steal a shower in your place?” he asked. “I already told Grady not to save me a room. Brought the hammock.”
Dagny shot to her feet. “Y-yes. You can use m-mine. Ours, I m-mean. Sorry . . . I’ll sh-show you the w-way.”
Bastian nodded, but sent me a questioning look when Dagny bent over to pick her flip flops up out of the sand. I shrugged in reply as I came to my feet, groggy from a delicious, heavy dinner in my gut. A long day of traveling, and the sound of the ocean just outside, had lulled me into a ready-to-sleep state.
Dagny’s weirdness about the Dunkins—not to mention Vikram’s still unknown whereabouts—could wait until the morning. For now, I wanted to stumble into bed and dream of Dagny’s gentle touch on the back of my neck.
The dinner lasted into the night.
Sometime around eleven o’clock, the bar finally shut down. Half-drunk people, ready to let loose on their island adventure, filtered away. A half-hiccup-giggle combination could be heard now and then as the guests made their way through the ring of palm trees around the beach and farther onto the island. Once the dinner sounds gave way to quiet waves, I relaxed on a lounge chair under a star-studded sky.
While satellites passed overhead, I stacked my hands behind my head and let my gaze get lost in the stars. My thoughts drifted to Dagny. Victoria. Grady. Vikram. The inevitability of change. My life in Pineville seemed rigidly structured compared to Bastian, even Vik. That idea used to terrify me. Now? It wasn’t so bad. Adventures helped me keep up with my wild side, but the routine kept time moving along.
Maybe the same went for Grady.
For marriage, even. Although that thought seemed far too out there to contemplate right now. Particularly with the memory of Victoria fresh on my mind. The sound of a body shuffling through the bungalow preceded a large shadow in the doorway, complete with a computer at his side.
“Have a seat,” I said.
Bastian lowered onto a chair and tipped his head back to look at the same sky. For several minutes, we remained in the silence, eyes lost on the stars.
“Different here,” he murmured.
“Very.”
He grunted. “Easier without the smoke.”
Bastian sank farther down the chair. My eyes drifted closed so I could take in the crashing waves below.
“Find Vik yet?” he asked.
“No, but his flight came in before ours.”
Bastian grunted. When several minutes passed without a word, I opened my eyes again. Too much more of this and I’d fall asleep.
“What happened with Victoria and Dagny? How were you there?”
Bastian’s teeth flashed in the moonlight as he released a rare, and brief, smile. “I’m always in the right place at the right time.”
“Not always,” I muttered.
Bastian gave a quick review of what he heard. Victoria’s chummy conversation, then quick spin of the tables to turn Dagny against me. Classic move for her. We’d only spent a week or so together, and I still recognized her manipulations when I saw them.
“Dagny held her own,” I said.
“She impressed me. You going to hide behind her?” Bastian asked. He shifted back, his long legs sprawled in front of him.
“Nah. I’m going to talk to Victoria in the morning.”
Now that I’d seen her, talking to Victoria didn’t seem so daunting. Something in breaking the spell she held over my mind removed my uncertainty. In the light of day, Victoria was beautiful, but not in the same way as Dagny. It wasn’t Victoria I couldn’t stop thinking about, at any rate, and that likely meant something.
“Victoria needs a line she can’t cross,” he said, then quietly added, “like we all do.”
Several more minutes, and a murmured conversation from hotel employees cleaning up the dinner, filled the quiet. I let the ease of the day drift in and out of my chest with each breath, feeling farther and farther from my cruiser. From flashing lights. From intensity, long nights, and tough conversations.
I turned and shot Bastian a questioning glance. “You still liking wildland fire?”
He scoffed. “No, I hate it.”
“You always hate it in the summer. Then you love it in the winter.”
“When I’m not doing it.”
I grinned. “Exactly.”
He shook his head, then rubbed a hand along his tricep and shoulder. Mid-summer meant his large body had started to waste away except for a few muscle groups needed when swinging an axe and a shovel. He’d bulk back out through the winter, just in time to qualify for the Hot Shot team again, then lose it in another self-sacrificing summer of heat. There had to be something in the painful cycle that he liked.
“How much longer?” I asked.
“One more year.” He shook his head. “Giving it one more year.”
“Then?”
“No idea.”
Bastian had never been anchored to a single career path. He taught snowboarding in the winter, fought wildland fires all summer, and did whatever he wanted on his cheap computer in the in-between. In the meantime, he stored away money like a squirrel. Until he figured out exactly what he wanted to do, he’d oscillate between the two and not say much in the meantime. He’d been like that in high school, too. A perpetual coaster.
“College?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Maybe.”
Another span of silence. Bastian would be a good college student, “Vik’s upset about Grady getting married,” I said.
“What doesn’t Vik get upset about?”
I laughed. Fair point.
“What about you?” I asked. “Grady’s the first to go.”
Bastian fell quiet for a moment, so I let it ride. Several long minutes later, he replied, “Good for Grady. Not the choice I’d make, but I see why he’s doing it. You?”
Anytime before now, I would have said, Same, but this time the word stuck in my throat. Would I make the same decision as Grady? Any other time, I'd say no. It's why I avoided abuela, because I knew that I didn't want what she wanted.
These days, I didn’t know.
“I think he might be the smartest one of all of us,” I muttered, and Bastian tilted his head back and laughed.
I fell asleep with the breeze in my ear, and the song of the ocean a soft chant behind it.