Forty-eight hours. Two days and two nights. Four high tides and four low, up and down like his mood. The high of the kiss; the low of knowing he’d been, basically, an asshole. The high of recalling her instinctive, welcoming reaction to his lips; the low of imagining what his brother would think of it all.
He tried to work, but kept lapsing into thoughts of black bikinis and red lace panties, her hair soft against his skin, the way her moan echoed the same sound waiting in his own mouth. Then he’d jolt himself out of it, back into the reality of an empty house, a silent summer, an unplayed guitar in the corner, and a history that couldn’t be undone.
Once, he’d looked out his bedroom window and seen her sitting on the deck under the shade of a sun umbrella, working on a laptop, a lead snaking up to her earphones. What was she doing? He wondered if she was listening to Wolfmother again. Or writing songs, maybe.
He tried to tear himself away from the window. What did he care? He was only waiting for her to leave. Someone like her couldn’t hide out in Sweet Breeze Bay indefinitely. For starters, someone else was going to realize who she was, and then what? Plus, from what he could tell, she was successful, but still in that almost-there zone, tenuous territory that was always wide open to the next up-and-comer. You wouldn’t think that kind of career could be left untended for long.
Not that he’d know. His own dreams of a rock star life never drove him on, unlike Ethan, who could totally have pulled it off. Liam might have been the better songwriter—even Ethan had given him that. But even if he’d gotten noticed, by some miraculous kind of luck, his talent would never have taken him as far as Ethan could have flown on the head-turning charisma he was charmed with.
Could have.
He forced himself to step back from the window, turn, and walk out the door, back down the stairs, back to the computer. As he sat down, he felt a twinge in his back that had nothing to do with the twinges he’d been fighting in his groin. His entire body was crying out to move, to release the increasing tightness in his muscles. Clearing the yard the other day had reminded him how he missed the exertion of wielding a hammer and lifting lumber. If he stayed cooped up here, the combined tension of his unworked body and the presence of the girl next door would drive him crazy. How long had he thought he could keep this up, anyway? Something had to change.
Because if it didn’t, he knew the temptation to crash through the hedge and do something reckless would be too great.
Jacinda hit save again, and closed the laptop with a sigh. Half a draft chapter didn’t seem like much of a result for two days of work. If ‘work’ consisted of bursts of concentration interrupted by Spotify browsing, looking through Nana Mac’s family photo albums, and lying on the floor watching Velvet and the kittens, waiting for the first one to open its eyes.
And determinedly not thinking about the guy over the fence. No, not at all.
With her sunburn making the beach pretty much off limits, the farthest she’d been able to go was to the shade of the deck umbrella, and she was starting to get cabin fever. So when Riley called on Friday afternoon, she was ready for a real distraction. And Riley had the perfect suggestion.
“Most Friday nights we pull down the shutters and have a girls-only session after closing,” she said. “Like a speakeasy, only with leftover cheesecake and wine instead of bootleg whiskey. Sometimes it does get a bit messy though.” She laughed. “Anyway, would you like to come tonight? If your sunburn’s feeling better, I mean.”
“Oh God, I really would, thanks. What time?”
“About ten thirty. We close at ten, so that gives us half an hour to do the last cleaning up. Caro won’t leave anything until the morning.”
“Ten thirty will be great. See you then.”
After Jacinda hung up, she had a moment of hesitation. She’d been bored stuck here in the house while her sunburn settled down, even with the kittens for entertainment. But this anonymity was kind of nice. Once she started going out, she knew there was a chance someone would recognize her, and then everything would probably change. But the lure of cheesecake, and a few drinks with some girly company, was too strong. It sounded like fun—and wasn’t that what this break was for?
So at twenty past ten, in the still-warm evening, she sat on the front steps and did up her sandals. There was something in the neighborhood that smelled so good after dark—a lush, tropical fragrance, some kind of plant, she guessed, although she couldn’t tell where it was coming from. She paused for a moment with her elbows on her knees, listening to the sound of the ocean and the crickets singing their summer love song. The tall tree ferns in the front yard were silhouetted in the milky moonlight. As she sat and listened, and breathed in the sweet air, a small visitor snuffled into sight—a hedgehog, spiky, quirky, and pointy-nosed. She held her breath as he pottered across the grass, pausing to sniff and rootle in the grass as he went. A few zigzags here and there, and then he was gone, safely into the hydrangeas.
She let out the air she’d been holding in her lungs, and smiled to herself as she stood up.
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d walked anywhere alone after dark. You definitely wouldn’t do it in LA. Or in Florida, where her mom lived. In fact, she couldn’t think of a single place she’d been the last few years, where she would even consider walking alone at night. Maybe nowhere was truly safe, but she felt totally at ease doing it here. The short walk to Clarion Call felt neighborly, even though she was alone. Going past the houses with their windows wide open in the summer warmth, she caught snippets of people’s lives: a laugh, the clatter of glasses, the drifting narration from some wildlife documentary. She felt like an observer of the local fauna herself.
Her feet had taken her left out of Tui Street instead of right, so she came onto the main street from the end closer to Clarion Call than to the Kelp and King. She could see a few people hanging around outside the old pub, laughing and joking, and in that moment she knew why her autopilot had taken her the other way. When she went past the pub last time, the ghost of Ethan had lingered there, even though she didn’t know he was gone. Now, it was almost too much to look in that direction, knowing he’d never be there again. She wondered if Liam had been in there since he came home. He seemed to be lying even lower than she was.
Now everything was flooding back into her mind, washing away the idyllic vibe she’d felt on her walk. She turned and grabbed the heavy brass knocker on Clarion Call’s door, and knocked once, twice, three times, suddenly feeling an urgent need to be inside.
Riley opened the door holding a bottle of red wine, a grin on her face.
“She’s here!” she announced to the room, over her shoulder. “Someone find a glass. We can’t let her go thirsty, or Nana Mac will come back from wherever she is this week, wanting a damn good explanation.”
A chair was found, a wine put in her hand, and introductions made, and Jacinda felt herself relax again. As well as Riley and Caro, there was Kerry, Stephanie, Jess, and Tina. She vaguely remembered Kerry and Jess from her last Sweet Breeze Bay summer, but the others had moved there more recently. As far as they were all concerned, it seemed, she was Nana Mac’s granddaughter, and that alone made her a bit special. And she was happy to bask in her grandmother’s reflected glory and goodwill, without the fact of her celebrity (such as it was) getting in the way of a good time with a few nice women.
There were the inevitable questions about where she lived and what she did, but she deflected them with a pre-rehearsed answer. She worked for a medium-sized record label, she said, but no, it was nowhere near as exciting as it sounded, and she just lived in a regular kind of LA neighborhood. Well, regular if you didn’t count her neighbors in the fancier houses farther up the hill—like other music biz types, a basketball player, and a celebrity wrestling couple. But that didn’t need saying. None of it was actual lying, really. Then she avoided any more questions by turning her attention to Jess—obviously the most gregarious one there—and asking her about the amazing necklace she was wearing. And with that, the topic of her American life was closed—for now at least—as they all enthused about Tina’s jewelry making and her blossoming online business.
As the conversation flowed from one subject to another, it was obvious that they all knew each other’s lives inside out, and Jacinda was happy to listen, drink the very good wine, and let the voices and laughter swirl around her.
“Riley!” Jess said, as a fourth bottle was being opened. “Can’t you find something better than this bloody world music?”
Caro looked offended. “Our regulars don’t mind this bloody world music,” she pointed out.
“It is great dining music,” Stephanie said, shooting Jess a sideways look. “But maybe something more lively now we’re all finished work? It’s Friday night, after all.”
“I suppose so.” Caro nodded to Riley, who went to the laptop hooked up to the speaker, and selected a new playlist. A top-ten hit came on, and Jess got up, swinging her hips happily to the music.
“That’s more like it.” She grabbed the nearest person, who happened to be Kerry, and pulled her to her feet. “Come and dance, come on!”
Riley slid into the chair next to Jacinda. “Newly single,” she said, waving her wine glass in Jess’s direction.
“Oh…that’s a shame.”
“Not really. He was a dickhead.”
Jacinda laughed. “Well, in that case.”
“Exactly.” Riley raised her glass, and they drank to freedom from dickheads. Then she glanced Jacinda’s way. “Are you okay now?” she asked in a low voice. “I know I dropped a bomb on you.”
She nodded. “Yeah, I’m okay.”
Riley tipped her head as she considered that reply, and Jacinda knew she could see right through her.
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “Some things just suck.”
Riley sighed. “That’s the truth.”
They watched as Jess and Kerry shimmied around in the space left when the café tables had been pushed against the wall. Then a new song came on, and Jess held up a hand.
“This one! Oh, I love this one.” Her face crumpled a little, and she slipped into instant melancholy. “The lyrics, you know.”
And she sang along with the words that were as familiar to Jacinda now as her own name.
The hourglass turned at our start
And I keep running but my heart
Won’t let me stay ahead of you
Reverberations echo through
All the things I thought I knew
However far I go, one thing stays true…
As Jess sang, only slightly off-key, Jacinda tried to keep her face in neutral. Hourglass Reverb. The song she’d written when she went home that summer, after everything. The song that had been both therapy and confession, and had kick-started her career. The song that had given her band its name. She waited for someone to look at her, knowing, but they were all looking at Jess as she fell into a chair with a dramatic flourish after the first chorus. “Oh, this song always gets me. Always! But especially now…”
Tina reached over and refilled her glass. “You’re better off without him, babe. You’re too good for him. He always knew it.”
“I never liked that song anyway,” Kerry said. “Skip to the next one.”
Jacinda snorted, then choked on her mouthful of pinot noir. The others looked her way but she shook her head, pointing wordlessly to the glass of wine as she struggled to catch her breath.
“Went down the wrong way,” she managed. She didn’t add why she’d breathed in a lungful of the country’s finest. Kerry’s words proved at least that there were no suspicions about her other identity, and that was a relief.
With a tap on the laptop, Riley banished Cin Scott from the room, and Jacinda felt herself relax as the girls rallied around Jess, sympathizing and encouraging. The night was hers to enjoy, she had great company, and she was going to make the most of it.
By the time they finished up, Jacinda felt like she was one of the gang. The wine had helped, sure, but mostly it was the straightforward, friendly mode that they all operated in. As far as she could tell, there were no unspoken tensions, no veiled comments or rolled eyes behind anyone else’s back…just a bunch of girls shaking off the weight of the week, and helping Jess shake off her lousy ex.
Caro had left before midnight, because she was working the next morning. But Riley was taking the Sunday morning shift, so she stayed and partied on with the rest of them. Finally, they all tumbled out the front door just after two in the morning, unsteady on their feet. After farewells and hugs, Riley wobbled off on her bike in the direction of her place, which sat higher up on Bay Road, heading toward the Other Side, and everyone else left on foot. Stephanie and Tina peeled off to their own houses as they walked the quiet streets, giggling and shushing each other occasionally. When they came to the corner of Tui Street, Kerry and Jess offered to walk down with her, but Jacinda shook her head. It only made the world spin slightly. Well, a medium amount. Or maybe, down here in the southern hemisphere, the moon danced in the sky like that every night.
“It’ll only take me a minute,” she said, gathering herself together. “I can see the front gate from here. You guys keep going.”
“Okay, you darling American girl,” Kerry said, and gave her a hug, the wine making her effusive. “It was really, really, just so nice to see you, even though I don’t think you remembered us.”
“Oh, well…I mostly did…” she began, but Jess laughed.
“We don’t expect you to remember us,” she said. “We weren’t in the cool crowd that summer. But we remember you. Who wouldn’t remember the girl who appeared out of the blue and snagged Ethan Ward?”
Kerry sighed. “Oh, that guy. Didn’t we all just love him? I don’t think there was a girl in Sweet Breeze Bay who didn’t have a crush on him.”
“What kind of magical power did you bring with you, to bewitch him?” Jess asked. “He obviously couldn’t live without you after you disappeared like that.”
Jacinda’s stomach lurched with a sudden pain, and she pressed her fist to her middle. There it was, proof that the old saying was literally true: the truth hurts.
“Jess!” Kerry scolded. “Oh my God. Why would you say something like that?”
Jess looked remorseful, but there was no way to backpedal. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean…I mean…” She gave up, flustered, her already wine-pink cheeks turning red under the streetlight.
Jacinda felt her fingernails digging into her palms, and her throat tighten.
“That’s okay,” she said, her voice tense but even. “If that’s what people think, then…maybe they’re right.”
Maybe not as even as she’d hoped.
Kerry and Jess looked at each other, but before they could say anything more, Jacinda stepped back. Have to get away.
“Thanks for a great night. I’ll see you around.”
And she waved, and turned and walked away. Away from Jess’s words, away from their remorseful, sympathetic looks…but still in the one place in the world where the truth sat deepest and strongest.