A Little Too Hot

Chapter Thirty-One

BLAKE WAKES ME at eight by waving a travel mug of steaming coffee under my nose. Half an hour later we’re pulling out of the garage.

I wake up slowly as we drive, taking in the scenery. For some reason, today this all feels new to me, even though I grew up only miles from here and traveled these highways hundreds of times. It’s a weekday, but we’re going against rush hour traffic as we make our way over the San Rafael Bridge into the North Bay.

I sip the last of my coffee, wondering if this was really a good idea. “You’ve spent all this time protecting me from Ben, and now you’re seriously just going to throw me to the sharks?”

He flicks me a glance and a smile tugs his lips. “I will admit, you are a tasty morsel, but they know they’ll have to come through me first, and I’m tough and gristly, so I’m pretty sure they’ll leave you alone.”

My eyes slide down his body, and I seriously doubt there’s anything tough and gristly about him. He’s definitely a prime cut. Filet mignon. “Still . . . it would be pretty ironic to get eaten by a shark just when this is all over.”

He laughs and shakes his head.

“I watched Shark Week. There’s a reason they’re, like, one of the oldest living things on Earth.”

He bites his lips and stifles his laughter, and I’m instantly sorry. I like the sound of it. “The fact that you know that means you’ve done your research. You’re ready to face this phobia head on.”

“Pho-bi-a,” I say in syllables. “Have you looked that word up? It means irrational fear. It’s not like you can just turn it off, you know? Logic doesn’t work with something that’s irrational.”

“I won’t make you do this, Sam, but if you do, I promise, I won’t let anything bad happen to you, shark related or otherwise.” He looks at me as he slows for our exit ramp, and his eyes are suddenly sincere, all the humor gone. “I will never let anything hurt you. Ever.”

I pull a deep, shuddering breath as he turns back to the road. It’s a little while later that we emerge from the lush woods of the Russian River Valley onto Route 1. We wind up the Costal Highway and watch the waves beat themselves against sheer stone cliffs and craggy outcroppings. Seagulls soar overhead, and golden grass waves on the hillsides to the east. It’s breathtaking.

When we pull up to a surf shop in a tiny town an hour up the rocky coast, it’s quiet. The door hinges groan as we step through, and a combination of sea salt, mildew, and chlorine mingles in the air. There are surfboards on racks along one wall, and tanks and neoprene on shelves along the other. Sand grits between my flip-flops and the wooden floor as Blake and I make our way across the room.

The long-haired guy behind the counter looks up from the phone in his hand. “What can I do you for?”

Blake drums his fingers on the scratched glass over a display case of scuba regulators and pressure gauges. “We need snorkeling gear: neoprene and fins.”

“What size boots?” he asks.

Blake glances down at my feet. “One small and one large.”

The guy nods and darts around the back, pulling suits, gloves, boots, fins, and masks and setting them on the counter. “One day rental?”

Blake nods.

“Where you diving?”

“How are the abalone off the point?”

“Guy came back yesterday with three ten-inchers,” he says, twisting new mouthpieces onto a pair of snorkels and laying them on top of everything else.

“Then we’re diving off the point,” Blake says.

“Need a guide?”

“No, thanks,” Blake answers, pulling a credit card from his wallet and tossing it onto the counter. “Just the gear.”

“Um . . . have there been any shark sightings off the point?” I ask as the guy scans Blake’s card.

He shakes his head. “We don’t really get them up here. If you want to see the great whites, you’re better to head down to Monterey. There are a couple of guys I know down there who will take you out and chum to attract them. I can give you their card.”

“No thanks,” I say with a shudder.

Blake and the guy complete the transaction and we scoop up our stuff and head to the Escalade. We drive another twenty minutes up the coast, past lighthouses, scrubby pines, and cragged cliffs that drop off into the ocean, and pull into an empty parking lot.

He pulls off his hoodie and takes the gun from his chest holster, locking it in the glove box. I notice under the sleeve of his T-shirt some kind of clear bandage on his arm, but his sleeve is long enough that I can’t see the damage. He unstraps the holster and tugs it off, then just sits behind the wheel for a few minutes, staring out at the vast ocean.

“Your dad used to bring you here?” I ask, remembering our conversation about abalone.

He looks at me, and there’s something deep in his gaze that’s either guilt or regret. “A long time ago.”

Before I can ask anything else, Blake’s out of the car. He moves around back and lifts the tailgate. “Have you ever worn a dive suit before?” he asks.

I slide out and meet him around back. “No. Why do we need one if we’re not scuba diving?” I ask, plucking a snorkel out of the back.

“The water out there’s always cold, so you won’t last long without it. You’ll probably want to keep a T-shirt over your swimsuit.”

I shuck off my shoes and shorts as he sorts his from mine.

He holds my suit open. “Just step in.”

I do, and once my legs are in, he tugs it up around me. I stick my arms through the sleeves, and his fingers trail up my abs as he zips me in.

“Comfortable?”

“It’s fine.” I tug at the hood. “You know I have no idea what I’m doing, right?”

“We’ll spend some time close to shore until you get the feel of it.” He pulls his neoprene on over his T-shirt and swim trunks, then hands me two towels and grabs the backpack and loops it over his shoulders. The hike to the shore is longer and trickier than I expected. It takes us almost half an hour to negotiate the path down the cliff to the water, and I slip a few times picking my way over moss-covered rocks as we get below the high tide line. The path eventually drops us onto a small patch of sand. Jutting out from it is a rocky outcrop.

“This cove is protected, so the current shouldn’t be an issue, but stay close, just in case. The abalone will be out in the rocks beyond the point,” Blake says, pointing at the outcrop.

My heart is pounding as I tug my dive mask over my forehead. “I don’t like the sound of ‘just in case.’ ”

He gives me half a smile. “You heard the guy. No sharks here. You’ll be fine.”

He gets me all strapped into my mask and snorkel, and we leave the fins on the towels and head for the water. He’s right. It’s freezing, even through my dive suit, and it takes me a while to work my way in.

“The first thing you need to learn is to purge your mask and blow out your snorkel,” he tells me once we’re waist deep. “You’re going to want to dive to get a closer look at stuff on the bottom, and anytime you resurface, you’ll need to purge the water.”

He takes me through all the basics, and I try everything out in the waist-deep water, but I can’t stop my eyes from darting around for anything moving under the surface.

“Got it?” he asks.

“Seems pretty basic.”

He trudges to the sand for our fins and comes back with those, a small flashlight, and two metal things tucked into his dive belt.

“What are those?” I ask, pointing.

“An abalone gauge and iron. They can grab pretty tight to the rocks.” We slip our fins on over the neoprene booties. “If your arm gets sore, or you need to head back to the beach for any reason, just give me the sign. Thumbs-up means you’re good.”

I nod.

“Ready?”

“No.”

He laughs, probably at my terrified expression. “No sharks, Sam. I promise.”

I plant my hands on my hips. “How can you possibly promise that? Jaws could be waiting right out there,” I say, throwing my hand at the ocean, “licking his chops and saying, ‘Welcome to my lair.’ ”

“Sharks don’t have lairs,” Blake says with a smirk.

I splash him. “You know what I mean.”

“Come on,” he says, venturing deeper.

I can’t stop the cringe as I follow. He dives under, then surfaces and blows out his snorkel. “You’re not going to see much from up here,” he says.

I glare at him, though with my face strapped into the mask, I’m sure he can’t tell that’s what I’m doing. Finally, I get brave enough to stick the snorkel in my mouth and float out on the surface of the water. As I anxiously peer around under the waves, even though I’m on the edge of hyperventilating I get the hang of breathing through the snorkel pretty quick . . . mostly because I realize I can see much better through my mask when my face is in the water.

There are stalks of kelp floating lazily in the waves, and the water is clear and blue. Blake dives deeper and I stay on the surface and watch as he points at a big green flower-looking thing. He pokes at it and it closes all its “petals.” Behind it, attached to the rocky wall, is a large orange starfish, which he brushes his fingers over.

He kicks back to the surface, pops his snorkel out of his mouth and grins. “Pretty cool, huh?”

“What was that first thing?” I ask, spitting out my mouthpiece. “The flower thing?”

“An anemone.”

I grin back. “Definitely cool.”

He swims us out toward where I can see waves breaking around some underwater rocks. “This is our best bet for abalone,” he says.

When I realize we’re not going in water much deeper than I could stand in, I feel better. I mean, sure, Jaws could probably swim up here and eat me, but whether it’s illusion or reality, it just feels safer in the shallow water close to shore. I float on the surface and watch as Blake dives to the rocks a few feet below and points to some urchins and a scurrying hermit crab. He looks up at me and points to something that looks like part of the bigger rock, but then I see it’s ovalish with a line of holes. He takes the metal thing from his belt and holds it up to the oval, then gives me the thumbs-up.

When he comes back to the surface, he spits out his snorkel. “You should come get a closer look. There are tons of starfish and abalone, and I think there’s a giant Pacific octopus in the crevice of that rock.”

“Oh my God!” I say, scurrying back.

“It’s not a giant giant Pacific octopus,” he says with a sideways grin. He tugs my arm. “Come on.”

I take a few deep breaths to get my heartbeat under control. “Giant octopuses eat people.”

“In the movies,” he says with a shake of his head. “It’s only like a foot long.”

“That’s not so giant,” I say warily, looking at the rocks below me.

“Give it a try,” he says, tugging my arm again.

I fix my snorkel in place and look at him through my mask, eyes wide.

His slips his mouthpiece in and gives me a nod and a thumbs-up.

I thumbs-up him back and then he’s gone, leaving a ripple on the surface as he dives under. I stick my face in the water and see him below, shining his flashlight into a crack in the rock. Taking a deep breath through the snorkel and setting my resolve, I kick and drop below the surface. I beeline for Blake’s side and press against him, where he’s peering into the crevice.

There’s something wiggling in there for sure, but I can’t see what it is, and I don’t dare get within tentacle reach.

Blake looks at me and I shrug. He tucks the flashlight back in his dive belt and reaches for the flat metal thing with a green handle. He slips the blade under the big oval shell attached to the rock and pries it loose.

When we break the surface, he spits out his snorkel and hands the oval to me. Underneath the rough brown shell is soft, white . . . something.

I poke it. “What is this?”

“A nine inch abalone,” he says with an amused smile.

“Fine, but what do you do with it?”

He grins. “It and a few more of its abalone friends will be dinner tonight.” He takes it back and slips it into a small mesh bag hanging off his belt at his hip, where his holster usually is, then positions his snorkel and dives again. I follow, looking toward the open ocean on my way to the rocks below, just to be sure no one from out there is crashing our party. Blake swims us around the rock, and it’s amazing: starfish and urchins, fish and crabs.

We dive again and he hands me the knife and points to an oval shell. I try to slip it between the shell and rock like he did, but I find the abalone is stuck tighter than I would have thought. It takes a bit of wrestling, but I’m finally able to pull it loose. He pries up another one and we slide them into his bag, then surface again.

“Three is our limit,” he says. “But those are all nine or ten-inchers, so we’ll be feasting tonight.”

Something tugs at my ankle and I scream, picturing giant octopus tentacles. When I yank, my leg doesn’t come loose and I scream again, my heart leaping into my throat. “Get it off me!”

Blake dives under and I feel his hand on my calf. I kick hard, trying to free myself, but he holds my leg steady. And when he lets go a second later, I’m free. I’m already kicking back toward shore as fast as I can when he catches me.

“Kelp,” he says when we drag ourselves out of the water.

“Kelp eats people too?” I say, my heart still racing.

“No,” he says, tipping his head at me. “But people can drown in it if they get tangled then panic.”

“I wasn’t panicking!”

He laughs and pulls off his mask and hood.

I rip off my mask and storm back up the sand to our towels. But considering I’m still in my flippers, it doesn’t feel very stormy. I spread a towel and sit, pulling off the rest of my gear. Blake peels out of his dive suit, and I try not to notice how his wet T-shirt hugs every contour of his chest.

But then he pulls it off over his head and I can’t help staring. “So . . . we defied death.”

“That was amazing,” I concede, peeling off my T-shirt.

He pulls two bottles of water, a bag of grapes, and some crackers out of his backpack, and we nibble. When I’ve had enough, I lay back on the towel with my arms overhead, soaking up the warmth from the sand below and the sun above.

The sun feels so good, and the warmth lulls me into a drowsy half-dream where I can almost forget everything that’s happened over the last few months. I can almost pretend that I’m more to Blake than just his job.

“Sam,” he whispers in my ear.

“Hmm . . . ?” I answer lazily, without opening my eyes.

“We should head back. The tide’s coming in and the dive shop closes in an hour.”

When I open my eyes, the sun has moved across the sky. “Was I asleep?” I ask, propping up on to my elbows.

“For the last hour.”

I sit and realize my suit is dry. “It’s so peaceful here.”

He looks around and something a little mournful passes over his face. It makes me wonder again about his dad. “It is. It’s one of my favorite places.”

He stands and reaches for my hand, pulling me up. We pack up and trudge back to the parking lot with all our gear, and Blake loads everything into the back of the Escalade.

The gunshot comes out of nowhere, and Blake has me on the ground in a heartbeat, his body over mine. He swears under his breath as he looks wildly around the parking lot, and I realize, in nothing but his swim trunks, he has no gun.

But then the bang comes again, and an ancient Volkswagen Beetle rolls into the parking lot, a plume of black smoke in its wake. It backfires again as the engine chugs to a stop.

“Christ,” Blake says, rolling off me. “Are you all right?”

My left hand feels sticky, and when I sit up and look at it, I see the gouge in my palm. My knee’s scraped too, but not bleeding. “Yeah,” I say as he pulls me up by the hand. “I’m okay.”

He takes my shaking hand in his rock solid one and opens my palm, poking at the skin around the cut. “It’s not too deep,” he says. He lets me go and opens the storage compartment in the back of the Escalade, pulling out a first aid kit. After cleaning me up with a betadine wipe and covering the cut with a Band-Aid, he pulls a fresh T-shirt over his head and straps his chest holster on over the top. Then he ushers me to the passenger door, unlocks the glove box and pulls out his gun, tucking it into the holster.

He climbs in behind the wheel. “I’m sorry, Sam.”

“It’s all right. You were just doing your job.”

He turns and his eyes lock on mine. “I don’t want to do my job anymore. I’m sick of trying to be supercop. I’m sick of following orders and doing everything by the book.” His jaw tightens and his eyes go distant. “None of it is going to bring him back.”

“Who?” I ask gently.

His eyes focus again and he just looks at me a long moment.

My chest constricts with the pain in his expression. “Your father?”

He tips his head into the headrest and stares at the roof. “Caroline wasn’t just my sister. She was my best friend.” He lifts his head and looks at me. “My dad shipped us both off to live with my aunt and uncle when I was one and Caroline was two. I guess he did the best he could on his own, but this job means long hours and a lot of travel, so he had to give something up. He chose his job over his kids,” he says, rubbing a hand down his face. “When I was old enough to realize that, I hated him. My aunt made my dad take us for a week every summer, but from the time I was thirteen, all I ever did with our time together was try to make his life a living hell. That was when he stopped bringing us here.

“When I turned eighteen and didn’t have to see him anymore, I stopped coming. For five years I pretended he didn’t exist. And then Caroline died. The night they flew her body home, Dad came to Houston. I didn’t want him there and I told him so. Said if he wasn’t part of Caroline’s life, he didn’t get to care that she was dead. It got pretty ugly. Punches were thrown. But then we talked. All night. As backward as it seems, part of why he gave us up was because he loved our mom. I guess it was too hard after she was gone . . . looking at us and being reminded of her all the time.”

He tips his head back into the headrest, and moisture pools in his eyes. “The night I said goodbye to my sister was the night I met my dad.” His expression hardens. “And three months later, Arroyo gunned him down. He stole any chance I had to get to know my father.”

Seeing the agony on his face, I know today wasn’t just about facing down my fears. He had some that needed to be faced down too. I reach for his hand, but he pulls it away and rubs it down his face.

“I’m sorry, Blake.” It’s all I can think to say, because I know what it feels like to always come in second. My real father didn’t even want to know me. I was never going to be good enough for Mom and Greg, so they replaced me with the golden boys. Nothing cuts quite as deep as being rejected by the people who are supposed to love you unconditionally. But for him, it’s worse. I never knew my dad. Blake found his just in time to lose him again.

He takes a few deep breaths to pull himself together, then looks at me. “But the thing is, Arroyo’s just one of hundreds. Thousands. They’re lining up behind him already to take his place. Arroyo goes to jail, and nothing changes. I put you in the middle of my war, but it’s a war that can’t be won.”

I swallow the lump in my throat. “You didn’t put me here, Blake. That’s all on me. I’m the one who fucked up and got tossed from school. I gave my parents every reason to throw me out. I took advantage of my friends. And I’m the one who took the job at Benny’s.”

He reaches for me, threading his fingers through the hair on the back of my head and pulling me close. “I’m sorry for everything that’s happened to you since I walked into Benny’s, but I’m not sorry I did.” He closes the inch between us, bringing my mouth to his. His kiss is deep and desperate, and starts an ache in my chest.

He pulls away, his hand cupping my cheek, and thumbs my chin. “I never saw you coming, Samantha West.”

He kisses me again, then lets me go and starts the engine. We return our diving gear and find a tiny shack on the coast where we stop for fried seafood. It’s greasy and good and I devour all of it along with a beer. And every move I make, I feel Blake’s eyes on me, but I try not to look. Because one thing I know is, I could lose myself in that gaze.

He calls Cooper from the road to tell him we’re on our way back. We talk about the urchins and starfish. We talk about the beach and the guy at the dive shack, who we both agree was seriously stoned. Blake plays his music and we talk about that. But as we head home, we don’t talk about anything that matters, like what happens next. Or if what we’re feeling is still just lust or something more. We don’t talk about if I’m ever going to see him again when I’m no longer his job.

Blake and I have shared so much. We’ve lived under the same roof for over six weeks. We’ve spent time together; gotten to know each other. There’s something beautiful and tragic in his soul that speaks to mine. I want to know him. I want to know every inch of him.

My head swims with more questions than answers as we wind up the hill to the house. When we get there, Cooper is in the driveway. He walks alongside the Escalade as Blake pulls into the garage.

“Everything’s clear,” he says as Blake steps out of the car. “How were things on your end?”

“No problems,” Blake says, opening the tailgate and pulling out his bag. “But I want someone on the perimeter tonight.”

Cooper’s eyes flash to me and he tips his head at Blake in a question. “And tomorrow?”

Blake nods, moving toward the elevator and sliding in his key. “Tomorrow too,” he says, pressing his code into the panel.

“We’re still going through with it?” Cooper says warily.

The elevator door opens and Blake steps in. “Yes.”

I look at Blake as I follow him into the elevator, trying to sort what they’re saying, but it’s like they’re speaking in some secret agent code that I’m not privy to.

“ ’Night, Jezebel,” Cooper says as the door slides shut.

“What’s tomorrow?” I ask Blake as we descend.

“Saturday, last I looked,” he answers without looking at me.

“So . . . Saturdays now warrant someone on the perimeter? I thought we went out today because the danger has passed.”

Finally, as the door opens into the living room, Blake turns to face me. “I believe it has . . . and I want you to have your life back.” He rubs his neck, dropping his backpack on the tile floor. “I want that more than I can tell you . . . to give you back what I took. But we’re still in a little bit of a cooling off period, and as long as it’s my job, I’m going to keep you safe. We just need a few more days, Sam.”

He takes the mesh bag to the kitchen and pulls out the abalone, and I move to the window. Outside, the sun is setting over San Francisco, streaking the sky with lavender and crimson and gold. I step out onto the balcony, trying to keep the sudden pang in my chest off my face. Because in a few more days, this will all be over. In a few more days, I won’t be Blake’s responsibility anymore. I’m just now realizing that the thing I’ve been hoping for all along is the thing I’m dreading most.