Silence rang loudly in my noise-expectant ears for the first few seconds, and his hands moved mine from his stomach to his shoulders in a nonverbal prompt to climb off.
I did as he asked, standing on one peg and swinging the other leg over the back of my seat. He followed me as soon as I cleared his space, reaching for my helmet as I unstrapped it and setting it gently on the seat where my butt had been.
When he had his helmet off too, he replaced it with his hat, having worn it nearly constantly since I’d made the comments about his hair, and reached for my hand.
I took it without hesitation, questioning only where we were going—and trusting him to guide me there.
We climbed the dune together with relative ease, but when we reached the top, I felt my breathing labor.
Stretched out before me, a similar path to the one we’d just been on sliced through another willowy, breezy-blown field, yawned into a beach, and led directly to the moonlit ocean. Blue crystals of gulf water seemed to shimmer above the surface, and the sand took on the motion of active glitter. But what really got me were the thousands upon thousands of lightning bugs that danced over the grass of the field, mirroring the luster of the sand and the ocean and perfectly tying together the fantastical location.
Nik waited patiently through my silence, doing nothing but squeezing my hand as a gasp of air escaped my lips.
“What is this place?”
“Well, I guess technically, it’s Riley Beach. The last place I know of this close to the ocean to have lightning bugs.”
I knew nothing about the habitat of lightning bugs, but his words suggested significance. I settled for believing him.
I shook my head in answer to my wonder, but I didn’t look at him—or away from the picture in front of me.
“But to me, it’s the place I come to feel close to my parents.”
“Why does this place make you feel close to your parents?” I asked, turning to look at him at the prompting of his tone.
He shrugged, looking out in front of us, and took one deep breath. “Because it’s impossible to see them again.” My free hand floated to my lips, just as he gripped the one resting in his. “And this place feels like magic.”
“Nik.”
“They died in a car accident six months ago.”
It was fact. It was an admission. It was a functionally large crack in his well-performing heart.
“I’m sorry,” I said, pouring my condolences into the two words and moving my hand from my mouth to his, cocooning it with my hands from both sides.
“Me too, Cal,” he whispered, moving his eyes from the beach to me. “That’s not why I brought you here, though, okay?”
My eyebrows pinched together and my lips lifted closer to my nose.
“I’m sad they’re gone. But they didn’t miss anything, you know? I’m happy and healthy and they raised me to be a person we’re all proud of. They loved each other more than most people think is natural, and they built a life for themselves in a country that wasn’t their own. They treated it like it was, though. You know, they never even talked about Russia to me. Never taught me a syllable of Russian, never enforced customs or traditions.”
I paid attention, trying to soak in all the things he spoke about with such positive conviction without making my own opposing judgements.
“I know,” he said, once again reading my traitorous face. “Trust me, my relatives thought it was crazy too. But see, to me, it was because they didn’t see themselves as Russian anymore. They were American, and so was their baby.” He shrugged his shoulder. “I’m not saying it was right or wrong, but it did make them happy. And now, with them gone what seems like so soon, I’m thankful for that.”
“Me too.”
Not knowing if I should but doing it anyway, I pushed it, noting, “They sure as hell gave you a Russian sounding name though, Nikolai.”
His eyes met mine with a genuine smile, but he didn’t make any moves to explain.
I didn’t really need him to anyway.
He looked back to the ocean, and I followed suit, but when the silence stretched on, I asked a different question that was still unanswered.
“So, why did you bring me here?”
He looked into my eyes again, searching them and my face with an intensity that twisted my insides and lifted my heart as if on a platter.
Another shrug lifted the line of his shoulders, but it wasn’t because he didn’t know. It was a gesture of admission.
“To share it with you.”
I felt uncomfortably cornered, the honesty in his eyes and the soft stroke of his thumb on the back of my hand lulling me into some sort of alternate universe where I was supposed to feel this way for my coach.
His eyes left mine to travel to my lips, and I could feel the pull as my body swayed in an effort to give in.
It was dangerous and tempting, and I scrambled to distract myself with questions that didn’t necessarily need answers.
“Why isn’t anyone else here? Isn’t this the sort of place that would attract a crowd?”
“Most people don’t go to the trouble to find it,” he explained, illustrating his point by asking, “How long have you lived here?”
“Point taken.” And it was. I lived a solid seven miles from here, and I’d never known it existed. I’d gone from one place to another on a plan without any attempts to wander.
“And those of us who do know, don’t ever tell,” he whispered, a wink traveling slowly through the iris of his eye like a wave through the nearby ocean.
“Shhh,” he breathed, the warm air from his mouth sending a shiver across my cheek. “Best kept secret in Southern Georgia.”
I wasn’t so sure.
Because hidden in the depths of my pounding chest, controlled by the softness of his eyes and the warmth of his larger than life smile was one very secret thing.
Something I had to fight to keep at bay, when I lay awake at night, when I watched the flare of his eyes, and under the watchful vision of my father and everyone else involved in not only my destiny, but his—
Want.
Rampant and wild and nearly unchecked, it flowed through my veins like adrenaline and only spiked as each annoying moment of this day ticked on.
The frustration of my unsatisfied longing crept into my coaching as I watched her run through her routine with the same indifference she’d been shoving on me since we’d parted ways last night.
Both things were false and contrived, and I could tell she had to actually work at not caring. Her toes only pointed in half measures, and the extension of her core was completely lacking. She sank into herself instead of pulling herself up out of the Beam¸ and the effect on her appeal was deadening.
Her. The same woman who’d enthralled and enraptured me with her movement on this apparatus for the three weeks prior.
Deep breathing before her dismount, a small line of concentration formed between her arched brows for the first time. Minimal effort put in only when needed.
I was supremely underwhelmed, and for as fascinating as I found her to watch, that was really saying something. The judges would be even less impressed if she didn’t dig deep enough to find some heat. All traces of its previous existence had vanished, the spoils of her effort nothing more than a plastic, lifeless veneer.
As soon as her feet hit the mat, I found my voice. It echoed in the mostly empty, large space, and, still used to being the only one in her world, she jumped at the first syllable.
“Great. Now how about you try doing that routine like you mean it,” I boomed. Her narrowed eyes whipped to mine and my voice turned garbled with gravel. “Like it means something to you.” I held her eyes with the contempt of a child robbed of his favorite toy, knowing on some instinctual level that this was all about me. “Because that version was completely devoid of passion. You look like you’re out for a stroll through the grocery store!”