For last night. For how I left. For everything. I may have been the one who did the leaving back in the day, but as I stare at her now, I realize that she truly is the one that got away. Somehow, I always thought it was the other way around. I was wrong.
Of course, I’d be lying if I said that apologizing is all I want to do. I notice all over again how her blond hair brushes her breasts when she turns her head. Then she bends over. Now I'm going to need a cold shower. But first I have to find a way to get her attention.
"Hey," I say to a volunteer off to my left, "bring out the cannons."
The kid does a double take. "The cannons, sir?"
"Yes, pirate, the tennis ball cannons. That’s an order."
"It's the first day, sir. I know you're from Phoenix, but that's highly unusual."
"Oh, I'm from St. Tropic, believe it or not. And it's definitely time to run out the cannons."
"Alright," he says as he gets up out of the sand and brushes himself off. "I'll run to the storage shed. Can I ask who it is we'll be blasting?"
I point to where Angie, Fi, and Kaylee are building their sandcastle.
"Oh boy," the volunteer says. "This is going to mean war, you know."
"Yep,” I grin. “I know."
Chapter 10
Angie
Even though I haven't been here long, Fi and Kaylee and I fall into a comforting, familiar sand-castle building routine. We’re making fantastic progress too.
"How's Chase?" I ask Kaylee.
"He's good. The team he owns made the playoffs this year, so he's happy. But he’s been travelling a lot. So it’s mostly been me and Cooper at the beach house."
Cooper's her adorable German Shepherd puppy. Because the way Chase tells it, a team of security guards isn’t enough to guard Kaylee when he isn’t around.
Cooper's a sweetheart to me and Fi, but heaven help anyone who ever dares break into that place. I'm glad she has a furry friend to snuggle with when Chase isn't around.
And I can't help but be a little jealous. She has a man and a furry friend. I'm not only zero for two in that department, my life now feels like it's getting demolished by Jake the steamroller who’s busy demolishing everything in his path. Well, everything being my life. So far, the rest of St. Tropic seems blissfully and annoyingly unaffected.
So yeah, jealous. A little. And happy for her too. I smile in Kaylee's direction, where she's hard at work shaping the soft wet sand. Then I head back down to the water with another empty bucket.
Only the minute my back is turned, I hear an odd and somewhat familiar whistling sound coming from behind me. I glance back to see a wet tennis ball just miss Kaylee's back.
What the fuck? Somebody is shooting cannons at us. On day one? On our team? You’ve got to be kidding me. Somebody wants to get their pirate ass kicked. Nobody messes with our clique.
Fi and Kaylee quickly jump up and huddle behind the giant mass of sand that Kaylee was working into a castle.
Kaylee's face is scrunched up in anger. "If the line I’m working on gets messed up, then so help me God, somebody is going to pay."
She gestures for me to hurry and join them behind the wall of sand before I get smacked in the face with a wet tennis ball going thirty miles an hour.
She's right. I drop the bucket and dive in next to the two of them.
"Can you tell where it's coming from?" Fi asks, risking a peek before ducking back down.
That's when it hits me. I know exactly where the cannon fire is coming from. I stand up.
"No!" Kaylee shouts. "Those things cause ugly bruises, Angie! Get down." Fi pulls me back down.
"I'm sorry, guys, but I know who's cannonballing us."
"Jake," Fi and Kaylee say together.
"Should have known," Fi says. "Alright. Angie, when I give the signal, you grab a bucket of water. Kaylee, you fill a sandbag and sneak up on him from him behind. If he wants a war, we're going to give him one."
I like the plan so far. "What are you going to do, Fi?"
"I'm going to walk right over there and confront him."
Now that's a plan I can believe in. We wait a couple of minutes, knowing that it takes time to reload those machines and gather more wet tennis balls.
As soon as the cannon goes silent, I spring for the bucket and sprint down to the water to refill it. I see Fi march off in the general direction of Jake and his team.
Kaylee grabs a sandbag. It looks heavy, but she's used to it. She heads over to the water’s edge so that she can stay far enough from the fray to get behind Jake and then sneak up on him.
I grab my water and follow Fi. As I make my way across the warm sand, I spot Jake in the distance. He’s pointing and barking out orders like he's a God of War.
He looks the part too with his unbelievably muscled frame, distractingly handsome face, and blond hair that makes me want to run my fingers through it.
Oh no. He's wearing the blue bathing suit. I remember that bathing suit. And now he's bending over. I feel a tingling in my core. I can’t help it.
Both the sight of his super sexy ass and that bathing suit bring back memories. Sadness blends with the anger inside of me. Why did you have to ruin it all, Jake?
I know why. A football career. It was all he ever wanted. All he ever thought about and dreamed about.
All his parents ever talked about. I swear if he hadn't become a pro football player, I think they'd have probably disowned him.
But he was more than just a jock to me. At least he was back then. Back then, the only time he spent not training, thinking about, or
