Wet(3)

“I don’t want her.” Trent thought about all the girls he’d bedded down with since Katy had left. “I moved on, remember?”

“What I remember is that you fucked nearly every single woman in town after Katy kicked your ass to the curb, yet here you are still pining over her like some lovesick schoolboy. It’s pathetic, pal. Just pathetic.”

“Adam—”

“Look, why don’t you try fucking her? Fucking all those other girls didn’t help so maybe fucking Katy Wilson is the only way you’re going to get her out of your system once and for all.”

“Unlike you, I don’t think fucking solves everything.”

Adam grinned. “Well it doesn’t hurt.”

Trent gave an impatient sigh. “Look, I’m not going to fuck her, Adam. I’m not going to do anything with her. I probably won’t even see her or talk to her when she’s here, so drop it, okay?”

“Fine, if you don’t want to fuck her, I will.”

“Like hell you will.” The words flew from his mouth before he could stop them.

Adam laughed and gave a slow shake of his head. “Yeah, Trent. It’s real clear that you’ve moved on.”

Trent was about to open his mouth to voice an argument, but the fire alarm went off. They both dropped everything and bolted to the garage where they found the others already suited up.

Less than five minutes later they were rushing through town and heading back to Dresden Bluff. It was the second time within twenty-four hours someone had lit a fire on the hill. Trent knew the kids were antsy this summer, especially with the unusually high temperatures, and according to his friend, Sheriff Brody McGrath, teens seemed to be getting into more and more mischief lately, but rarely would they return to the scene of a crime and risk getting caught. Whoever was lighting these fires was brazen and it didn’t bode well.

But something else was gnawing at him, something about the fact that the fires were set on Dresden Bluff, as if they’d been deliberately ignited at the location he and Katy used to go to make love.

Trent hadn’t been back to the bluff in ten years and returning to the site now was simply a reminder of what he’d loved and lost.

They parked at the foot of the bluff and Trent and Adam ran to the top with the hose. Once the small fire was extinguished, Trent moved into the thick brush. He pushed low-hanging branches from his path and sifted through the pine needles looking for hot spots. The fire had been contained near the rocks and he was pleased to see that very little damage had been done.

As the trees closed around him, blocking him from the others, he couldn’t help but think about Katy. Being so close to the spot they’d made love unlocked all those buried memories and had him reminiscing about what it felt like to hold her, kiss her, bring her to orgasm beneath the stars as they listened to the waves crash against the rocks. He thought about the way she gave herself over to him, the way she trusted him with her body, her pleasure, her heart. He thought about her unique, arousing scent—honeyed vanilla and sweeter than candy—and the way it always seeped under his skin and filled him with longing.

Jesus, it was so perfect. She was so perfect.

Then she’d left.

“Fuck!”

Trent turned back around and shelved those thoughts to the recesses of his mind, not wanting to travel too far down memory lane. Christ, Adam was right. He was pathetic. Totally fucking pathetic.

Maybe Adam was right about fucking her, too.

The truth was, he’d never gotten over Katy and loved her now as much as he had back then, which was why he hadn’t begged her to stay when she said she wanted to move on to bigger and better. It cut to his core when she left, but he couldn’t fault her for wanting to experience life outside Whispering Cove. Not everyone was cracked up for small-town living. He knew that truth firsthand.

Right after high school, his mother had gotten pregnant. Some said she trapped his father, but Trent didn’t like to believe it. His father had gotten a scholarship upstate, but with a child on the way, he never had the chance to go. Instead, he’d ended up working the fishing vessels like his father before him. His dreams of pursuing a career in engineering were flushed out to sea. Resentment ran deep, and his dad had ended up searching for happiness in the bottom of a bottle. He’d never found it. Instead he found his way to an early grave, his mother not too far behind.

Trent swallowed down the lump in his throat as old, painful memories rose to the surface like air bubbles. Jesus, he never wanted Katy to resent him the way his dad had resented his wife and son. He knew Katy belonged in Whispering Cove, it was in her blood, but if she had to go away to find herself, to forget who she really was and take on the persona of big-city-girl Kathleen Wilson until she came to that conclusion herself, then who was he to stop her? But deep down he’d thought she’d be back. Thought she’d come home. To him.