I nod. “Yep. If she was the one leaving with some strange guy, I’d be the one threatening him with bodily harm.”
Luke grimaces.
I smile sweetly and pat his shoulder. “No worries,” I say, letting my fingers linger there for a moment until I realize what I’m doing and pull away. “Maybe she is a little meaner than I am.” I squint one eye and hold my index and thumb a half inch apart. “But just a little.”
He smiles.
“So I’m some strange guy you’re leaving with, huh?”
“I like strange.”
Our eyes meet briefly, soft smiles permanent on our faces, it seems.
He jerks his head back. “Come on,” he says, “not much time left.”
“Where are we going?” I ask, walking away with him through the sand.
“I said I’d give you some surfing lessons, didn’t I?”
“Yeah, you did. But you don’t have a board.”
He shrugs and glances at the hotel.
“I can borrow one.”
We walk together toward the building and I can’t stop smiling the whole way there. I admit, I’m kinda nervous about my first surfing lesson, but I think I’m even more nervous—in a good way—that Luke is the one giving me that lesson.
I hope I don’t embarrass myself …
SEVEN
Luke
I’ve always been a risk-taker—actually that’s a huge understatement—but for all of the things I’ve done, all of the risks I’ve taken in my twenty-four years, something tells me that this one is by far more dangerous than any of them.
And maybe more worth it.
I had been on my way to catch up with Seth and Kendra on the hike, and I was alone. Knowing they had only about a thirty-minute head start, I could’ve called Seth and told them to wait for me. But I didn’t. Instead I began to slow down. Just as I stepped onto the mouth of the trail and the lush greenery engulfed me on all sides, I began to think of my brother and a conversation we had a few weeks before he left for China eight months ago:
“I wanna say I don’t know what the hell your problem is,” Landon argued, standing behind me as I sat at my office desk staring at my laptop, “but I do know, and I can’t believe what I’m seeing, Luke.”
Clicking the mouse, I moved on to the next page, refusing to turn around and look at him. I wasn’t in the mood for this. I had work to do.
“I’m not doing this with you today,” I told him.
Click, click, scroll. I typed in my password and hit enter.
“Goddammit!” He moved from behind me and stood to my left. I heard him breathe in deeply, trying to calm himself. “Look, I know the business is important, but we have people to take care of these things.” He motioned his hands. “We don’t pay Derrick to sit on his ass while you do his job.”
Finally I looked up at him, his hazel eyes, which looked just like mine, were hard around the edges, his mouth slightly pinched amid a rigid jaw.
“Just because we hire people doesn’t mean we can sit back on our asses,” I pointed out. “I’m just making sure that things stay running smoothly.”
“At what cost?”
My expression hardened. “What do you mean? I think it’s more costly not to stay on top of things. What the hell would we do if it all came crashing down, Landon?” My voice began to rise with every word. “Do you want Dad to go back to cleaning fucking toilets, or you tearing tickets at the movie theatre? Shit, why don’t we just give it all up and go back to renting since rent in California and Hawaii is so cheap? We can pawn all of our stuff to pay the bills, eat potted meat sandwiches every day, and hope we have enough gas in the tank to get us to work every morning.”
Landon threw his hands up at his sides.
“This is bullshit and you know it,” he said.
I turned back to the screen. Click, click, scroll.
“I promised I’d go to China with you,” I said in a calmer voice. “I don’t know why you’re so worried I’m going to back out of our plans.”
“Because you’re leaving everything else behind,” he said with dejection and it prompted me to look up at him again. “You’re not you anymore. And it’s scaring the hell out of me.”
He succeeded in making me feel bad, as I knew he would.
Lowering my eyes momentarily, I swiveled around fully on the chair to face him and only him, dropping my hands between my knees.
“I’m still me. Nothing is more important to me than you and our plans. It’s always been you and me, Landon, and it always will be.” I paused to catch his gaze, and when he looked into mine I added, “Nothing will ever come between us or our plans, not this business—nothing and no one, and you have to believe that.”
Landon gave up, but I knew only for the sake of not wanting to prolong the argument. I felt like he wanted to believe me, but it was getting harder and harder for him to do.
“Are you afraid?” he asked suddenly, and it caught me completely off guard.
I felt my eyebrows knotting in my forehead.
“Afraid? What are you talking about?” He couldn’t be serious.
Landon grabbed ahold of another desk chair and rolled it closer to me, where he sat in it backward, propping his arms atop the backrest.
He looked at me thoughtfully.
“Let’s be real here,” he said. “I’m afraid to go through with it—it’s a big jump—but I think you, me, Seth, anyone would be stupid to not be afraid.”
“I’m not afraid of it,” I told him, but then backtracked. “I mean, yeah, I’ve got the natural fear, but if you think I’m doing all of this stuff”—I waved my hand at the desk and the laptop—“just to get out of China, you’re wrong. It has nothing to do with it.”