Page 40 of Catch and Release

“I know you said I don’t need to apologize, but I want to,” Willa said. “You’re a good guy, Shawn.”

“Willa,” Shawn said. “Look at me.”

She opened her eyes and turned her head toward him. His eyes were dark, full of lust. She almost gasped at the way he devoured her with a simple look, the way it made her core pulse in desire.

“I can’t stop thinking about that kiss either,” he said, licking his lips. “And fuck if I haven’t tried all afternoon. But if we want different things… maybe we’re better off being just friends. Can we do that?”

She nodded.

“I’d like that,” she said softly.

He grinned at her.

“Me too.”

12

Willa felt like she had been crawling out of her skin ever since she asked Shawn if he wanted to sleep with her a few days ago.

It was mostly the guilt that was killing her—that she’d so thoughtlessly asked him to give her a good time barely 24 hours after he’d told her tourists used him so thoroughly that he no longer felt comfortable in his own store some days. But it was also the knowledge that it wasn’t going to happen and she had to find some other outlet to get orgasms.

Oh, and the pesky little fact that she’d been rejected.

Not a fun feeling.

Not a feeling she was familiar with at all, actually.

And it was made worse by the fact that her vibrator wasn’t cutting it. Especially since she and Shawn had fallen into a steady rhythm of fishing off the wharf together in the evenings and he always showed up looking delicious.

Like last night, when he wore gray sweatpants and a t-shirt that stretched perfectly over his shoulders. God, she wanted to lick his biceps. She wanted to lick a lot of things, especially now that she’d seen him in those sweatpants that left little to the imagination.

Willa shook her head.

Stop it, she told herself.

She was walking up and down the wharf with the cast net in hand, looking for schools of mullet to catch. When she’d woken up this morning and saw the sun shining, the waves falling at the perfect cadence, and fish jumping from the kitchen window, she knew it would be a great day to throw the net.

Plus, since she was a kid, the steady cadence of tossing it out and pulling it back in calmed her.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw something in the water. It didn’t look like a fish—it was stagnant, unmoving.

It wasn’t uncommon to see odds and ends in the water on occasion. The hurricanes that rampaged this part of the world made sure of that. Sometimes wood from people’s wharves across the Bay would wash up on their shore weeks later. Sometimes they found jewelry. And sometimes, more dangerous things washed up—scraps of metal or nails.

Typically, the community got together after hurricanes and did their best to clean up the water, but her grandparents had taught her to be cautious and keep her eye out.

Suddenly a big wave broke through and the dip of it left room for the item to sit out of the water for a moment—long enough for Willa to realize what it was: a metal chair. It was damaged and covered in barnacles, with shards of metal sticking out where the feet used to be.

A hazard if there ever was one. On days where the water wasn’t clear, somebody could trip over that while swimming. The water was shallow here; even at the end of the wharf, the deepest it’d get was three or four feet. Plus, she didn’t want her cast net catching on the remnants of that chair.

Willa dropped the net where it was and headed into the closet in the garage. It was where her grandfather had stored everything—fishing supplies, tools, buckets, and anything else one might need living on the water. She dug through a few boxes and found some gloves reserved for fishing.

She came back out to the wharf and shimmied out of her shorts. Down to just her bikini and the fishing gloves, she walked down the stairs to the beach and waded out to where she saw the chair.

Since she’d left the cast net where she was when she saw it, she used it as a marker to figure out how close she was to it. After a few minutes in the general area where she knew it was, she found it. Pushing her hands under water, she gave it a tug and felt very little movement.

She sighed, pushing her hair back, and correcting her stance so she could put more effort into pulling it. She reached into the water, grabbed the chair, and?—

“What the hell are you doing, Greene?”