Salt in her hair. Sand between her toes. A gorgeous sunset melting toward the horizon. As far as moments went, this one couldn’t be more perfect. Especially as she watched her son cast his line out into the surf. At a safe distance, her lover did the same.

It had taken some time to embrace James and those words in the same sentence. My lover. In a matter of tumultuous weeks, he’d gone from being the baby daddy who’d abandoned her to someone she trusted. Someone she admired. Someone she again loved.

It still felt frightening, falling in love with the bad boy all over again. But the inertia between them had won, as it had before. However, this time around, everything about their relationship felt right.

James walked into the surf, cast out his line then turned to walk back to the beach. The wind tossed his hair across his forehead, into his eyes, but she felt gooseflesh on her arms and knew, underneath, those baby blues were fixed on her. A roguish smile touched his mouth.

Her heart rapped. Her nerves pinged. Buried in the sand, her toes curled. Any hold she’d thought she’d had on the reins of this relationship was gone. She’d fallen hard.

Nobody had been there to catch her when she fell for him the last time. She hoped and prayed he would be there to do so this time around.

There was a pebble of doubt lodged in there somewhere. After last time, how could there not be? It was why they hadn’t yet told their son about their budding relationship.

Kyle tossed a look back over his shoulder at her, beaming. Those blue eyes, the way his hair fell across his forehead, the white flash of his teeth… He was so like James, it almost hurt to look.

They would need to tell him if their relationship went any deeper. She didn’t like keeping things from him. On some level, Kyle must have some idea that the dynamic between James and Adrian had shifted. Gone was the tension of the last few weeks. They were careful not to touch around him…however much they might want to. But the lingering looks…the secret smiles Kyle caught them exchanging on occasion…they must admit things James and Adrian were afraid to around him.

The fishing lasted until the sun sank below the earth’s precipice, leaving tints of lavender and blue to hang about the air. As shades of night fell around the island, dimming the world enough that the mast of James’s catamaran anchored in the channel was lost to the darkness, James rummaged around their tent and located three flashlights. They set off along the deserted beach in search of the abandoned fort.

Adrian knew that James was following in the footsteps of his father, who’d brought him to camp on the island every summer. She also suspected that doing the same thing with his own son was an emotional experience. He may not have been there for the first seven years of Kyle’s life. Despite this, he’d embraced the news that he was a father just as he was embracing his role in his child’s life in ways Adrian had never allowed herself to imagine.

Kyle walked ahead, the white beam of his flashlight wheeling.

“Don’t go too far ahead of us,” Adrian advised. Her hand brushed James. Their fingers meshed under the cover of darkness. They interlocked.

James lowered his head toward hers. “Rain’s coming in.”

She’d been so busy watching the sunset, she hadn’t noticed the heavy-bottomed clouds gathering in the east. The breeze had picked up, she noticed. Over the smell of salt and tide, she caught a whiff of rain. “Should we go back to the campsite?”

“We can hunker down in the fort if it turns into a lightning storm,” he told her. “We might be safer there than the tent until it’s over.”

A knell of thunder chased them to the ruins. Built between 1834 and 1839, Fort McRee was constructed to protect Pensacola Bay and the city of Pensacola. Engineers had selected the sandy bar of Fosters Bank on the eastern tip of Perdido Key for its strategic position along the Gulf Coast. It was used during several conflicts, foreign and domestic, but after decades of hurricanes’ destruction, its guns were removed and the government had given it up to the harsh elements.

Before they reached what remained of the protective walls, rain pelted them in stinging nettles, forcing them to run the rest of the way.

Kyle laughed as they hunkered down against a retaining wall. His hair was now pasted to his brow and his clothes were soaked through. He had to shout over the bellow of the thunderstorm. “This place is creepy! Are there any ghosts?”

James brushed the hair out of the boy’s eyes and knuckled the drops of rain off his chin. “Maybe. Two Union soldiers died here. Thirteen were wounded.”

“That’s so cool,” Kyle breathed. “Can I look around?”

Adrian exchanged a look with James, wondering if it was safe.

“Stay close,” he told Kyle.  

“Yes!” Kyle hissed before moving away from them with his flashlight.

“Are you sure it’s safe?” she asked James.

“There’s not enough left of the fort to get lost in,” he assured her, “and the waves aren’t coming in. He’ll be okay.”

She’d melted at the way he’d swept Kyle’s hair back from his eyes. She’d seen James defend him from her ex. A little over a week ago, he’d saved Kyle from a bad fall off of a horse. She could count on him to keep Kyle from any danger. She heard the ghostly sounds of her son’s voice floating back to them on an echo and smiled.

James, too, was wet through, she realized as she placed her hand over the breast pocket of his loose button-up shirt. She lifted her touch to his face and felt the rain there, too. “It’s a good thing we all brought a change of clothes.”

“Hm.” His forehead dropped to hers and his arms linked around her waist, bringing her into the circle of his arms against the heat of his long rangy body.

Her breath caught. They hadn’t been alone. Not since his declaration of love in her greenhouse…when she’d finally embraced what he meant to her. What they meant to each other after everything that had tried to break them apart once more.

“I missed you,” she heard herself say.

His smile warmed against her cheek. It had been difficult before that day in the greenhouse for her to voice her feelings. For her to trust him with them. Trust herself. He knew what these words meant. “I missed you, too.”

Thunder rattled the structure around them. She tensed. “Should we call him back?”

“I see his light bouncing around up there,” James assured her. “He’s okay.”

She gave a slight nod. “Do you think he’ll see us?”

“We’re alone in the dark. He can’t see us.”

Adrian lost track of time and space as she folded her arms around his neck, bending him to her. She opened her mouth to his.

The kiss stung. He had missed her. She had missed this, too. Bodies clashing. Mouths heating. Everything inside her firing, star bright and need bound.

His hands roamed over her damp blouse, her heavy wet maxi skirt. They molded her to the shape of him as she lost her fingers in the thick waves of his hair.

The sting of wanting him again nearly hurt. It was rash and impulsive. He grunted as she ground herself against him and manuveured her backwards toward the retaining wall. As he lifted her to her toes, the hot curve of his mouth swooped to hers once more. He tasted of wishes and rain, of promises meant for nighttime alone.

Lightning flickered over the scene, bright in its intensity.

Not lightning, she realized, as the light lingered. A flashlight.

“Mom?”

James backed off fast, hitting the brakes as her hands braced against his chest. “Kyle,” she realized. Her heart dropped into her stomach.

He’d seen. There was no way around it. He’d seen her hands on James. His hands on her. Their mouths clashing in heated abandon.

James cursed under his breath, echoing the words bouncing around in her mind as shock and motification sank in.

“You guys were just kissing,” Kyle said, befuddled.

Adrian closed her eyes briefly, took a long drink of air, before facing him. “Yes.”

“Huh,” Kyle said after a moment’s thought.

James had one hand propped against the retaining wall. There was a uncharacteristically hesitant look on his face. This wasn’t the way they’d wanted to tell him. This wasn’t at all what they’d planned. James’s eyes darted to Adrian and she saw the concern there. The edge of fear.

If Kyle wasn’t open to the two of them dating then that would be it. That would be the end. To them, nothing mattered more than this boy in front of them. He’d been through enough in the short span of his lifetime. They wouldn’t put him through anything more.

“Are you okay?” Adrian asked, trying to read Kyle’s face in the shadows of the fort.

“It’s fine,” Kyle said. He backed away a step.

James took a step to follow, his hand coming off the wall, then stopped. He swallowed. “Are you sure about that?”

Kyle sought Adrian for answers. “You said you and James weren’t together. Not in that way. Not anymore.”

“I did say that,” she admitted. “This…what’s happening between us… It’s very new. I don’t think either of us saw it coming.”

Kyle’s brow knitted. “Okay,” he said uncertainly.

Silence fell over the scene. It was worse than the thunder. More ominous than the distant crash of the sea.

“I think the storm’s over now,” he said. “Should we go back to camp?”

After a second’s thought, James nodded. “We need to check on the tent and the catamaran. Make sure everything’s still in place.”

“Let’s go,” Kyle said, backing away toward the exit.

Adrian drew in a shaky breath. “Oh, God,” she whispered.

James gripped her shoulder. “It’s okay. It’ll be okay.”

“Did you see his face?” she asked.

“We surprised him,” James assured her. “It’s going to take a while to sink in.”

“He shouldn’t have found out this way, James,” she told him. “I should’ve been honest with him. I’m always honest with him.”

“Let me talk to him,” James said in return. “See where his mind is.”

“He’s going to have questions,” she warned.

“I’ll answer them,” he assured her. “Every single one of them.”

She thought about it for a moment then nodded in resignation. “He hasn’t seen me with another man. Not since…” Radley, her ex. The man who’d hurt her physically.  The monster Kyle saw in his nightmares.

James nodded. “I know. “ He touched his lips to her brow. “He needs to know he can trust me to keep the both of you safe. To take care of you. I’ll make sure he does. I promise.”

*

After changing into dry clothes, the boys lingered around the campfire with marshmallows after a quiet beachside dinner. Adrian wanted to linger. She wanted to know what Kyle was thinking. She needed to know that he was okay.

She’d given James the chance to explain everything. She’d honor it. So she retired early to the tent, leaving the flaps of it open as she settled in her sleeping bag and listened to the indecipherable murmur of their voices around the fire. James’s soothing tones. The curious lilt of Kyle’s.

She woke the next morning and realized both their sleeping bags remained untouched. She sat up and peered through the tent flaps.

The fire was down to embers and they were both asleep in the camp chairs. Their heads were cocked in the same direction and both their mouths were open in twin poses. James’s windbreaker was across Kyle’s lap to warm him.

How long had they talked? Had it gone well? Had she made a mistake, going to bed before they were finished discussing everything? Had Kyle had questions for her?

She crawled out of the tent and walked to the fireside. Reaching out, she touched Kyle’s shoulder.

He came awake slowly, blinking around and up at her.

“Hey,” she murmured, trying on a smile. “Are you all right?”

His smile came lazily and unexpectedly. It grew to encompass the bounds of his face. “I slept outside.”

She gave a small laugh. James jerked and came awake suddenly. His quiet curse as the muscles of his neck no doubt complained made her bite her lip to keep from laughing further. “You did,” she echoed. “Are you hungry?”

“Starving,” Kyle said, stretching. “What’s for breakfast?”

She caught sight of the sticky marshmallow residue on his chin. “Wash your face and hands and I’ll see if I can’t get the fire going so I can heat something over it.”

“Can I go swimming?”

“After breakfast.”

As he made his way to the tent, she eyed James. “Sleep well?” she asked.

“I’ll let you know,” he said, reached for his neck as he slowly rose to his feet. “Once I can turn my head again.”

She crossed her arms, trying to not portray her nerves. “How did it go?”

The corner of James’s mouth lifted as he stepped across the sand to her. He took her hands. “I kept my promise.”

An involuntary breath filled her lungs. “He took it well?”

He chuckled. “He practically thinks it was his idea for us get together again.”

A surprised laugh shook her. She wanted to throw her arms around him. Cautious, she ran her hands up the length of his arms until she touched the firm curve of his biceps. “So I shouldn’t worry?”

He made a face. “He might’ve gotten me to agree to getting him a puppy for his birthday.”

“Oh, James,” she muttered.

“What can I say?” he said, placing his hands on either side of her waist. “When it comes to the two of you, there’s nothing I wouldn’t do.”

Her breath caught. She wanted beyond anything to believe that that was true. That this would remain their reality—her and Kyle and James living out their lives together. The way it should have been from the beginning.

She held onto that feeling. She held it tightly and James, too, as the light of morning strengthened and the gulls began to wake.

© Amber Leigh Williams