Brief moments turned into long minutes as he reluctantly pulled out of me and lifted his weight to the side.

Looking into his eyes with the sky dark and glittering behind him, I felt complete.

Until I remembered something.

“I’ve just realized what we’ve done.”

“You’ve just now realized?” he asked through a chuckle, smoothing the sticky hair out of my face and trying not to cover me in sand.

“No, not that. I knew we were doing that the whole time.”

“Thank God,” he laughed with a close of his brilliant blue eyes.

“I just remembered what you told me the first night we came here.”

“What did I tell you?” he asked, at a loss.

“You know!”

“I’m afraid I don’t, Cal.”

“That you come here to be close to your parents!” I whisper-yelled.

His eyes widened slightly just as I spewed the rest of my panic. “You don’t think they saw us, do you?”

“No,” he comforted, wrapping his tan arms around me and squeezing.

My eyes closed in relief and my head settled onto the perfect pillow of his shoulder.

“They probably heard you though.”

“Nik!”

“I’m just saying,” he teased, and then mouthed, “Loud,” directly against the salty skin of my cheek.

Feeling properly teased and content, I leaned into him and lie there, counting the stars and the bugs and the times the ocean rolled in and back out again.

I think I got to a thousand of each before I even considered moving, the late hour of the night and the pull of responsibility making me cringe all the way down to my toes.

“I just want to live in this moment,” I admitted as we climbed on the back of his motorcycle to go back to the gym for my car.

I wanted to stay there on that beach with him and spend the night in his arms, and for now it wasn't a possibility.

I felt trapped by circumstance and freed by feeling.

I’d never felt this complicated in my life.

“Calia,” my mom’s soft voice called out of the darkness, sounding like a gunshot in the dead silent house.

My hand shot to my chest, and I took a panicked step back.

“Geez! Mom! You scared me.”

Out of the dark and into the light, she padded softly from her spot in the living room to the opening in the hall. Her nightgown peeked out from underneath her robe, and the satin of her sash tangled loosely at her waist. Her feet were bare, and her long brown hair hung neatly in front of one shoulder.

She looked largely the same as she did every night, but her face held concern and worry that I wasn’t accustomed to seeing.

My mom was a good woman. A good nurturer and caretaker and a good wife to my father. What she wasn’t was outspoken.

She didn’t get involved in my life the way my dad did, but she didn’t stop him either. She just lived her life among us, watching us make decisions and hoping they’d turn out well.

Until now.

“Come on,” she worried her lip, grabbing me gently at the elbow and pulling me into a walk. “Let’s go in the kitchen and talk.”

Her voice was low, and her eyes drifted up the stairs to where my father no doubt lay sleeping. This conversation was meant to be private.

Unable to deny her something she asked when she asked so little of me, I followed behind her obediently and took a seat at the table when she gestured that I should.

A pot of coffee sat waiting, and taking two mugs from the cabinet, she poured us each a cup before sitting down.

Her lips worried between her teeth for several moments, doing nothing but bolstering my own concern to near the point of breaking, before she finally found the courage to speak.

“I know what’s going on with you, Calia.”

My throat squeezed at her tone, but I forced myself to speak casually, without hurry, and as innocently as possible. “What’s going on with me, Mom?”

“No,” she shook her head, gripping her cup with both hands and still speaking in a whisper. “Don’t give me that. Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m saying. A mother knows. And you know exactly what I’m talking about.”

I sank deeper into my chair, thinking about the feel of Nik’s skin on mine and the sand that still clung to my body underneath my clothing.

Denial hung on the tip on my tongue, but with the feel of him fresh inside me, even desperate, I couldn’t muster up a lie.

“I see the way he looks at you,” she murmured thoughtfully. “And I see the way you look at him.”

“Mom—”

“I get it, Callie,” she interrupted, reaching out to take my hand in hers. “I get how easy it is to get caught up in someone when they’re that caught up in you. I get that you’re plenty old enough, and that you don’t need your momma getting in your business.”

When I started to exhale in relief, she squeezed my hand in warning.

She wasn’t done.

“But I cannot ignore the consequences of this. I can’t sit by and watch you throw away years and years and years of work. Do you realize what you’re doing? What your father will think?”

“I can’t just stop my feelings,” I argued quietly, feeling my eyes well up. But the tears didn’t fall. No matter how upset I got, they never did. I wanted to blow up. I wanted to cry and rage and argue about how none of it was fair.

How I didn’t deserve to be punished for wanting to be with someone, for feeling like I’d finally found that thing people are looking for, the person who understood me and trusted me to understand him.

But I knew no matter how much I vomited my feelings all over the table and my mom, the talk wouldn’t change. She wouldn’t change her opinion completely and my predicament wouldn’t disappear. It was here to stay for the near future, and no matter how angry I got, it wasn’t something I could easily alter.

“I know,” she agreed with a nod, forgetting her coffee all together and grabbing on to both of my hands tightly. “But can’t it wait until you’re done? You’ve got a month or so until you can retire. Just put it on hold until you’re done, that’s all.”

God, Nik had asked me for virtually nothing, giving and giving to my needs and foolishness at every turn. All he wanted was me.

“I don’t want to break his heart,” I admitted to her.

I didn’t want to break mine, I admitted to myself.

“He’ll understand. If he cares about you, there’s no way he’d want you to throw everything away that you’ve worked so hard to achieve.”

Her words were a challenge. She hoped he wouldn’t want me to, but part of her already thought he had asked. Or that he was trying to convince me. Nik was the villain in her scenario. No matter how she looked at it.

“He would never,” I swore vehemently my voice breaking at the same time that my raw energy made the chair creak below me. He’d been the one to keep me alive, keep me from going so far down the damn rabbit hole that I couldn’t thump my way back out.

“Then wait,” she urged. “A month. It’s so little time to sacrifice. It can’t be worth it.” She shook her head, convinced. “That amount of time with him cannot be worth the consequences.”

I wasn’t so sure.

A lot could happen in the span of a month. I knew that now.

Because the night had finally caught up with me, and my mind had finally made sense of all that jumble I’d been too scared to sort out before.

It’d been six weeks of back and forth, but one thing was for sure. I was stuck on Nik like some crazy strength glue, and I didn’t know if it was possible to pry myself off.

I shrugged, pulled my lips to the side, and admitted one of the scariest possibilities I’d encountered in my entire twenty-six years. “I think I love him.”

Panic flashed in her eyes, the danger that I was going to turn my entire world upside down burning in her brain. She couldn’t let that happen. Because my world directly related to hers and my father’s.