"How could you?" I scream. The tears well up in my eyes, and I blink furiously, attempting to keep calm, trying to keep from picking up the nearby vase and throwing it across the room at my mother, letting it shatter into a million pieces all over the marble floors.
"I don't understand what you're so upset about," she says. "Hendrix is fine. He came through the hospital, but he's in one piece. He wasn't even injured. It was ages ago, anyway. You had a tour, and you didn't need to be bothered with that kind of news. What a downer, right?"
I clench my hands, my fingernails digging into my skin, and focus on the pain. I count, taking deep breaths to steady myself even though I feel like I'm falling apart, fragmenting into a thousand little pieces right here in front of her.
"You two aren't even close," she says. "I fail to see what the big deal is."
"Hendrix was in the hospital," I say. "You don't think I might want to know that?"
"He was fine," she says. "We called him on the phone. He was doing some -- I don't know -- Marine stuff, and had to travel somewhere or something. He did not want us to visit."
"He -- he said that?"
"He specifically mentioned you by name, Addison," she says. "I was trying not to be mean."
"I don't believe you," I say, my voice breaking. Hendrix was back in the United States. Hendrix was in the hospital. He was in an explosion in Afghanistan. The pieces of news come flying at me, one at a time.
Hendrix didn't want to see me.
Me, specifically.
My mother shrugs and flips a page in her planner. "I don't know what kind of bad blood the two of you have between you, but you really need to start acting like adults," she says. "Now, we need to talk about the interview tomorrow. The label wants you to plug the tour and..."
Her voice drifts away, becoming quieter and quieter as the thoughts swirl in my head.
Hendrix was back.
He could have died.
He didn't want to see me.
I hear my mother protest as I stand up, stumbling to the bathroom and barely closing the door before I collapse into tears, a mixture of anger and sadness and overwhelming relief.
Anger that Hendrix didn't want to see me.
Sadness that his squad was killed.
Relief that he's alive.
*
PRESENT DAY
"Do you think anyone knew it was me?" I ask. Hendrix has my hand and he's pulling me down the beach until we're far away from the bar, the only ones out on the sand at this time of night.
Hendrix laughs. "Yes," he says. "You're lucky we got out of there quickly. That video is going to be everywhere tomorrow. And we are going to be fucked, you know."
The tequila in my belly makes me warm and brave and foolish and I know, but I don't care. I spin around in circles on the beach, my arms wide. I'm spinning because I'm half-drunk, on tequila or love, I'm not sure which. And because I'm happy. And, most of all, because Hendrix is here. He's here, with me, on a beach in South Carolina, after I thought I'd never see him again. And that is something. "But tonight, we're going to fuck," I say.
Hendrix laughs. "You're practically cursing like a Marine now," he says. "I'm afraid I'm rubbing off on you." He pulls me against his hardness, and slides his hands over my ass.
"We could go back to the hotel and you could really rub off on me," I say.
"Or, we could stay out here," Hendrix says, reaching for the button on my pants. I laugh and smack his hands away.
"Out here?" I ask, thinking of photographers and tabloid photos of us on the beach. "That's just what I need."
Hendrix's mouth is against my ear, and then on my neck, and when I tilt my head, my mouth finds his. "Maybe that is just what you need, Addy-girl."
"Sex on the beach?" It makes me giggle, until he slides his hand underneath my tank top and inside my bra. His thumb finds my nipple, and his touch makes me moan, the way it always does.
"Remember the last time we were here?" he asks, his finger running circles around my nipple until I'm practically begging for him.
Like it was yesterday.
I have to shake off the feeling, that sense of deja vu that comes over me, being out here together. "I haven't been to the beach in a while."
"You know what I thought about doing when we were here before?" he asks. He slides his hand down lower.
"What?" I ask, glancing around in the dark.
"I thought about pulling those little bikini bottoms you wore right down over that tight little ass of yours and riding you, right out here in the middle of everything, where anyone could see us."
"That's what you thought about, back then?" I ask. He's said he fantasized about me before, but hearing him say it again now sends a thrill of arousal through my body.
"Yep."
"Anyone could see, you know," I say. But I slide my hand over his chest and down the front of his jeans anyway.
Hendrix shrugs. "I guess they could."
"You're a bad influence."
"The worst." He pulls me down on top of him in the sand, and I laugh as I collapse on him, then glance around at the deserted beach again, straddling him.
"This isn't a good idea," I say as he cups my breast through my shirt. "I'm famous, you know."
"Are you?"
"I am. And there are photographers. Paparazzi."