Page 13 of The Surfer

And Sandy thinks that, somehow, I’ll be the one to come over here and fix him?

Good luck to me.

Well, let me meet him first and then we’ll see.

He can’t honestly be that bad. Not as bad as Sandy is making him out to be, surely?

I sink back in the leather car seat and rub my jetlagged forehead. The first thing I need to do before meeting Cove, or any other bad boys for that matter, will be a shower. ASAP.

We continue off the highway and onto a long winding road heading down towards New Water. I can see the whole town now in all its glory. The beaches. The surf.

I can even see an array of little dots far out in the ocean. It takes me a moment to realize what they are. Surfers. Sitting on their surfboards ready for the next wave to take them to shore.

It’s early morning. The sun is rising. The surfers are enjoying the first rays of sunshine.

This town really is paradise.

And then I can see them, more dark shapes beyond the surfers, even further out in the sea. Shapes that are moving fast, jumping in and out of the clear blue water.

No, they can’t be.

“Are those dolphins?” I ask Sandy in disbelief, pointing my finger against the car’s window towards the fast, black dots in the ocean below. Sandy quickly glances over as to not take her eyes off the road for too long. She doesn’t seem nearly as amazed as I’m to be seeing what I’m seeing.

“Yeah, they are,” she says matter-of-factly. “They sometimes like to swim near the surfers.”

I pressed my face against the window. “This is insane,” I whisper in shock. I’ve never seen dolphins in the wild before, only at the aquarium in downtown New York.

This is a totally different world.

Sandy smiled at me and again places her hand back on my knee.

“Thank you again for coming here,” she says.

I truly am happy to be here, but the words about her brother are still stuck on a loop in my head.

A bad boy.

And I’m the one somehow expected to fix him.

That’s the reason for this trip.

As I watch the dolphins dance in the ocean, I can’t help but think about this Cove dude I haven’t met yet, and what I’ve gotten myself into by coming to this country.

Well, it’s too late to turn back now, I’m about to meet the bastard.