Seaside Secrets by Melissa Foster

honesty.
    “We were so careful all those nights we made love that summer. That night in the woods, I was too damn weak. I’m a man, Amy. I should have been thinking of you, not me. You should always come first. All I could think about was being buried deep inside you, loving you, joining together in a way that would make me feel whole again. Only you could make me feel so loved, and damn it…”
    He swallowed against the tears welling in his eyes with the memories of how she’d freed him. She was the only one who had noticed the changes in his father that summer. How many times had he hammered Tony’s worthlessness into his head? You won’t amount to shit. A surfer? Surfing is for losers. Get a fucking job. Tony had never told a soul. Not once. He hadn’t even told Amy. But Amy had known. He had no fucking idea how. His father had been careful to say things when no one was around. He’d been slick like that those few difficult weeks, so different from the man he’d been before that summer. But Amy knew. She’d eased all the hurt from what his father had said when she’d told Tony at the beginning of that summer, just as she told him now, You’re the best man I know. But that humid June night he hadn’t been the best man. He’d been selfish .
    And she’d never wavered from loving him over the following weeks. Until after she’d gone to college, when they’d returned for that fateful weekend. The weekend they’d lost the baby he’d had no idea they’d conceived.
    “I knew it was risky. I knew that withdrawing wasn’t foolproof. I was older than you. I knew the risks, and I still did it. You need a guy who won’t ever be that weak.” He looked away, not wanting to see the disappointment he was sure was filling her eyes.
    She laughed, a sweet, unexpected, tear-laced laugh.
    Laughed .
     He looked down at her, and she was smiling through her tears.
    “Did you take a vow of chastity that I’m not aware of?” she asked.
    He couldn’t even form a response. He couldn’t find one funny thing about their discussion.
    “Tony...” She pressed her lips to the center of his chest, and he felt the walls around his heart crumble a little more. “I can’t deal with the past, not now. But you’re human. Any man would have made love to me in that way and filled that empty place with other women when I sent you away.”
    “Not when they loved someone else.”
    She dropped her eyes, and in that moment he realized what she wasn’t saying.  She’d been with other men. Of course she had. He’d known that, hadn’t he?
    “Yeah, they would,” she whispered.
    He pushed away thoughts of her with anyone else and focused on them. “Bullshit. Caden and Peter, do you think they would be with other women? Even for a second? Kurt, for Christ’s sake?”
    She laughed again. “Uh, yeah. If they’d been…if they’d gone through…”
    She couldn’t even say the words, and he knew, at least on some level, that they’d never be able to move forward until they both dealt with their loss.
    “It’s normal,” she whispered.
    “I never wanted to keep things secret back then, and I allowed myself to be swayed. If there’s one thing I’m certain of, it’s that you deserve a man who is better than normal.”
    “Tony, I don’t know where you got the idea that I should be put on a pedestal, but I shouldn’t. I’m the one who sent you away. I’m the one who couldn’t handle it.” Her thighs were still pressed against his. She had to feel how just being close to her again, allowing himself to feel again, with her , aroused him. The points of her breasts against his bare chest were only making him harder, swamping him with memories of their love and the connection he’d never stopped feeling—memories of their bodies as close as conjoined twins.
    “Don’t sell yourself short,” he said.
    “Tony.” She sighed. “I’m addicted to my label maker. I have the body of a prepubescent girl, and I can’t hold my