Windswept by Anna Lowe

tight lips, and regrets as every one of them wondered how to turn back the clock and do something differently to save their colleagues’ lives.
    “Hayes looks like he had a hell of a weekend,” Murphy laughed. “Who is she, man? Is it that sweet thing who keeps beating your ass in the pool?”
    He shook his head but couldn’t wipe the huge grin off his face. It had been a hell of a weekend, and not just for the time they’d spent in bed. They’d wandered around Central Park for half of Saturday, which had been one of those sunny, late winter days that felt like spring could be found right around the corner if only you walked enough. Mia had petted every dog, pointed out shapes in the clouds, and told him about summers spent sailing in Maine on some little boat her grandfather owned. A boat Ryan had never, ever imagined he’d see, not in a million years, because he was so busy marveling at the novelty of a woman who was just as much fun to spend time with outside the bedroom as between the sheets.
    She’d dragged him to a museum on Sunday, too. An exhibit of some artist who painted blue horses and yellow dogs and red cows and other kooky shit any ten-year-old could have drawn, except Mia said they were great. She told him all about them, most of which went in one ear and out the other, except for the important stuff. Like how warm her hand was in his as she dragged him from one painting to another. How wide her grin stretched, how bright her eyes shone as she stood speechless in front of each painting before sighing in satisfaction and loping off to the next like a filly who couldn’t decide which corner of the pasture had the greenest grass.
    He’d still been reliving all that, so it didn’t seem that important to stop the guys from joking around, even when they took things a little too far.
    “Look at him!” Murphy cackled. “Hayes didn’t just get laid, he got done.”
    “Done good, I’d say,” Ken added in his muddy Long Island accent. “Earth to Ryan, hello?”
    He waved them off and pulled on his trunks.
    “She a talker, Hayes?” Ken pitched his voice high. “Oh, Ryan, baby! Harder, harder!”
    It wasn’t that far off, actually, but he kept his lips sealed.
    “Check his back for claw marks, guys.”
    He threw his stuff in a locker, knowing they wouldn’t spot a thing, because Mia had kept her arms high over her head, clutching the bed posts, trusting every inch of her hot flesh to him. Trusting him to bring them both so high, they could have peeked down at the penthouses of New York.
    “No marks. Maybe you weren’t man enough to drive her crazy, Hayes.”
    Oh, he’d driven her crazy, all right. Just like she’d done to him.
    The guys kept up the banter all the way through the showers.
    “I say,” Ken cackled in that crazy laugh of his that hadn’t been heard in a dark and dreary month. “It’s a good thing Hayes finally got fucked to the eyeballs.”
    Yes, it was crude. Yes, it was stupid. Yes, he ought to have reined it in before they turned the corner to the poolside and practically bowled over someone walking past. Ryan had to grab the woman’s arm to keep her from falling over.
    “Sorry!” he blurted, settling her back on her feet.
    “No prob—” the woman started to say, flipping the hair out of her face. She stared at him with huge blue eyes. “Ryan?”
    “Mia?”
    Ken chose just that moment to follow him out of the showers, talking nonstop over his shoulder to the other guys. “Like I said, it’s a good thing Hayes finally got fucked to the eyeballs by some pretty little thing. Maybe he’ll share some around with you piss-poor…”
    Ken trailed off, but Murphy was coming up behind him, grinning a mile wide. “What’d you say her name was, Hayes?”
    “Mia!” the dive instructor called from across the pool. “Why don’t you bring the squad over so we can get started…”
    His gut sank faster than a torpedoed ship as his red-cheeked, outdoorsy, fun-loving girl