Hoax in One

| 30 |

This golf course was idyllic.

I guess most of them are.

But something about this one was special.

I now had an up close view of the candy cane looking lighthouse because the course was nestled against the coast right next to it.

I stopped setting up my camera equipment to look at my phone for the millionth time.

I still had no new texts since the one Tate had sent me after I went to sleep, so I read it again.

I'm sorry. I just got back, and now I have curfew. I'll make it up to you tomorrow.

I finished adjusting my settings and took some landscape shots. Not my forte, but I wasn't sure anyone could take a bad picture of this place.

I would live there—like on a permanent vacation.

I wanted to hold on to the warmth in my heart because the negative thoughts were trying to overpower it.

Had my moment come to a close—our right now over? I'd made it to four weeks since our kiss, and I felt like I'd worn out my welcome. This was the point where the end of every one of Tate's relationships had begun.

Why did I expect ours to be any different?

I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to remember his words, trying to remember the way he looked at me.

Don't give up on him. I matter to him. He loves me. But did I scare him by saying it out loud?

When I opened my eyes, the team had come out onto the first hole.

Tate found me almost immediately—like I was his beacon—and everything melted away. We were in a vortex together, nothing else around us mattered, nothing else could come between us.

I smiled knowingly at him as he walked toward me. The entire world blurry except for him.

"Did you get it?" he asked when he was still twenty feet away. He couldn't wait until he was close because my face was an open book.

I nodded excitedly, jumping up and down, and when Tate reached me, he scooped me up and kissed me so hard, I swooned.

"You're amazing, Devin." He placed me back on my feet and cupped his hands around my cheeks. "You're amazing. I'm so proud of you." He kept kissing me between his sentences. "I'm sorry." Kiss. "I needed a minute." Kiss. "And I'm working through it, okay?" Kiss. "I love you." Kiss. "I'm trying. For you."

I looked up into his sincere face. Why did I doubt him?

"It's okay. It's okay," I whispered.

Someone entered our vortex out of the corner of my eye. Maybe because she'd been standing there too long. She'd been so still she got sucked up into our black hole.

I flickered my eyes to her. A tall, beautiful, middle-aged brunette with stunning blue eyes—Tate's eyes; well, eye—was watching us. Her floral maxi dress whipped around her ankles when a gust of wind blew threw us.

A man thirty yards behind her came into focus.

They were both watching us.

She had a loving smile on her face like what we were doing made her happy. Almost a look of pure wonder like she'd never seen something so beautiful; like she'd never seen two people in love, and it was magnificent.

The man stood behind her looking like he didn't belong there; like he wanted to be anywhere but there.

My first thought was that it was Tate's parents, but the man was everything that Tate wasn't. Messy blond curls and a bright patterned beach shirt. He looked like he'd just come from surfing. Not at all what I pictured his father looking like.