Free ChasingSin by Sara Brookes Page A

Hopefully, this trip down to the beach
would serve as a relief.
    The sun still shined brightly, but she knew that would start
changing quickly enough as the days passed. By this time tomorrow, if her calculations were correct, most of the tourists on the island would be packing
up due to mandatory evacuations that would be given in order to ensure lives
were saved.
    That slight jog she predicted just needed to happen and then
all hell would break loose.
    A small group of men played near the waterline, flinging a
Frisbee back and forth. Their laughter drifted on the breeze and she knelt in
order to snap a few images. She watched them play their game, and got so caught
up, she jumped in surprise when two long shadows stretched out on the sand on
either side of her.
    At least out here the atmosphere wasn’t as suffocating when
they came near.
    She stared out at the shoreline, waiting for one of the men
to speak because she didn’t know what to say.
    “You know we don’t care why you left.”
    Kate lowered the camera as Tripp spoke, thumbing the power
switch to conserve the battery.
    Snyder crouched beside her, his fingers dragging through the
sun-warmed sand. “Whatever happened that made you feel as if you needed to take
off can be fixed. Especially if we had something to do with it.”
    Tripp crouched as well, his knees just inches from her arm.
“Let us fix it if that’s the case, but please just tell us what we did.”
    The desperate pleas in both their voices made her heart
clench. She longed to tell them and wanted to share with them her thoughts and
feeling on the subject as a whole. It shouldn’t be this hard, but the reality
of the future she now faced shook her to her core.
    She pushed to stand, waiting as she felt them stand as well.
If she didn’t get some of this out now, it would fester like an open wound, and
that couldn’t be good for any of them.
    “It wasn’t you. Either of you.” She stared out at the Gulf,
unable to stomach turning around to face them as she confessed. At least
partially. The reason she left was easy. The reason she kept running was more
complicated. “At least nothing intentional. You were yourselves and that’s all
I ever could have asked for.”
    She felt them step closer, one man on either side,
bracketing her. It reminded her of lying between them at the hotel. After
everything had changed. “It was so right between you guys. So peaceful and
calm.”
    Snyder’s hand brushed a few strands of hair out of her face,
sending a flood of chills racing over her skin despite the humidity. “Not what
you wanted or expected?”
    Nothing in her life had ever been as she’d expected and she
liked it that way. Until Snyder and Trip came along. They’d blown her way of
life right out of the sky. “Chasing with you two has always been thrilling.
This out of control roller coaster I couldn’t stop. Every moment was the edge
of your seat feeling I love so much.” Her heart jumped in elation as she
remembered how it had felt to be joined with them.
    “And that night wasn’t?”
    “No, it was. But it was different. A thrill I hadn’t seen
coming. I’ve always been at home surrounded by the extreme and that night—”
    “Changed everything you know?” Snyder finished.
    Kate nodded, her stomach turning over on itself. She placed
a hand over her mid-section in an effort to settle it. “I didn’t know if I
could handle that. If it was what I wanted of my life with you. It felt
comfortable to me, but it also…didn’t. Then I saw the way you two fit so well
together when I got up and I knew I had no right to disrupt what you two had.”
    Tripp’s eyes flared with heat as his fists balled at his
sides. “We told—”
    “I was wrong. I know that now. But it didn’t stop me from
thinking it at the time, you have to know that. I could see the three of us,
settling down and finding a place to live.”
    “But that’s not you. Us. Any of us. We move from place to
place depending