Free Beyond the Waves (Pacific Shores Book 1) by Lynnette Bonner

the sand. “Kylen, I just don’t know if I can go there again.”
    He stiffened, and his hand paused at the base of her neck. Then he placed his hands on his knees and stood. “I see. I’ll go get Marie and Brice.”
    Pain clenched Taysia’s chest until she could hardly breathe as she watched Kylen walk slowly down the beach, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his shorts. She dashed at the tears on her cheeks with the flats of her fingers and headed back to the car to wait for them.
    Kylen was strong. And there would be plenty of women for him to choose from. He would be fine. And she had Blaine. They would both be fine.

Chapter 5
    Kylen walked down the beach a way and then paused, looking out over the endless motion of the water. He sighed and rolled his head from side to side as he let his mind wander back over the years to high school.
    That first summer, he and Taysia had become friends almost immediately. Their friendship had quickly blossomed into romance, and he had finally worked up his nerve and kissed her under the grape arbor in her backyard. That night she had shared her fears with him. She had never been popular at school. She’d always just been “Chubby Taysia Green.” Earlier that year, before he arrived, she had determined to lose weight and help women do the same in the future, but she knew nothing would change at school. She told him she was afraid when school started he would turn his back on her, because no one was going to like him if he hung out with Fatty Four-Eyes. He had assured her nothing could be further from the truth.
    Kylen huffed a breath of disgust with himself and scuffed his toe through the sand. That first year, things had been okay between him and Taysia for a while, but eventually the ribbing he took at school for hanging around her got to him, and he’d slowly stopped sitting with her, walking home with her, talking with her.
    The hurt in her big gray eyes the first time he’d passed her by in the cafeteria to sit instead with the football players and cheerleaders pierced his heart. The first time she called a greeting to him across their lawns, and he merely waved and headed to the beach with his new friends, her shoulders had slumped. He’d felt like a cad, but he’d valued popularity more than his relationship with her.
    Soon, like a dog that gets cuffed every time its owner is around, she carefully began evading him. Even during the summers, she made a point of staying as far from him as possible. And, selfishly, he hadn’t given her a serious thought until the night of their senior prom.
    Taysia had been so beautiful that night.
    Her date was Darwin Schwartz, a punk rocker with a tattoo of a dragon on his neck and a silver earring that dangled down so far it bumped against his shoulder. Darwin hadn’t been at the prom for fifteen minutes before he was well on his way to being drunk.
    None of the jocks had been able to tear their eyes off Taysia, all of them wishing they’d had enough guts to be the first to break the “Taysia Green Taboo” and ask her to the prom themselves. Kylen included. Her sapphire-blue dress hung just off slender, tanned shoulders, and a small sapphire-and-diamond pendant graced the hollow of her throat. Somewhere in her high school years, Taysia had learned she couldn’t be anybody but herself, and she’d stopped trying to impress the popular people. She mingled around the room chitchatting with her friends, and everyone in the room noticed her exquisite beauty. It was a beauty that emanated not only from her outward appearance but from an inner confidence. The fact that Taysia was unaware of it only added to her allure.
    On that night Kylen knew she was the most beautiful girl he’d ever laid eyes on. His date, Sophia Clinesmith, had known it too and hadn’t liked the way Kylen watched Taysia across the room.
    Sophia waited until Taysia stopped by the punch bowl and then approached her. Filling her own cup, she angled Taysia a