His first thought and a half is of his mom and brother. Bringing Bette to the Monsters would be a major betrayal, even if they fully believed that Monterey 9 was behind the Barrel. Wouldn’t it?

“My family would freak out.”

“Mine, too. Let them. You know this would be good for you. I would simply be your guest, your companion, your driver, your fixer, your protector.”

Casey feels the tingle of sweat on his scalp, like the outrageousness of this idea is heating him up and spilling out.

“Mom and Brock might not believe that article, Bette. They might believe it was Jimmy who did the Barrel. They’ll remember what he said about fire.”

“He’s a show-off and a fool, Casey! You’ve seen him enough to get that!”

At Bette’s rising voice, Mae raises her head and gives them a look. Then hoists herself from the sunny spot, lumbers over, and sits at Casey’s feet.

“Yeah. I get that.”

A beat while Casey tries to find a way that showing up in Half Moon Bay with Bette Wu would not infuriate Jen and Brock. Is he underestimating them? Is it his duty as a man to stand up for someone he’s begun to see as innocent?

“But maybe, Stonebreaker, they’ll see that we are a good combination. Maybe they’ll come to believe that King Jim Seafood had nothing to do with the Barrel—as I have promised on my soul is true. Maybe—with your acceptance of my companionship—they will give me a chance. Maybe the truth will have to be enough for them. Maybe you should trust your judgment above theirs. You can show them a truth they can’t see for themselves. You are twenty-four and a man of intelligence and high moral ambitions. Don’t underestimate yourself.”

Casey tries to think all this over in his plodding, one-fact-at-a-time way. It’s the “ors” that trip him up. And the “ifs” and the “maybes.” It’s always taken him a long time to weigh things and set his course. Brock, it’s always taken him about two seconds.

“I have good feelings for you, Stonebreaker. I know you have good feelings for me.”

He looks at her, feels his blush, nods. Never could keep his emotions off his face.

“Why would you do all that for me?”

“I want you to win. I want you to become, and be recognized as, the best big-wave surfer in the world.”

“I’m barely number ten, Bette.”

“Not if you win the Monsters.”

“I want Brock to win it.”

“Fine. So long as that doesn’t change the way you surf.”

“No, I just surf all out. Everything I have goes into it.”

“That’s why you need calm and peace in Half Moon Bay. The adrenaline alone is enough to tire you. Stay inside yourself. I’ll build an invisible wall around you. Only good thoughts can get in. If you want, I’ll be invisible myself.”

“Sounds cosmic,” he says, thinking it sounds pretty good, too.

“And, Casey? I also want you to win because I’ve bet two thousand dollars on you. I’ll be protecting my investment. You’re paying out four to one. The big money is on the nineteen-year-old from—”

“Tom Tyler. Santa Cruz.” Tyler is the best nineteen-year-old big-wave rider he’s ever seen. Maybe the best, period.

“Woah. Is that BetUS, online?”

“No. It’s a strip mall sports book in the San Gabriel Valley. Nails, massage, too. Don’t ask where.”

Casey pictures his mother’s face when he walks into the restaurant where most of the surfers and their teams and friends and family meet the evening before the contest—Barbara’s Fish Trap.

Walks in with Bette Wu, that is.

Now that’s a painful expression, he thinks.

Brock’s is even worse.

Casey stares long and appraisingly at Bette. She purses her lips, widens her eyes, and turns away like she’s been caught at something. Casey’s long stares have always worried people for as long as he can remember—icy blue eyes that they tell him look cold and removed between blinks, which slow down to almost none.

The cold blue eyes mean he’s thinking, though, his plodding calculations proceeding within.

Bette Wu didn’t dognap Mae to hurt her. Bette and her family didn’t burn up the Barrel.

I want this.

I want her with me for the Monsters.

Mom? Bro?

Believe in me.

“I always stay at the Oceano in Half Moon, with Mom and Brock and Mahina,” he says. “Some of my friends will be there. I leave Mae home.”

“But the Ritz would give you privacy and set you apart as a celebrity surfer, not part of the pack.”

“I want to be part of the pack. Even though some of them think I’m a spoiled Orange County brat.”

“Okay, I’ll book the Oceano instead.”

Casey gives Bette another long, calm, blue-eyed assessment. But this time Bette shows no unease at all, just an equally delivered, analytical return of serve: a nod.

“I’ll profit handsomely if you do what I know you can do. You’ll take home fifty thousand grand-prize dollars if you win. By the way, my gambling instincts have always been very good.”

“I’ll surf good,” he says.

“My father won’t be happy about you and me doing business together,” says Bette. “He’ll hate me, temporarily. I’ve known for a while that I need to break away from him. From King Jim Seafood. From all of what being a part of the Wu family is. You are my harbor, Casey. My berth.”

She reaches over and squeezes Casey’s big warm hand with her own cool and smooth one. He feels a rare, crazy heat inside, spreading from his hand to his heart, then out to everywhere. Who’d have thought that after twenty-plus years in cold oceans his ears could burn this hot? His face? All of him?

“We share a fatal illness, Stonebreaker.”

“Which one? There’s lots of them.”

“Time,” she says.

32