Somehow this turned into one of the longest chapters yet. I don't think you guys will be too mad at that, though, or that it's going up so quick. Enjoy your weekend! Minor Mature Content Warning.

She is my hurricane, and I am her ocean. And we could make the biggest waves. – "Waves" by Kris Allen

Quil

Claire turns seventeen today, the first Wednesday in September.

It's bittersweet.

I don't say it aloud or tell this fear to anyone but the darkness of the nighttime, but it's possible this will be Claire's last birthday with her mother.

No one else says anything either, but it's in the silence: the way during meals the only sound is forks scraping plates or Hannah's labored breathing as she tries to eat. The retching noises that float from the bathroom after she realizes she can't. Sometimes she doesn't make it all the way there, and Jonathan, Claire, or I will clean up the mess while the others clean up dinner.

I've seen Claire vacuum loose clumps of hair from almost every surface of the house while Jonathan chops vegetables for smoothies, since Hannah's tongue is too raw, teeth too sensitive for anything harder.

During movies, Jon will massage Hannah's feet and and she'll bruise almost instantly if he presses too hard. Paper cuts will bleed for more than fifteen minutes, and I'll have to run and get bandages and gauze from the next-door neighbor. A paper cut.

Somehow, it was decided without words that we will leave Callie out of this as much as possible.

I wish there were a way to leave Claire out of it, too, but she's planted herself so firm and deep in it, I'm afraid she won't survive being uprooted.

The worst of it, though (as if it can be sorted like that, a neat little list titled Best to Worst Chemo Symptoms), is that for every day that passes, Hannah's headaches get louder and louder, and the music gets quieter and quieter.

Summer is well and truly over now, but Claire didn't go to school yesterday. Or today.

"It's your birthday," Hannah had said this morning from her now-permanent nest on the couch. "Go surf! Go to Seattle. Do something fun. On me. Here," she'd said, reaching for her wallet. It was somewhere below the mass of papers on her lap. She's been writing a lot lately. In journals, on napkins, receipts, even the takeout menu from where I brought home Chinese food last week.

I didn't see the denomination of the bill she slipped Claire, but I knew Claire wouldn't spend it. She'll find a way to slip it back inside her mom's purse later.

Now, we're breathless and fatigued ourselves, the waves taking more out of us than we had to give. It was a cloudy day, and with school back in session the beach remained mostly private.

Mostly, but not completely. Which is why Claire and I go back to my place so I can give her her present.

Birthdays don't have the same 'experiences only' stipulation we've put on Christmas. I'll thank whoever Up There made this happen, on hands and knees if I've gotta. It's this surfing book Claire's been on the hunt for forever, by one of her surfing idols. It's hard to find, even harder to find in decent shape. I set up eBay alerts and everything. I outbid nine other people for this thing.

But there's no way Claire's going to want to flip through it with sand-encrusted fingernails. I leave the wrapped present on the table.

"You should hop in the shower first," I say, already tugging her toward the bathroom. "You're shivering."

"You need one too," she snorts, pushing the door open and flicking on a light. "You smell like a wet dog."

"Har har. Go ahead, I'll grab some clothes for you."

As I enter my room, the shower starts up, and I hear shorts hit the floor. My dick enjoys the thought of whatever's happening in that bathroom. Does Claire always take her bottoms off first, then her shirt? Is that the way she puts them on in the mornings, only in reverse?

I imagine the path her hands would take over her body as she washes herself. She'd probably scrub her left arm first since she's right-handed. I imagine my loofah—blue, her favorite—slipping over her rounded breasts and dark nipples, the ones that are just barely visible if her top's thin enough. Down her soft stomach. Through dark curls between her legs, the ones I thought I'd seen earlier when she shifted just so on her board.

My dick is now more than enjoying these images, and the walk back to the bathroom is more than uncomfortable.

I knock on the door, my mind swirling down the drain like the soapy water in Claire's shower. Her voice grants me entrance.

When I push open the door, intent to leave a towel on the toilet and clothes on the counter, I stop.

Claire's still standing where I left her, just in her bikini. She clears her throat, cheeks pink. "What if you came in with me?"

That last wave must have rattled my brain harder than I thought. "In the bathroom?"

"In the shower."

It sounds simultaneously like the best and worst idea in the world. I'm speechless.

Claire's neck reddens, and in her half-state of dress, I think I see it spread toward the line of her cleavage. But to fully see it, I'd have to be staring. Which I'm not.

"I just thought," she says, "I have a lot of sand on my back, and I don't think I can get it all by myself. It'd be easier with four hands instead of two."

Claire's a smart girl; if she thinks four hands are better than two, then who am I to argue? The logic is sound. The sand I now feel on my back itches, amplifies the situation until it feels like life or death.

My heart is a bass drum. My shorts are pulled tight over my growing need. "O… kay."

"I'll keep my bathing suit on," Claire says as if that will make a difference, reaching for the shower curtain. She helped me pick it out last summer, back before everything had changed. It's a soft blue and cream pattern, waves kissing the shore.

"Me too," I say before I think it through, and Claire pulls the curtain back and slips inside.

I need to calm down before I follow, though.

Three deep breaths don't help. Thinking my go-to erection-enders don't help. Thinking I'll just take care of this later doesn't help.

And then something does.

"Quil?" Claire says softly, and I move toward the sound on impulse. It's a siren song, my name on her lips.

I pull back the curtain, and enter the shower.

I've seen Claire wet before, and I've made Claire wet before. But Claire is wet and then she's wet, the scent of it filling the shower along with steam and heat.

For a second we just stare. The water's skimming the top of her head and hitting me mid-chest, so our eyes lock through the stream of hard water. At our feet, sand and dirt slide along the floor toward the drain.

I break first, because I'm two seconds from pushing her back against the wall. "Hand me the loofah?"

She passes it over. Watches as I lather it with probably too much soap, and start running it over my chest. Claire tracks my movements with her eyes, fists tight at her side and pulse jumping in her neck.

I won't be able to do a full wash with these shorts on, but I get my chest and underarms before I offer the sponge. "Get my back?"

A strangled noise comes from her mouth in place of an answer, but I get the message. I turn slowly to face away from her.

The soap is soft enough to send a shock down my spine, and she pauses. Only for a second. Then I feel her step closer—her breath tickles as she works the loofah over my skin. I track her movements based on muscle group: traps, delts, rhomboids, teres. Then lower: lats, the edges of my obliques. At first she was just using the loofah, but somewhere around the bottom of my shoulder blades she brought her other hand up too.

I'm pretty sure right now she's just… learning. Pressing harder in some spots that make me groan in one type of pleasure, some in another, and cataloging the difference. I drop my head to my chest and brace against the shower wall with one hand, content to let her explore my back for as long as she likes. The soap is all washed away by now. I can teach her the scientific names of those muscles. I bet it'd be incredibly sexy to watch her lips form the words erector spinae.

She presses her thumb into one of the dimples above my waist, and instead of groaning, I moan. Her name.

Her hands fall away. "I'm done. All good."

If I face her, I will either embarrass myself or make the situation worse. Probably both, knowing my luck. "Turn around," I say.

I wait until her breath at my back disappears and her feet shuffle on the silted floor, and I turn. The loofah hangs loosely in her hand, and I snag it.

But then I look down at her, the way the water drips off the ends of her hair and runs in rivulets down her spine. Disappears into her bikini bottoms.

And I lose the plot.

I move the hair off her back. It's tangled and thick, and good God do I want it wrapped around my fist.

She's seventeen, the angel on my shoulder reminds me.

Yeah, but you made her come for the first time when she was sixteen, the devil on the other one says. And that's not counting all the times she's done it herself.

The steam in here has somehow collected in my throat—a feat of science, really. I swallow it down and continue collecting her hair to the side, revealing more and more smooth skin.

She was wrong. There's no sand here. But I add soap to the loofah and start on her shoulders anyway.

I can't stand too close to her, otherwise…

Well.

Never mind.

I slip the sponge across her skin, watching with rapt attention as her skin turns white with bubbles. I could spell my name. Q-U-I-L, I think, right there on her brown skin. There's a stretch mark across her left hip that could serve a dual purpose.

I'd have more space if this pesky bikini strap wasn't dissecting her in half. Frustrated, dazed, distracted, I push my thumb up under it to move it out of the way. But it slips off and snaps her skin instead.

Claire gasps so quietly it's almost just another inhale. Al-fucking-most. But then she shifts her thighs together, turns her head so I'm on the very edge of her periphery, and bites her lip.

"D'you like that, sweetheart?" I ask, half-serious, half-sex. What am I doing? I don't know who's running the show, but it's not me.

She nods, and then it's my index finger that's hooking the fabric, pulling it taut, letting it go on purpose. She gasps louder this time, mixed with a little moan.

Q-U-I-L, I remember.

It's second nature to unclip the top, letting it fall to her front. It's second nature to suds her entire back until she's covered, neck to hips, in white foam that smells of sugar. It's second nature to lift my finger and begin to write my name.

Her hips cant backward, grazing my ever-present erection, and I buck forward, and it's the couch all over again, except it's not. It's a thousand fucking degrees in this shower, and we've both got clothes on, and it's the hottest moment of my life. Claire is wet, wet, soaking wet.

I look down, surprised to see an M instead of a Q. My name does not start with M. But my finger keeps moving. The loofah falls somewhere by our ankles, and my other hand grips her hip, sliding off at first before I firm up my hold.

I, I draw next. The soap is sliding off too fast, so I reach up hastily and shove the shower head to the side. My groan draws one from Claire's throat.

M-I-N-E, I write.

I want to write it everywhere on her body. And I want to start with my tongue on her pussy. Start there and finish there and stay there every minute in between.

"Hands on the wall, Claire," I request, except it sounds more like a command.

Which she follows without dissent. Her palms slap the wall, and I can't remember the last time I was so in control of my body and out of it at the same time.

The couch, the devil reminds me.

My lips find Claire's shoulder, and I know if I were to look down, I'd see her breasts free, the fabric of her top swaying loosely. I shut my eyes tighter.

"Your clothes are staying on," I gruff against her spine next. But not for much longer, so help me. "I won't break the rules." This time.

I'm pitched so far forward over her she's almost bent in half. She whimpers, shoves back into me again. I imagine sinking my teeth into the soft flesh.

And so I do. I drop to my knees behind her and grip her thighs and close my teeth around the exposed flesh of her ass.

Her legs would give out if I wasn't holding her up. I nudge her legs apart with my knee; her feet go parallel against the walls of the tub.

She's right there, and she's so wet and wet that her bottoms are soaked through. I can see the outline of her. But I don't touch, not yet. M-I-N-E, I say in nibbles down her right thigh, then up her left. Just hard enough to leave a mark, but not so hard it will last more than an hour or two.

M-I-N-E, I think as she tips forward more, exposing herself further. Her skin is darker between her thighs, where they must rub together as she walks. It's softer, too. I can tell it's sensitive there, so I let my tongue love it as opposed to my teeth.

Slippery.

Slippery soap, slippery slope, slippery skin.

M-I-N-E, I groan as I finally let my thumb trace the shadow of her heat.

"Fu—oh God," Claire corrects at the last second, then something else that could either be so hot or don't stop or, hell, I don't know, let's rock. I'm not thinking so straight these days.

Not straight at all. I'm thinking in the curve of her body above me, in the way the fabric goes darker and wetter at my contact, in the spaces that beg to be filled.

"Can I see you?" I say.

"Whatever you want," she returns, which is a dangerous blanket statement.

M-I-N-E, I spell with the fingertip that moves the fabric to the side. A dark pink rose is revealed to me, petals dripping. It sets something off in me, to see her wanting this bad. Somehow, it turns my own desire down a notch. No way I could think about myself when she's this desperate. No way I could ever leave her with this much unresolved tension.

"Oh, Claire," I murmur, when what I really mean is M-I-N-E. I trace it on the tight, swollen bud.

"Like that," she says suddenly after I finish the word the first time. "Just like that."

Eventually I spell it in ALL CAPS and in bold. Over and over and over. All the while, my mouth embosses it on her ass, her thighs, the back of her knee and the base of her spine.

I want to taste her more than I want to breathe, but I know I won't be able to stop there. I'll want to take her here, just like this, against this steamed-up wall. I'll want to take her to bed and, more than likely, never let her leave.

And that would be selfish of me.

So I resist.

"Touch yourself too," Claire moans.

I'm already removing my hand from her thigh, my other hard at work between her legs. "You've gotta hold yourself up, sweetheart. Can you do that for me?" My hand dig into my shorts and pull myself free, and the relief I feel is secondary to the overwhelming urge to come.

"Yes." Her forehead finds the wall, and even though she said she had it, her legs quiver. I track a water drop as it slides down her thigh and onto the tip of my tongue. "Quil," she breathes, and her shaking breaks more water drops free. "Quil, I can't hold out. I can't wait for you."

"I'm there," I say because I am, racing to catch all the water on my tongue. My grip is tight, but I know, as I circle the pad of my thumb around Claire's entrance, that she will be tighter.

I don't really know who goes first, if Claire's breathy, high-pitched moans tug me to follow or if my groan at her backside makes her tumble too. But I spill in long, jerking spurts onto the shower floor, right between her feet, and she comes all over my hand, and the specifics don't really matter all that much.

Still not sex, I tell myself as I stand on shaky legs. As I re-clip Claire's bikini while she holds her hair to the side. As we turn, backs to each other this time, and finish cleaning up on our own.

Still not sex.

"Claire asked me to show her what sex was like," Nessie Black murmurs after everyone has gotten their fill of hotdogs and burgers and pie, so much fucking pie. "Do you have any idea why she'd ask me something like that, Quil?"

Days have passed in a tiring blur since Claire's birthday, nothing ever fully taking shape in front of me except Claire, always my exception.

Hannah's treatments have ramped up in frequency and intensity, as have her symptoms. I move from work to home to Claire's place on autopilot, helping with housework and errands and cleaning when I can. Jonathan has given up on asking when I'll be leaving at night, because most nights I don't. I don't think half of the Youngs would remember to eat if I didn't place food in their direct line of sight.

But there was one shining beacon of hope (God, what an overused phrase; I sort of hate it; I also sort of hate how it's the only thing remotely applicable) that broke through the fog only nine days ago:

Embry Call, my brother, my best friend, is a father.

We're having a beach picnic today in celebration: Sadie's adoption was finalized last week. Or maybe I should say legalized, because Embry's acted like her father for a lot longer than the law recognized him as one. A lot longer than it seems like mine did, according to my mother.

The thought pricks some residual indignation, simmering at the base of my sternum.

My mother knew about the affair. My entire childhood has been rewritten in my memory, the filter switched from warm gold to rusted copper, the kind you'd find on an old nail or jagged knife.

Obviously I'm dealing with some misplaced anger. The problem is that I can't figure out where it would be properly placed. My father is dead. My mother is a liar. There are no good choices. That's why I've avoided making one at all.

What was Nessie's question, again? Claire wants to know what sex is like, firsthand?

Yes, I think, it's probably got something to do with that day I practically ate her out from behind in the shower. Or how when we were alone again, I slipped my hand in her panties and told her next time she'd be naked. How I'm pretty sure the bet is smashed to smithereens because I've got a running tally of all the times I've touched her, and it's edging out of single digits.

"No clue," I say with a shrug. "Maybe she thought you'd take pity since she helped birth your daughter and saw you and Jake naked as a consequence." My neck is hot as I tack on, "Did you? Show her, I mean."

She can, that's the thing. If Nessie feels so inclined, all she has to do is use her special voodoo vampire powers and project her memories.

Nessie snorts. "She's seventeen," she says before walking down the beach toward Leah, who's just arrived with her imprint Adam and their son Caleb.

Automatically, my eyes find Claire again.

She's down by the water with her nephews. Levi will be five in April, and Lucas just turned two in August.

I used to think it would be hard to keep track of all the kids' ages, but it's not: Sadie (my niece, now, I guess—weird, but somehownot) turns ten in January; the twins turn four in March; Marie and Caleb will share their own fourth birthday on the fifth next month. And Kim Cameron will round it out when her baby boy arrives in December.

Boys: four. Girls: four.

Tie game.

But I suspect that's leaving single digits soon, too. (There's a bet on who the tiebreaker will be. I'm still hoping it's Bethany.) It will probably get harder to keep track, the more kids there are. Hell, we share a phone tree; maybe I'll start a fucking family calendar or some shit. Set up reminders so I know how many gifts I gotta buy each month.

Someone punches me in the arm. "You're drooling," Bethany says.

I roll my eyes and tap her lightly back on her shoulder. "You stole the mug. When did you do that?" The mug is mine, personalized with my name, and it magically disappears from my house every time Bethany steps foot inside. I got her one as a wedding present, and now instead of us each having our own, we usually either have two or zero.

Her red hair blows in the wind around her, and she reaches up with her left hand to smooth it back. The rock that lives there shines back at me even though the sun is nowhere to be found (way to go, Embry, making all other men in history look dirt poor in comparison).

"I may have had some help," she says, her chin dipping toward Claire.

I groan. "I'm not ready for you two to be in cahoots yet."

Her vibrant green eyes find mine again. "Speaking of cahoots, you won't believe what Claire asked me the other day."

I groan again, because if anyone's going to give Claire a play-by-play of losing your virginity, it will be the girl who got pregnant losing hers. "I have a pretty good guess."