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Monsoon Passions

I hadn’t set foot in Bali for ten years—not since that summer internship when I’d been a cocky business student and he’d been the local surf god who made my life hell. Marco. The name still made my jaw tighten. Now I was back, owning a small yoga retreat on the edge of Seminyak, trying to find peace. Peace was the last thing I found when I discovered the plot of land next door had been bought and turned into a surf school. His surf school.

The first time I saw him again, he was shirtless, waxing a longboard, his dark curls bleached at the tips by the sun, his body a map of lean muscle and old tattoos. He looked up, and those hazel eyes locked onto mine with the same arrogant spark. “Leo? No fucking way.”

“Marco.” I kept my voice flat. “You’re my new neighbor.”

He grinned, that infuriating, knowing grin. “Looks like it. Still as stiff as ever, I see.”

The tension between us was instant, a live wire. Over the next week, we argued over everything—the shared path to the beach, the noise of his students, the way his clients sometimes wandered onto my property for shade. It was petty, but it felt like a continuation of our old war. He’d outed me to a group of friends back then, laughed when I flushed with shame. Now here we were, both in our thirties, and the hatred still simmered.

Then the monsoon warning came. A big storm was rolling in, and the guests evacuated. My villa, built on stilts, was safer than his beachfront shack. He showed up at my door, drenched, his board under his arm. “Roof’s leaking. Can I crash here until this passes?”

I wanted to say no. But the wind was howling, and the rain was coming sideways. I let him in.

The electricity went out an hour later. We sat in the candlelit living room, drinking arrack. The anger between us was a third presence in the room. He accused me of looking down on him, a local boy made good. I accused him of never growing up. We stood up at the same time, chests heaving.

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