Chapter Fifteen

Cooper

I broke the surface with a gasp, the jolt from the cold water like a hundred volts of electricity being fired into my body.

Kate bobbed up a second later. “Oh my gosh, it’s cold!”

“Hey, you’re the one who decided to throw me into the water.”

A shiver wracked her body. “I meant to make you almost fall, not actually fall. And I like how you took me with you.”

“I just figured you’d want to follow your own advice about enjoying the water.”

She splashed water at me. “Oh, sure. Now you listen to me.”

I slapped the surface of the water with my palm out, sending a spray at her. We laughed, and then we fired at will, stream after stream. Some crashed in the middle, and some hit their target.

Little by little, my body got used to the cold water. Or maybe it grew numb, but either way, it wasn’t so bad anymore.

Kate ran her hands through her hair, slicking it back away from her face. “Okay, let’s see who can spin all the way around and come back up faster. Ready…? Go!”

I dove under the surface, tucking and spinning, and kicked for all I was worth.

She was already up and waiting. “You lose.” She added a victory dance, doing some kind of chicken thing with her arms as she made an oot-oot taunting noise.

“And you wonder why I get so serious about winning. Where’s my ‘good try; you’ll get ’em next time’?”

“Good try, sport, but you had your ass handed to you.” She giggled, apparently thinking she was hilarious. And okay, she kinda was.

“Fine. Let’s see who can hold their breath longer.” I lifted my fingers toward my nose to plug it.

“No way.” Kate shook her head. “In, like, every movie where they do that, the other dude doesn’t come up, and then the person is left swimming alone, calling their name in a panic.”

“You’ve seen too many movies,” I said.

“Go ahead and hold your breath, then. If the sea monster gets you while you’re down there, just know that I’m not coming after you.”

I laughed and swam closer. I reached down and grabbed her leg, laughing harder when she squealed. She kicked me and stuck out her tongue. “Jerk.”

Unlike when she called me Coach Jerk Face earlier, this time there was a lighter, joking tone to her voice.

Suddenly she lurched toward me, her arms wrapping around my neck. “Okay, for reals, I just felt something slip past my leg.” Her gaze skimmed the surface of the lake. “I’m telling myself it’s just a fish, but it felt like a really big fish.”

“There are some pretty big fish in here.” I paused for dramatic effect. “Then there’s the alligators.”

“I know there aren’t any alligators,” she said with a click of her tongue, but she still searched the area around us.

“Okay, but I know for a fact that the police caught a couple last year.” It was true, but they were little ones, and the police concluded they were pets someone had abandoned. If the owners had done any research, they’d know the water was way too cold in the winter for alligators to survive it. But I wasn’t going to tell Kate that quite yet—messing with her was too much fun. “Do you see the way the water’s parting over there? I thought it was a log, but a log doesn’t move like that.”

She practically crawled up me, her grip on my neck nearing chokehold levels. “Not funny.”

I was going to tease her some more, because we hadn’t even covered snake territory yet, but then I noticed the soft press of her curves, and how if I looked down, I could see her skin and her polka dot bra through her shirt. And then I couldn’t stop looking and noticing, even though I knew I shouldn’t be.

My breath grew shallow, and for a couple of seconds, I forgot I needed to continue to tread water, and we started dipping lower.

“Okay, I think that’s enough enjoying the lake by being inside of it today. I’m ready to get back to rowing.” Kate let go of me and swam toward the boat, and as she climbed in, I noticed a few other things I shouldn’t. Namely her legs and the way her clothes molded to her body, every curve on display.

Get it together, Callihan. Still, I couldn’t help thinking she was right earlier when she said I didn’t slow down enough to enjoy the actual lake. I was in such a hurry to be on the water as much as possible before my time ran out that I forgot to actually appreciate the ability to get lost out here. The sense of calm it brought to my life, and how it felt more like my home than my house sometimes.

I lifted myself into the boat and returned Kate’s smile. Goose bumps covered her skin and water dripped from her hair and clothes into a puddle on the boat floor. The bit of makeup she’d had on was long gone, and the last rays of the sun spotlighted her natural beauty and those features I was starting to crave seeing.

Kate wadded her hair in her hands and wrung it out. “Did you want to tell me how I was right about how fun it can be to slow down once in a while now, or later?”

I could think of so many girls who would’ve yelled at me for pulling them into the water fully clothed, and how there’d be talk about ruined clothes and hair and makeup. Kate had to be freezing, but she was sitting there all smug, grinning like she’d just had the best adventure.

While I was slowing down and enjoying things, I figured I should add the time she and I had left together to that list, too.

By the time we made it back to my truck, we were both cold and tired. Kate was still in a happy mood, but I worried she’d catch pneumonia or something, like every person over the age of forty threatened kids they’d do if they didn’t cart around big coats 24/7.

I cranked the heater and looked behind my seat. “Jackpot.” I handed my hoodie over to Kate.

“But what about you?”

“I’m fine,” I said, ignoring the squish of my jeans against the seat as I moved to start the truck. “Just put it on. Please.”

She nodded and tugged it over her head. Unfortunately, with her wet clothes, I knew she’d still be far from warm. The twenty-minute drive to her house didn’t usually seem like a big deal, but that long being cold and wet—not to mention all the time we’d spent on the lake that way—was adding up fast.

My house sat behind us, a dim outline against the setting sun.

Wednesday meant Dad played golf this afternoon, and he almost always went drinking with the good old boys after. Since his current case left his stress level high, things were tenser at home between him and Mom as well right now, so most likely he’d stay out late.

“This is crazy riding around in wet clothes like this,” I said. “Why don’t we go dry off and warm up at my place, and then I’ll drive you home later?”

Kate hugged her arms around herself as she cast a quick glance at my house. She nodded, her teeth chattering together. “Okay. I’ll just text my mom and let her know.”

Her eyes widened when she took her phone out of my glove box. “Mick texted me. He actually texted me! I figured it was a long shot, or that he’d take days, but”—her voice pitched higher—“he texted me!”

She tapped on the screen and her happy expression morphed into one of confusion.

Was it wrong to hope he’d said something extremely stupid or jackass-ish? Something that would land him way past the ten spot on her Kanye Douchebag Scale, so he’d look a lot worse than me.

“All it says is ‘what’s up?’” She turned the screen to me and practically shoved it in my face, so close the words blurred. “What am I supposed to do with this?”

Ignore him and keep hanging out with me. For no other reason than to have fun. Needing a distraction, I drove the few yards to park in my driveway. Of course when I stopped the truck she was still looking at me all expectantly. “Uh, type: just messing around with Cooper at the lake.”

“Yeah, but if he thinks I’m with you all the time, won’t he start thinking I’m with you, with you and stop talking to me?”

One can only hope. I knew that my hope was in vain, though, because that’d require him being a gentleman, and he wasn’t much of one. So he’d read between the lines and take it as she and I were messing around, and turn it into how he wanted to mess around with her, which sent enough heat through my veins that I wasn’t all that cold anymore. It’s what she wants. Why she’s here with you in the first place.

I tried to remind myself yet again that I was avoiding drama and getting carried away with Kate and the act we put on in public for her mission, and forced my reply through clenched teeth. “Trust me. Send the text.”

She spoke the words as she typed, the exact ones I’d fed to her, and then she sent the text about going to my house to her mom.

I wasn’t nearly as eager to take her inside after that stupid texting thing, but it didn’t change the fact that she needed warm, dry clothes. I called out for my mom as I ushered Kate inside, but she didn’t answer, so it looked like we had the place to ourselves.

I took her up to my room and dug through my drawers until I found a T-shirt and some sweats I’d outgrown years ago. I pointed her toward the bathroom adjacent to the guestroom so she could take a hot shower and get her body temperature up.

I broke off to my bathroom to do the same, and about fifteen minutes later, we met back up in the hallway. I took her wet clothes and tossed them into the dryer, trying not to let my eyes linger when I spotted the polka dot bra among her things. It had a pink bow in the middle.

Okay, so I failed at not lingering.

When I returned to my room, Kate was seated on my desk chair, twisting it one way and then the other. My too-long sweat pants pooled around her ankles and she had the sleeves of my hoodie rolled up. Her wet hair looked darker than usual, and it was messy, like she’d tried to finger-comb it, only to abandon the attempt halfway through.

I drank in the view, surprised by how much I enjoyed seeing her in my clothes, in my room, and a word that had no business being there popped into my head: mine.

But then my gaze lifted to her face.

She had on that fixated, calculating expression that instinctively sent trepidation through my gut. Those big green eyes came back from whatever planet they’d been visiting and focused on me. Something told me I wasn’t going to like the next words out of her mouth. “Mick didn’t text me back yet.”

Guess I was wrong. That’s not so ba—

“I assume you have a laptop somewhere around here? Can you pull up his social media profiles and help me do some light recon?”

And there it is.

“Hear me out,” she said, rolling the chair toward me. “Remember there’s a tight deadline.”

As if I could forget.

“And I just feel like I’m not utilizing every tool at my disposal, and clearly I need all the help I can get. With your input to guide me, surely I can figure out what I need to do to get to the next level. Plus, when I’m on my profile, I’m always worried I’ll accidentally hit Like on an old picture and look like a total stalker.”

Yeah, we wouldn’t want it to look like that.

“Not that I look all the time. Only once in a while, really.” One more scoot brought her knees to mine. She reached up and grabbed my hand. “Please.”

Two minutes later, we were seated on my bed with my laptop. I scrolled through my Facebook feed.

“You just passed a post that you need to go back to,” Kate said. “Quick. Go back, go back!”

I dragged my fingers on the scroll pad until she said, “There.”

A picture of a puppy and a kitten snuggling filled the screen. The post insisted that if you liked it, the world would magically be better to animals, and butterflies and rainbows would rain down amazing karma on you or some shit, but if you ignored it, you’d have bad karma for a year.

I glanced from it to Kate, then slowly scrolled past it again.

Kate tsked and shook her head. “So you’re saying you don’t need any good karma, not for animals and not for you? Even though you have a race coming up?”

“It’s more that I don’t negotiate with meme terrorists.”

Kate tried to hide her laugh. No doubt she liked every damn one of those posts, and because I’d clearly lost my mind over the girl, I found it incredibly endearing. If I had any good karma to give, it was hers.

“Looks like he posted something about an hour ago,” Kate said, reaching right over me and clicking over to Mick’s profile.

His pictures and deep thoughts filled the screen—I’d really been trying to avoid this. It was why I hadn’t just clicked on his profile from the beginning.

“Okay, now you take the wheel,” she said. “It makes me too nervous.”

I slowly dragged the cursor down, hoping she’d get whatever fix she was looking for and the torture would end soon.

Kate’s fingers brushed my knee. “Wait, scroll up again.”

My pulse quickened as she rested her hand where her fingers had brushed, her touch soaking through the thin cotton of my sweats. I swallowed and kept my eyes glued to the screen as I followed her instructions. If I looked at her, I was afraid I’d lose it and either tell her this was ridiculous and I wanted out—in words that’d probably come out way too harsh sounding—or that I’d try to kiss her.

So I just scrolled back up to post 307 of Mick talking about how awesomesauce he was at football and how hard it was for him to choose a school, and in #firstworldproblems news, the coaches from the colleges were calling him every day now.

Woe is you, dude, at least you get a choice. Harvard was nothing to turn my nose up at, and the truth was, I did want to go there. They had a great rowing team, and they were number one in marine biology, a subject I’d love to explore more and possibly major in. To go and study political science instead? It seemed like a wasted opportunity. But I didn’t dare say that to dear old Dad.

Kate made a hmmm noise. “Okay, go to his recent check-ins…”

I stop and say hi to a girl I kinda sorta know one day after school, and now it’s come to this… Cyber stalking a guy I can’t stand for someone I want to stand close to a little more than I should.

She leaned close enough I could feel the warmth radiating off her body. Okay, a lot more than I should.