Marston
October 27th, before
Nothing feels better after a day of working in the Knoxes’ endless gardens than diving into the cool waters of Lake Blackledge. The sun is low in the sky, and the warm late-day light makes the water’s surface sparkle. Everyone thinks it’s too cold to swim, but I don’t mind it. In fact, I prefer the lake without all the people from school crowding the beach. I like the quiet. The solitude.
“What are you doing out there?” someone calls from the shore, and it’s the only voice I want to hear right now.
Treading water, I squint in Brinley’s direction.
I swallow hard at the sight of her. She’s in a dress that comes down to her knees with a little sweater on top. Even from a distance, I can tell she looks beautiful. But she always looks like that. In the shed at school last week, we decided to be friends, but I haven’t seen her since. Friends, we decided. But I have no idea how to be friends with her.
“Hey,” I call, heading to shore. “What are you doing here?”
“I saw your car,” she says. She kicks off her shoes and tiptoes into the water until it laps at her shins. She shudders. “Are you trying to freeze to death?”
I grin, still moving closer. “It’s not that cold.”
“It’s not warm, either.” She wraps her arms around her waist.
Once my feet hit the bottom of the lake, I walk toward her until the water’s barely up to my waist. “It feels warmer if you get all the way in.”
“I’ll take your word for it.” Her gaze dips to my chest then farther down before snapping back up. “You’re not even wearing swim trunks.”
I laugh. Under the water, my cotton boxer briefs cling to me. “I didn’t have any with me.”
“So why did you get in?”
I shrug. “I wanted to.”
She looks over her shoulder toward the beach and the small parking lot beyond.
“Don’t worry,” I say. “No one’s out here to see you talking to me.”
She licks her lips then turns back to shore.
That ended quickly.
But when she reaches her shoes, she doesn’t put them back on. Instead, she takes off her sweater, then unzips her dress and lets it fall to the sand.
I can’t speak. Can’t breathe.
She shivers, but when she faces me again, she has a big smile on her face.
Her underwear isn’t any more revealing than a bikini—hell, I came to the more popular part of this lake when I first came to town, and there were girls in bikinis that exposed way more than Brinley’s lacey white bra and cotton panties—but there’s something about this that’s so much sexier. Maybe it’s knowing I’m not supposed to know her like this. It’s like she’s letting me in on a secret—showing me more of herself than I’m supposed to see.
“If I get hypothermia, I’m counting on you to bring me to shore and warm me up.”
My eyebrows shoot into my hairline. “Oh, really?”
She seems to realize how that sounded, and her cheeks glow pink. “Oh my God, I didn’t mean it like that. Get your mind out of the gutter.”
I hold up my hands. “I didn’t say a thing.”
“Okay. I’m coming in.”
I grin. “Sure you are.”
She takes a deep breath and takes off in a run into the lake, splashing water everywhere. She stops beside me, the water lapping just below her bra, and squeaks. “So. Cold.”
I take both of her hands and back us into deeper waters. “It’s better if you get your whole body in.”
She lifts onto her tiptoes then dunks down to her neck in the water. “Still cold!”
I laugh and bend my knees to sink deeper with her. “Give it a minute.”
Little by little, she relaxes until she lets out a long breath and lifts her face toward the sky. “Okay, this actually is really nice.”
“See?”
She turns in a slow circle. Following her gaze, I take in the view of the trees and the water, the way the setting sun peeks between the trees and sends dappled light dancing on the water.
“Do you like it?” I want her to. I like Brinley, but I have no idea how to impress a girl who has everything, and somehow, that makes it that much more important that she likes what I like.
“It’s gorgeous.” She swims in circles, and I follow, enjoying the way the water moves over my sore muscles. I spent my whole weekend trimming shrubs and shoveling mulch, and while I don’t mind working with my hands, I’m not used to doing manual labor for eight hours at a time.
When she stops swimming, I can touch bottom, but Brinley has to tread water. She keeps her gaze cast on the opposite shore. I wait, giving her the time she seems to need to process her thoughts, but when she finally turns to me, her face is sad. “We’re friends, right?”
I don’t let my gaze dip beneath the surface of the water as I contemplate this. I’ve had friends, but never one I’ve so desperately wanted to see in wet underwear. I swallow. “Sure.”
“I don’t want to go home.”
A surge of protectiveness washes over me. “Why? What’s going on?”
She shakes her head. “Brittany’s in the hospital again. I just went to visit her, and she was . . .” She drags her bottom lip between her teeth and seems to search for the word. “She didn’t want me there.”
“I’m sorry, Brinley.”
She shakes her head. “No. It’s fine. She’s struggling to stay optimistic, and she’s sick of being sick all the time. She hates the hospital. But . . .”
I can’t pretend to know what that’s like. I used to wish I had a brother—someone to get through the hard times with—but to have that and then feel like you might lose it any day? I can’t imagine how lonely that would be, and Brinley’s loneliness makes my heart ache. I’ve felt it in her since that first night. Maybe that’s what’s always drawn us together. “Why don’t you want to go home?”
She looks to where the sun is disappearing into the trees. “Because she asked me to do her a favor, and I don’t know if I can.”
Only after a long silence do I ask, “Do you want to talk about it—the favor—or . . .”
She shifts in the water and floats toward me.
She loops her arms behind my neck, and my breath catches in my throat, but then her legs come around my waist, and I’m done for. “What are you doing?”
She licks the water off her bottom lip. “Throwing myself at the boy I like.”
“Why?”
She shakes her head, her eyes fixed on my mouth. “Why what?”
“Why—” Fuck it. I don’t need to know. I slide a hand into her wet hair and bring my mouth down to hers. I kiss her gently, and she answers my tenderness with intensity. I can practically taste the need to escape on her lips. She clings tighter and tighter to me, her breasts pressed against my chest, her hands tangling in my hair.
I tear my mouth off hers and kiss my way down her neck, licking and sucking lightly until she’s arching into me and moaning softly in my ear. I kiss across her collarbone up to her ear.
I think about this constantly. Brinley in my arms, kissing her, touching her. I think about it in bed at night. In the shower every morning. In the middle of fucking calculus. I’ve never been so gone for a girl. I keep telling myself it’s because she’s off-limits, but I know it’s more than that. I am so fucking done trying to talk her out of this, trying to pretend I don’t want her with everything I am.
When I lift my head, I draw in a ragged breath. Her eyes are closed and her head’s thrown back, as if to give my mouth access to every inch of her neck. She slowly opens her eyes, and the hunger I see there makes me want her even more. “I don’t want you to be with anyone else,” I say. “Not with Roman or Liam or even some guy who’s actually good enough for you. I want you to be with me.” I swallow. “And I know your parents would lose their minds, so I’m not asking you to tell them, but I’m saying friends isn’t going to be enough for how I feel about you.”
Her lips part. “I can’t stop thinking about you.”
“Same.” I look around. It’s gotten dark, and the only lights come from the rising moon and the houses along the lake. “We should go.”
“I don’t want to go home,” she tells me again.
I shake my head. “We’ll go get dressed and then talk. You go home when you want. I’m not here to boss you around.”
“Good,” she says, but she doesn’t pull back or unhook her legs from my waist, and I don’t try to push her away.
“Are you really mine?” I ask.
She cocks her head to the side. “Depends. Are you mine?”
“Fuck yes.”
Her smile is so big and bright and just for me that I feel like I’ve won the lottery and gotten superpowers all in one fell swoop.