“Your feet were just in it.”
“That’s different.”
“How?” I ask, my arms making tiny waves where they fan out beside me.
“I’ll be naked.”
A smile stretches out across my face. “Well, don’t let me stop you. It’s like bath water out here.”
Her eyes narrow, her hands returning to her hips. “I’m not getting fully naked.”
“I’ll take any degree of nakedness, please and thank you.”
She looks as if she’s valiantly trying not to laugh. “Now I’m tempted to jump in wearing my dress.”
“That’s fine. Then you can change into my clothes when we get inside. That works for me too,” I say, grinning wider.
This time, she can’t hold back her smile or her laughter. She’s so perfect it makes my chest hurt, an ache forming beneath my sternum. God, I’m so in love with her.
The smile she pulled out of me slips away, though, when she reaches for the hem of her dress. In fact, I think I stop breathing altogether. She lifts it slowly over her head, ruffling her short blond hair, and my eyes don’t leave her even as it lands in a pile next to my clothes. She’s stunning in moonlight, the dips of her skin disappearing into shadows that I want to touch and taste.
Before I can look my fill, drink her in, she’s jumping, landing with a splash in the water next to me, coming up looking like something out of one of my dreams. Her skin looks soft as silk, and her smile is bright enough to illuminate the lake if the moon were to slip behind the clouds.
“You’re staring,” she says, silently moving closer to me in the water. Her legs slip against mine, and it takes everything inside me not to reach for her, to let my hands slide against her skin and see if it’s as smooth as it looks.
“Should I look away?”
I expect her to respond with sarcasm, but my throat dries up when she holds my gaze steady and says, “No, I like it when you look at me.”
I want to tell her I’m nevernotlooking at her, that if she’s in the same room as me, my eyes are following her every movement, but I can’t make my mouth work. I can’t do anything but slide my hands the distance between our bodies and pull her closer. I’m tired of all the space I’ve kept between us over the years. I’m tired of being careful. I’m just tired ofwanting.
She must misinterpret the look in my eye, because she asks, “Are you okay after…?”
“After?” I ask, even though I know what she’s referring to. I just don’t want to talk about the dinner, about them. She holds my gaze, not speaking, until I blow out a heavy breath and say, “Yeah, I’m okay. My parents are…” I trail off, not knowing how to finish the sentence, my eyes settling on the trees in the distance. Difficult? Tiring? Disappointing?
“Wrong,” Finley says, and it snaps my attention away from the trees at the other side of the lake. I find her eyes already settled on me, earnest.
“Wrong?”
She nods, scooting even closer to me. We’re almost lined up, our legs tangled as we tread water, skin sliding against skin. Softness against hardness. Roughness against smoothness.
“They’re wrong about you.” She says it with so much certainty that I think I believe her. Holding my gaze, her voice dropping lower, she says, “Your dadis wrong about you, Grey.”
I swallow against the lump forming in my throat, unsure of how to respond.
“What made you want to become a firefighter?” she asks. I probably wouldn’t answer truthfully if her palms didn’t land on my shoulders, her fingers sliding up to thread into the hair at the base of my neck. On instinct, I settle my hands in the dip between her waist and hips. They fit perfectly there, like she was made for me. And that feeling loosens my tongue, making me speak the truth that I never have to anyone else.
“When I was a kid, I overheard my parents arguing,” I start.
She must feel the way my body tenses, because she moves even closer, until we’re lined up completely. My heart thumps in my ears, so loudly I’m sure she can hear it. But for the first time, Iwantto tell this story. I want to let it go so that it might lose some of its power.
“They didn’t argue much, really. I don’t think they ever cared enough to argue. But this one time, it was late at night, and I was small. I’m sure they thought I was asleep, but it was storming, and I woke up and went to their room.” I pause for a moment, avoiding her gaze. I don’t think I can look at her as I say this next part. “My dad was cheating. It wasn’t the first time, and I get the sense that he always has. My mom was fed up, I think, and she told him that the only reason she got pregnant in college was because she knew he was going to end it and she wanted him to be tied to her.”
I feel Finley’s gasp as much as I hear it. Her chest moves against mine with it, and I want to put my face there, let hersmooth her hands through my hair and comfort me. Erase this memory I’ve held on to for so long.
Instead, I keep going, knowing that if I stop, the lump in my throat will grow too large to continue. “She thought that if she got pregnant, he would marry her and quit cheating. I don’t know if he stopped for a while, or if he just married her and continued with the affairs. But either way, they had me, and he never changed. She told him…” I swallow thickly, dragging my eyes up to the darkened sky. “She told him she regretted doing it. That she regretted tying herself to him for the rest of her life. That she would take it back if she could.”
“Grey,” she breathes, sounding as wrecked as I feel. Her hands find my face, tugging it down until we’re eye to eye, until our foreheads are pressed together and we’re breathing the same air. She doesn’t say anything else, because what could she say? But having her here, holding me like this, is more than I could have asked for.
