This was more comfortable ground than sex, thank God.
“I do not want to get hypothermia and die. I want to try something different. Figure something else out. I just... I’m uncomfortable right now. And this is kind of a metaphor for that. I have to submit to the discomfort in order to survive it.”
“Or, I could knock off the rest of the workday and we could sit down on the couch and watch one of your favorite movies.”
She looked suddenly hopeful. “We could watch13 Going on 30?”
“We could. Thirty, flirty and thriving,” he quoted.
He knew the movie better than any man should. Because he’d watched it an untold amount of times with Rue over the years. He didn’t hate it, he had to admit. Actually, he could admit just privately he kind of enjoyed a romantic comedy. Rue had shown him that.
She made a harassed noise in the back of her throat. “But the problem is I’m thirty-two, I am in no way flirty and you could argue that this is not thriving.”
“Iwould argue that,” he said. “I would argue that wanting to jump into an icy pond is not thriving.”
Neither was having a bad sex life with the same man for eight years but he wasn’t going to say anything about that.
She stuck her chin up in the air, looking defiant now. “Support me on my journey or don’t, I can go by myself.”
“Like fucking hell,”he said.
“I need to do this,” she said. “So if you don’t want to be involved...”
Her eyes were full of mischief, and there was something else there. Something that he’d seen yesterday, just briefly, before they’d gone down from the mountain.
It brought him back to that tightness in his gut.
To lines he’d drawn years ago. Lines he didn’t want to cross.
She got into the truck and he drove them down the short distance to the watering hole. He had opted forthe little spring at King’s Crest because he did not want her to parade her breakdown in front of everybody at Sullivan’s Lake. And anyway, she had said that she didn’t want to encounter too many people right at the moment. She seemed comfortable with him and his family, but there was no need to run the risk of running into other people.
He always got a feeling of unease in his gut when he came down here, though. It was part of the ranch, and he didn’t avoid it. It didn’t make sense to avoid it. He lived here. He worked here. He made his life here. He might not revisit the exact epicenter of his trauma, but he wasn’t going to avoid it like a little bitch either.
They were going to the watering hole anyway. They wouldn’t be pushing beyond that.
He pulled the truck up to the water, and just looking at it made his balls want to jump up inside his body.
“Yeah,” he said. “Looks great.”
True to his word, he left the truck running, and got out with her.
“Come on, Justice,” she said, cajoling. “You should do it with me.”
Just like that all the words just filtered out of his head. He couldn’t think of any intelligent thing to say, because he had gotten snagged on whatshe’djust said. She unzipped her jacket and shrugged it off her shoulders. Then she gripped the hem of her long-sleeved shirt and pulled it up over her head, exposing her bare stomach, and revealing a very small bikini top that gave him a view of her breasts he wasn’t sure he’d ever had. Typically, she dressed pretty covered-up.
“I got this for my honeymoon,” she said, grimacing. Then she pushed her pants down her legs, and he found the bottom of the swimsuit to be as equally brief as the top.
Do it with me.
Was he in middle school? What was the matter with him?
Why was he standing there staring at his friend’s bare skin? Why did he suddenly have the urge to put his hands back on her thighs. Why did he suddenly want to make sure she knew that she was beautiful?
To make sure she knew sex didn’t have to be disappointing.
No. Nope. That fell outside of his purview. That was not a friendship task. There were caregiving tasks that fit very comfortably within the borders of friendship. That was not fucking one of them.
“Come on,” she said. “Are you really going to make me do this alone?”
