I hit the water and her laughter fills the night. Fuck if it isn’t the most perfect sound I’ve ever heard, and the moment I take a step toward her with purposeful eyes, she squeals and kicks away from me. I move faster, though, banding my arms around her waist and tossing her into the air. She’s so light that she flies high, coming down with a wild splash.
“You’re gonna get it, Stratton,” she threatens, and it’s so fucking cute that she attempts to feign seriousness through her giggles.
“You sure about that?”
She pops out of the water, reaching for my head to dunk, but I don’t budge. Instead, I grab her and toss her over my shoulder. More laughing and more smiling as I wade over to the steps and climb out of the pool.
“Kason, don’t you dare!”
Her feet kick, and her hands grasp on to my sides as I carry her over to the deep end. She starts begging for mercy, and when I grab her hips to send her back in the water, she finds my weakness, knowing all-too-well where my ticklish spot is. Going for my ribs, she feathers her fingers while I’m mid-throw. I twist against her touch, fall off balance, and she takes me down with her, quickly swimming away from me.
My chest rumbles with laughter as I watch her escape to the opposite side of the pool, but as soon as she turns against the wall to face me, the rumbling fades into a slow burn. The pool reflects against her face, flickering light across her smooth skin as beads of water drip down. I go still, my heart hammering in slow, steady beats as I take her in.
God, she’s so beautiful.
“You give up?” she taunts, and I smirk at her feistiness.
“Not a chance.”
Her golden hair is slicked back, and I can still remember how it felt to slip my fingers through it. Everything about her floods my system, and I fucking hate that she’s no longer mine to touch and that we have this invisible wall between us, keeping us from the connection we once had.
I watch as her smile fades along with mine, and the urge to go closer gnaws at me, but I don’t want to ruin this time she’s giving me.
“Come on,” she says, pushing off the wall and swimming over to the shallow end.
I follow, and can’t help myself from staring as she gets out of the water. Her clothes cling to her body, and water drips down her legs to her bare feet.
She chuckles lightly as she looks down at herself before pinching the hem of her top and peeling it away from her skin. “Oh my god.”
“I blame you,” I joke when I step out of the pool. Reaching back, I pull my T-shirt off so I can wring it out.
“I’ll go get some towels.”
She runs inside, and it doesn’t take her long to return. While she dries herself the best she can, I wrap a towel around my waist before tucking my hand through the slit and unbuttoning my shorts.
She catches my movements, and her eyes widen. “What are you doing?”
“I don’t need chaffing going on.”
She rolls her eyes when my shorts drop heavily to my feet, and I can’t help but laugh when I reach beneath the towel and shove down my boxer briefs.
She shakes her head, saying, “I’m going to change. Go toss your clothes in the drier.”
Watching her squirm amuses me. I can still recall her acting the same way when we first started dating. That girl was innocent beyond my comprehension. Every touch, every kiss, every step I made to move closer to her had her blushing with uncertainty and self-consciousness. Those thoughts are quickly replaced with how repulsed she became when we’d be intimate before everything ended between us. I could see she was deteriorating before my eyes, but I couldn’t understand why. The last time we made love, her body was so tense, trembling even, and she was crying. If only I had known at that point that someone had hurt her, I would’ve never allowed her to force herself with me. And I know she only did it to take care of me and this fucked-up addiction of mine. To this day, I feel like the biggest piece of shit for all the times we were together like that, even more so now that I know for sure what had happened to her.
Tossing my clothes into the drier, I close the door and turn it on. I wait a handful of minutes for her to come back down, but she never does. When I walk over to the stairs and look up, I see her bedroom door is open. Tightening the towel around my waist, I head up to her room but stop shy of her door when I hear her voice.
“Everything’s fine. Mom and I had dinner at the house, and I’m about to lie down. How were your meetings?”
Fucking Micah.
Leaning against the wall, I stay put as I listen to her side of the conversation.
“What time do you meet with the realtor tomorrow?” There’s a short pause before she says, “I’ll be around. Just video chat me if you feel it’s a place worth considering. No need to do it if you don’t like the property.”
My ribs may snap from how tightly they’re constricting in my chest. That motherfucker always had a thing for Adaline, and to know that he’s had her since she left me is a bitter-ass pill for me to choke on. From the moment she told me about the two of them, it’s all I can do not to think about them together. Him helping her heal from what happened to her when it should’ve been me. Him holding her, wiping her tears, kissing her, touching her, fucking her—I want to kill that asshole. But then, in a very messed up way, I’m grateful that she wasn’t alone to fall apart completely. That she had someone to help her. I just wish it hadn’t been Micah—or any man for that matter.
“I love you, too,” she says, and I swear those words claw right through me, filling my veins with so much bitterness.
My jaw clenches, and I bite down hard, swallowing back all the anger and jealousy that’s ripping through me. Taking a slow, deep breath, I step into her doorway to find her dressed in a pair of pajamas as she looks out of her bedroom window.
When I walk in, she turns around. Her eyes have lost the liveliness from earlier, and I move across the room, taking a seat on the edge of her bed. She turns back to the window that overlooks the pool, and she releases a heavy sigh.
“What are you thinking about?”
She fights a smile as it grows bashfully when she turns to face me, leaning against the side of the window. “I totally used to spy on you,” she confesses before she lets go of an embarrassing giggle.
“You spied on me?”
She pulls her bottom lip between her teeth and then nods. “I left school after my first day, and I couldn’t stop thinking about the cute boy I had met. I was up here unpacking when I noticed someone cleaning the pool. When I realized it was you, I hid behind these shutters and watched.”
“Did you do that a lot?”
She blushes with a coy, “Yeah.”
“That’s creepy,” I tease, and she shakes her head at me. “It’s okay. I used to watch you, too.”
“You did?”
“Look at you. How could I not?”
She blinks slowly and drops her head, and when I reach out my hand, she takes it and sits next to me on the bed. She keeps her hand in mine and simply lets me hold it. I want to hold so much more, though. The feeling to have her closer is powerful, but knowing I can’t have her is like a garrote around my throat. It’s the same feeling I get every time I walk into this very room.
“I’ve sat on this bed a lot since you’ve been gone.” She looks at me when I say this, and she moves to slip her fingers between mine, holding my hand more firmly in hers. “When I would come over to have dinner with your mom, I’d come up here afterward. As weak as it sounds, I just needed to smell your scent in this room. It was the only way I could be close to you.”
Her face slowly pains when I tell her this, and when her eyes rim with sadness, I slide my other hand along her cheek and back into her hair, holding her in my palm. She doesn’t flinch from the touch, and I’m wondering if she needs it as badly as I do.
“Why is this so hard?”
“It doesn’t have to be,” I tell her.
She tilts her head into my hand and stares into my eyes. There’s question in her irises—questions I want to give her answers to, but I don’t want to cross the line with her. I can see it, though—the dilemma in her heart. She wears her emotions in a way I’ve always been able to read.
“Can I ask you something?”
She nods.
“I know I have no right to be asking this, but . . . will you just let me hold you?”
She nods again, surprising me when she doesn’t come to me, but instead, lies down. I hesitate for a slight moment before lying next to her and gathering her in my arms. She comes freely, resting her head on my chest where my heart thunders from beneath the surface. I know she can hear it, feel it, touch it.
She’s so warm against me, and when I tuck her under my chin, I feel wetness from a teardrop when it falls onto my chest. It burns into my skin, creating yet another scar of my love for her. Even though she broke my heart and left me in cold silence, I never stopped wanting her. This girl, she was the one thing that truly ever gave me purpose. She made my world feel infinite. I’ve been lost without her. It kills me to have her back but not have her back. That time has pushed us to a place where life has transitioned. Yet, here I am—stuck—unable to move on like everyone else.
How can I?
She’s fermented in my veins.
How is my heart supposed to taste anything but her when she’s in my blood?
We lie here as seconds fade into minutes that fade into dying wishes as we breathe each other’s deepest secrets that not even we can deny. I feel it in her bones as I hold them in my arms—she’s filled with confliction.
When I drag my fingers through her hair, I let go of restraint long enough to slip on the words that have been tormenting me. “Tell me we have a better ending than this.”
Her body tenses in my hold, but I don’t regret saying it.
Drawing back, she gives me a worrisome look, but I keep my eyes steady on her.
“Tell me what you’re thinking.”
She shakes her head, stalling in her fear, but I want her to acknowledge it and give it life. Her breathing shallows, and she finally admits, “I miss you, and it feels wrong.” She then sits up, abandoning my arms. “We shouldn’t be doing this.”
I then sit up next to her. “Doing what?”
“Lying in bed together. Holding each other . . . all of this. It just confuses me.”
“That’s because it’s unfinished,” I tell her. “We’re unfinished.”
“But we are finished.” She drops her head and looks at the ring on her finger. “I’m getting married, Kason.”
“Then what are you doing in my arms?”
She stands from the bed and steps away from me before stopping and turning back around. Lifting her palms up, she holds them there for a second before dropping them back to her sides. “I don’t know. I don’t know because when I’m around you, everything gets blurry, and I . . . I don’t know what we’re doing.”
“What do you want?”
“Honestly?”
Getting off the bed, I readjust the towel, securing it around me as I step over to her. “Yes, Adaline. Honestly . . . what do you want?”
She opens her mouth to say something, but nothing comes out. I stand here and watch her waver as she stares at me in a silent plea, but I can’t answer this for her. All I can do is take her small hand and press it against the center of my chest.
“You feel that?”
Her eyes tell me she does.
“You might have run away, but you never left me,” I tell her as she holds my heart in the palm of her hand. “Every day, every week, every month, every year I’ve kept you in the most sacred and honest place inside of me.”
“Kason . . .”
“I would’ve given up forever just to touch you again.”
I let go of her hand, and she’s slow to pull it away from me, but when she does, she replaces it with her head. Her arms circle around me, and I hug her close, but all too soon, she steps back. Keeping her eyes away from me, she says, “Maybe you should go.”
With two steps forward, I take the sides of her face in my hands and press my lips against the top of her head before walking out.