So why was I thinking it would be okay to kiss her now?
She blinked. I blinked. I loosened my grip but didn’t let her go.
“Adam,” she murmured, her eyelids drooping.
She was going to be so angry with me…The reminder of what I had been doing behind her back was like throwing a stick of dynamite.
I dropped my hands and floated away from her.
“That’ll teach you to splash me,” I joked, though it sounded strained to my ears.
Meg laughed a little unsteadily. “You sure showed me,” she responded dully.
We swam for a while longer, but something had changed between us.
I had no idea that I had already started to break her heart.
**
I was floating on my back, staring up at the canopy of trees wishing for a thousand things that could never happen and hating myself for things already done. Something splashed into the water beside me. I turned onto my stomach to tread water. A few seconds later, a redhead bobbed beside me.
Of course, she’d find me. I couldn’t even be surprised.
Because deep down, I wanted her to.
“How’d you know I was here?” I asked.
Meg cocked her eyebrow. “You’re not that hard to read, Ducate. When you’re upset, you become predictable.” She looked around the clearing. “And I recall this being a place you liked to go when you were upset.”
She was right, of course.
She ran her hands through her hair, smoothing it back away from her gorgeous face. God, how I loved to look at her.
I turned away.
“You wanna talk about why you’re in such a bad mood?” she asked. She was completely oblivious that my mood had everything to do with her, that she dictated the tides of my emotions. When had I relinquished so much control to her?
“Not really,” I replied shortly.
She was silent for a beat. “That’s fine. We don’t have to talk. We can just float here together if that’s cool.” She went onto her back, and I noticed that she had stripped down to her bra and panties. The material had become see-through, and I could see the dark ring of her nipples and the dark apex between her thighs.
Of course, I wanted to fuck her. I always wanted to fuck her. But right then, there were more important things than sex.
Her company was enough.
Because I loved more than her body and the way she made me hot and horny. I loved how the sound of her breathing instantly relaxed me. How the smell of her hair was like coming home. How deep down, even after all these years, she knew me better than anyone. And when I said I didn’t want to talk, she wouldn’t push it. She let me be. But she stayed by my side, offering silent understanding and support. We had always been a strong team.
I realized that we still were.
We floated, our limbs outstretched, and the silence wasn’t awkward.
“Do you ever feel like you’re speeding down the road toward a brick wall with no way to stop?” I asked her after a while.
“Every day,” Meg said softly. Then, almost as if in unison, we simultaneously reached out, our fingers clasping in the cold water.
“But you’ll figure out how to turn the car. You always do, Adam,” Meg said, and I could tell she meant it.
When had she started to believe in me again? It felt good. Better than good.
It meant everything.
We floated on our backs for a long time, our fingers laced together like we used to do when we were kids.
And for a little while, things were simple.
Chapter 18
Adam
“Guess what I brought.” Meg and I had climbed out of the water. I tugged on my shirt but left it unbuttoned. Meg had put her shorts back on, but still only wore her red bra.
We sat on the bank of the river, my legs stretched out in front of me, Meg’s hair drying in thick tangles down her back. She reached into the canvas tote she took everywhere and produced a pack of playing cards. I laughed, feeling the last coils of tension release inside me.
Meg smirked. “I was looking at the tallies on my wall, and it seems you have some catching up to do.” She took out the cards and started to shuffle them.
“That’s because you didn’t record the games accurately,” I argued, picking up the seven cards she dealt me.
“You keep telling yourself that, Ducate,” she retorted, immediately laying down three queens.
I groaned. “You’re such a cheater. How do I know you shuffled properly?”
“Because I don’t need to cheat to beat your sorry ass,” she countered with a grin, picking up a card.
We fell into our familiar trash-talking banter. She even did her celebration dance when she won the first game by twelve points. She drew a line in the dirt. “One game to me,” she bragged.