The water was surprisingly comfortable despite it being October now.

I’d expected it to be so cold that I could barely stand it, but it was a balmy eighty degrees out, and with the sun, I was only slightly chilled. I had a feeling that the more sun that I got, though, the more that I would love the cooler water that my ass was sitting in.

“I never thought I’d like tubing,” Hastings said, her eyes on her man that was throwing a football around with his cousin.

Every time the ball flew over our heads, cold water droplets would drop all over us, making my nipples harden as it met my skin.

I shivered and scooted down further into the water, knowing that if I could just get a little used to it, I wouldn’t be as cold.

“Me neither,” I admitted. “It was a big thing in high school, though. We were supposed to go my senior year, but I had a softball game senior skip day. Which ended up being a good thing, I think, because a lot of those kids got in trouble for underage drinking. I think over a hundred of our classmates got tickets.”

“Including me,” Nathan’s deep, silky smooth voice said as he paddled forward.

He stopped when he got a bottle of beer out of the cooler that was for some reason connected to the women’s tubes.

Once he had it, he moved himself backward and went back to talking to Saint and Dax.

Dax’s wife, Rowen, had stayed home with their newborn baby.

The rest of the pregnant chicks were here, though.

Ashe being the most pregnant of them all.

She wasn’t in a tube with us, though. She was in a figure eight-shaped one that was connected to her husband, Ford’s, who was resting with his head against her big ol’ belly.

I looked away, feeling like I was intruding on them by staring, and found myself closing my eyes as I imagined what life would be like if I had my own man like that.

In the back of my mind, when I’d pictured my life, Nathan was always the one I pictured myself with.

Which, I supposed, was a bit of a stretch seeing as Nathan had never once acted like I was anything more than an annoyance on his part.

“So what was up with Eerie the other day?” Sierra asked as she took a hefty gulp of her virgin margarita.

I grimaced as thoughts of the bane of my existence filled my chilled brain.

“That asshole,” I grumbled darkly. “She had the nerve to go to the charge nurse about me! I hadn’t even done anything! Then the charge nurse asked me to please stay away from her son because ‘Eerie fears for her son’s safety’ when it comes to me.”

Sierra paused with her straw halfway to her lips. “You’re shitting me. And Peyton allowed that?”

Peyton, our charge nurse, was a sweet woman.

“No,” I grumbled. “But she did ask me to ‘stay away’ unless it was an emergency on the baby’s part. Which I agreed to do.”

Sierra sighed and looked at me with pity.

“So what’s the story with Eerie?” Hastings asked. “I know that she’s not a nice person just based on what I just heard. But, you know, as an author, I have to know all kinds of assholes so I can put them into my books.”

I snorted.

“Eerie is that asshole,” I admitted. “When I met Eerie it was at a party my family was having. Wolf, Nathan’s dad, and my mom are really good friends. Meaning that Nathan and I spent a lot of reluctant time together. And one time Nathan brought Eerie to this party, and she automatically decided that she was going to hate me. No ifs, ands, or buts. The moment she walked in the door, she started glaring. And then she moved to our high school, so things got even worse. She hated that the boys’ and girls’ softball teams traveled together, because she was convinced that I was going to steal her man. It got to the point where she didn’t trust me—and yes, you notice I say me, as if I was going to spike his drink and have my way with him while we were traveling for an away game—and decided to become the team’s water girl, so to speak. I got so tired of it that my senior year I almost quit. When the coach realized that it was either Eerie or me, she got rid of Eerie. And Eerie went out of her way to make sure that I knew how much she hated me.”

Hastings snorted. “What happened with Nathan and her?”

I glanced over at Nathan where he was drinking a beer on his own tube.

His cleft chin had a droplet of water in it, and I wanted to lick it off.

“Nathan and her broke up because Eerie is a controlling bitch that couldn’t fuckin’ let bygones be bygones.”

Tags: Lani Lynn Vale SWAT Generation 2.0 Romance
Source: readsnovelonline.net