Before (After 5)

“Hurry the hell up or I’ll turn around,” I impatiently remark after silently counting to thirty. I sneak a look at her while she’s bending down to set her jeans perfectly in line with her shoes. She’s a complete psychopath, lining her shoes up like that. For a few seconds I wonder how she’d react if I tossed her shoes into the calm water. She’d be so pissed. I bite back a smile and finally look at her body. Her legs are tan—that’s the first thing I notice. My T-shirt fits her body perfectly. Fuck, because of the size of her tits, the shirt barely touches the top of her thighs. I pull my lip ring between my teeth and enjoy the view in front of me.

“Um . . . come into the water, yeah?” I try to clear my throat and stop staring at the top of her thighs. “Just jump in!”

“I am! I am!”

“Get a little running start.”

“Okay.”

Tessa takes a deep breath before galloping toward the water in an awkwardly stiff run. She squeals and covers her face when she reaches the edge and stops one step before she would actually go over the edge.

“Oh, come on! You were off to such a good start!” My laughter fills the air between us, and I look at Tessa again. She’s staring at me, smiling and laughing in the sunlight, and it confuses me. What are we doing here? Laughing at each other at a stream? What is this? One of those Nicholas Sparks movies where the couple’s fighting is so cute that the trailer for the film spreads like wildfire on the internet? Bored women thinking they have some literary hero to come save them. It’s bullshit, and they always, always end up with a shitty husband who doesn’t and will never care about them or their family more than himself.

“I can’t!”

She looks pretty frantic. Is she actually scared of the water? Good Lord. “Are you afraid?” I ask her.

“No . . . I don’t know. Sort of.”

I walk through the water to get closer to her. I stub my toe on a large rock at the bottom of the stream.

“Sit on the edge and I’ll help you in,” I offer. I reach for her as she scoots closer. She tries to hide her panties by clamping her legs together, and I appreciate the effort. The last thing I need is a distraction.

My hands grip her thighs, and my cock immediately responds.

Fuck her for having such soft, beckoning thighs that I’m dying to get my face between.

“Ready?” I take a breath and move my hands to her waist. Her hips mold to my hands, and I have to forcefully hold on to my last bit of self-control. My hands are itching to squeeze her hips, bend her over, and take her here.

What’s my problem? I’m never this much of a horny frat boy. Is it her innocence and sinful body, or is it the competitive drive to win her body, to beat Zed?

Her skin is warm as she sinks into the water, and I let go of her. The water hits just below her chest. She sprawls her hands out in front of her and feels out the water. Her skin is covered in tiny goose bumps accentuated by the sunlight.

“Don’t just stand there.” I need you to move so I don’t just stand here and stare at you all fucking day.

She seems to ignore me, but she does move out farther into the stream. As she pushes through the clear water, the T-shirt lifts up from the water as if trying to take flight. Before I can look away, Tessa shoves the wet fabric down, smoothing it underwater the best she can.

“You could just take it off,” I say. I sure as hell wouldn’t complain.

Tessa scrunches up her nose and slices her hand through the water—she fucking splashed me? It’s annoying how funny this is to me.

“Did you just splash me?”

Tessa giggles and smacks her hands across the settling water.

I shake the liquid from my hair and lunge at her. I grasp her waist, tugging her under the water. Her small hand reaches up and plugs her nostrils. She still holds her nose?

I laugh, hard. “I can’t decide which is more amusing: the fact that you are actually having a good time or the fact that you have to plug your nose underwater.” I can barely talk from laughing so hard.

Tessa moves toward me, the look of a woman on a mission clear in her eyes. Her arms lift above her head, and she attempts to push my head under the water. It’s a comical attempt. At best. While I tried to ignore the way my T-shirt floated up around her body, now I don’t budge, and she laughs at herself and my stomach cramps from joining in. Her laughter is soft; it reminds me of the yellow wildflowers I saw at the beginning of our date-thing.

“I believe you owe me an answer to a question,” she pushes. I knew she wouldn’t forget, but I assumed she’d wait a little longer before asking.

“Sure, but only one.”

She’s probably going to ask something stupid, like “Did your tattoos hurt?” I stare at the grassy bank of the stream and wait for her intrusion.

Her voice breaks through the silence. “Who do you love the most in the world?”

What the fuck?

What kind of question is that? How fucking strange. I don’t want to answer it. I don’t even have an answer. Now I’m growing even more suspicious of her and Landon’s conversations about me. Love? Who do I love the most in the world?

Who do I love most? Well, I love my mum, I guess. I haven’t said the words to her in years, but she’s still my mum. That’s about it, except for myself. I love myself the most. I don’t think that “I love myself the most” would qualify as an answer, however.

Nevertheless: “Myself,” I answer truthfully. I wasn’t one to have any girlfriends as a puberty-stricken teen, so I never even had to fake any I love you’s before I or anyone else my age actually knew what the word meant. I dive under the water to disappear for a few seconds while Tessa’s brain tallies up her assumptions about me.

“That can’t be true,” she says the very second I feel the fresh air hit my skin. “What about your parents?” And like that, she crosses the line. Tessa Young has no fucking boundaries when it comes to her invasive personal questions. Her eyes are soft, her lips parted as she waits for me to respond. I hate the way her eyes look when they’re full of pity.

Stop it, Theresa.

“Do not speak of my parents again, got it?”

“I’m sorry, I was just curious. You said you would answer a question.” Her voice is quiet. “I really am sorry, Hardin. I won’t mention them again,” she apologizes.