“Anything you want.”
Chapter Ten
Marston
October 27th, before
Nothing feels better after a day of working in the Knoxes’ endless gardens than diving into the cool waters of Blackledge Lake. The sun is low in the sky, and the warm late-day light makes the water’s surface sparkle. Everyone thinks it’s too cold to swim, but I don’t mind it. In fact, I prefer the lake without all the people from school crowding the beach. I like the quiet. The solitude.
“What are you doing out there?” someone calls from the shore, and it’s the only voice I want to hear right now.
Treading water, I squint in Brinley’s direction.
I swallow hard at the sight of her. She’s in a dress that comes down to her knees with a little sweater on top. Even from a distance, I can tell she looks beautiful. But she always looks like that. In the shed at school last week, we decided to be friends, but I haven’t seen her since. Friends, we decided. But I have no idea how to be friends with her.
“Hey,” I call, heading to shore. “What are you doing here?”
“I saw your car,” she says. She kicks off her shoes and tiptoes into the water until it laps at her shins. She shudders. “Are you trying to freeze to death?”
I grin, still moving closer. “It’s not that cold.”
“It’s not warm, either.” She wraps her arms around her waist.
Once my feet hit the bottom of the lake, I walk toward her until the water’s barely up to my waist. “It feels warmer if you get all the way in.”
“I’ll take your word for it.” Her gaze dips to my chest then farther down before snapping back up. “You’re not even wearing swim trunks.”
I laugh. Under the water, my cotton boxer briefs cling to me. “I didn’t have any with me.”
“So why did you get in?”
I shrug. “I wanted to.”
She looks over her shoulder toward the beach and the small parking lot beyond.
“Don’t worry,” I say. “No one’s out here to see you talking to me.”
She licks her lips then turns back to shore.
That ended quickly.
But when she reaches her shoes, she doesn’t put them back on. Instead, she takes off her sweater, then unzips her dress and lets it fall to the sand.
I can’t speak. Can’t breathe.
She shivers, but when she faces me again, she has a big smile on her face.
Her underwear isn’t any more revealing than a bikini—hell, I came to the more popular part of this lake when I first came to town, and there were girls in bikinis that exposed way more than Brinley’s lacey white bra and cotton panties—but there’s something about this that’s so much sexier. Maybe it’s knowing I’m not supposed to know her like this. It’s like she’s letting me in on a secret—showing me more of herself than I’m supposed to see.
“If I get hypothermia, I’m counting on you to bring me to shore and warm me up.”
My eyebrows shoot into my hairline. “Oh, really?”
She seems to realize how that sounded, and her cheeks glow pink. “Oh my God, I didn’t mean it like that. Get your mind out of the gutter.”
I hold up my hands. “I didn’t say a thing.”
“Okay. I’m coming in.”
I grin. “Sure you are.”
She takes a deep breath and takes off in a run into the lake, splashing water everywhere. She stops beside me, the water lapping just below her bra, and squeaks. “So. Cold.”
I take both of her hands and back us into deeper waters. “It’s better if you get your whole body in.”
She lifts onto her tiptoes then dunks down to her neck in the water. “Still cold!”
I laugh and bend my knees to sink deeper with her. “Give it a minute.”
Little by little, she relaxes until she lets out a long breath and lifts her face toward the sky. “Okay, this actually is really nice.”
“See?”
She turns in a slow circle. Following her gaze, I take in the view of the trees and the water, the way the setting sun peeks between the trees and sends dappled light dancing on the water.
“Do you like it?” I want her to. I like Brinley, but I have no idea how to impress a girl who has everything, and somehow, that makes it that much more important that she likes what I like.
“It’s gorgeous.” She swims in circles, and I follow, enjoying the way the water moves over my sore muscles. I spent my whole weekend trimming shrubs and shoveling mulch, and while I don’t mind working with my hands, I’m not used to doing manual labor for eight hours at a time.
When she stops swimming, I can touch bottom, but Brinley has to tread water. She keeps her gaze cast on the opposite shore. I wait, giving her the time she seems to need to process her thoughts, but when she finally turns to me, her face is sad. “We’re friends, right?”