AllFreeNovel
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The soap pops right out of my fist and falls to the floor.Jesus, Dylan.My heart tries to beat a hole out of my chest.What the hell?
Images of her in her room at home—in her bed that I’ve crashed in a hundred times—sweep through my head, and I feel like I’m sweating. I draw in a deep breath, but I can’t breathe in here.
“Can I turn around now?” she asks.
She starts to twist, but I close the distance between us, pressing my chest into her back and stopping her.
Unfortunately, it’s not just my chest pressing into her, though. She freezes.
I tremble.Shit. I didn’t want her to see it, but she definitely fucking feels it.
“Are you…hard?” she asks softly.
“Yeah.”
She moves just a hair, like she’s about to turn, but she doesn’t. I grab the shampoo and squeeze some on top of her head and then on mine.
“Don’t read anything into it,” I tell her. “I’m eighteen. It’s hard all the time.”
The corner of her mouth reveals a smile. “Can I see it?”
I don’t reply. Instead, I pull her back with me a few steps, using the shower to lather up her hair. I rub her scalp with both hands.
No one’s ever seen me. I don’t know if I want mine to be the first one that she sees, either.
“Do you remember that week of snow days we had, like four years ago?” she asks me, her head moving as I scrub. “It was in February, I think?”
“I remember.” We had four days off from school in a row. Trees were down, some homes in the rural areas were out of power.
“I hated it,” she gripes. “The extra time off school only meant we’d have to make up the days, which would cut into our summer vacation, but…” She pauses. “More than that, I was sick of the snow. It was bitter cold. Everything was wet all the time. The world sounded dead because no one was outside.”
I sink my fingers into her locks, vaguely remembering how bored she got that year. I couldn’t care less about being outside. She and Kade both needed to feel the wind. Not me.
“It was gray everywhere,” she continues. “Gray smoke from the chimneys. Gray snow from greasy cars and tires. I wanted to swim. Ride our bikes. Smell my dad’s grill in the neighborhood.”
I tug her backward a little, guiding her head back and rinsing her hair. I watch the suds cascade over her ass and down her thighs.
I lower my mouth to her hair, closing my eyes.Fuck.
“So you told me,” she goes on, unaware of how turned on I am. “You told me ‘to make it beautiful.’”
I said what?
She continues, “You said there was a way to find beauty in almost anything. To think about things I like and apply them to how I see. To frame it in a way I find alluring.”
Huh, I did say that, didn’t I?
“You pointed out that I loved nighttime and the tree outside my bedroom window and how it made noises in a breeze,” she says, “and you reminded me that I liked to sneak around and loved to see new things.”
Yeah, by the time we were fourteen, I knew everything about Dylan.
I run my hands down her hair, smoothing out the remaining soap.
“And then you snuck me out of the house that night.” Her voice sounds like she’s smiling. “Took me to Blackhawk Lake, and we shared sips of your dad’s Jägermeister, while we laid in the snow. We listened to the winter wind sweep through the bare, black branches that stretched up into the night sky. I heard the creaking sound of the wood that I never noticed in the summer, because I only hear the leaves rustling or the birds singing.” She drops her head, slowly rubbing the soap off her hands. “But when they’re gone in the winter, you can hear the icicles. See the way they shimmer in the moonlight and how scary the quiet is.”
I don’t remember telling her any of that. Guess the Jäger was a good idea, after all.
“Or you said to just smile to change my perspective,” she adds. “You said if you smile, something is already more beautiful because you’re looking at something with kind eyes.”
