Page 31 of Don't Tell

Her hair is against my face. She smells like the lavender spray she uses in my room. I keep my voice instructional and my face professional. When I tell her to shift her weight to her outside heel, I hear how quiet my voice has gotten, given how close we are.

We ride to the lake.

Theo and Lila come on their own horses. Lila rides well. She has ridden since she was twelve. She brings her horse close to ours twice in ways that I track but don't call out, because I'm not going to give her the satisfaction of looking at her sideways with Suzanne in front of me on the saddle.

We dismount at the shoreline. The cottage sits a few yards back among the pines. The wind is up. The pines are moving. A heron lifts off the far reeds — white underside, gray wing, slow as a thought.

I watch it for a beat.

I point. "Look."

Suzanne looks. "Wow."

Theo, behind me, says, "He is doing the bird thing, Suzanne. Run."

I don't turn around.

Suzanne walks toward the water. She is closer to the edge than I would like. I'm about to say something when Lila steps past her on the narrow path — narrow enough that one of them has to give — and Lila's shoulder catches Suzanne's at the wrong angle.

Suzanne goes into the lake.

She is in the water before I know I'm moving.

I'm in the water on the third stride. It is not deep. It is also not warm. She is already pulling herself upright, hair plastered down her back, gasping from the cold, furious. I get my arm under her knees and the other under her shoulders, and I lift her clear of the water in one motion before she has a chance to tell me not to.

Theo is moving toward Lila with a face I have not seen him use since we were nineteen.

I carry Suzanne up the bank. I don't stop. I pass Lila on the path. I don't look at her face. "Do you lack self-control?"

I keep walking. I don't look back to see what her face does. I don't need to.

The guest room on the second floor of the cottage is the one I have used twice. I set her down inside it. She is shivering. Her teeth have started chattering.

"Stay here."

I open the closet, pull down the stack of clothes I keep here for myself — soft drawstring pants, a long-sleeved shirt I have worn a couple of times, and a pair of dry wool socks. I put them on the bed.

"Towels are in the bathroom."

I leave and shut the door.

I stand in the hallway with my own jeans wet against my thighs and the cold of the lake still working down the back of my neck. I go to my own room down the hall.

I change out of my wet clothes.

I think about her in that room, drying her hair with one of my towels and stepping into a pair of pants with my name on the waistband. I change faster than I need to so I can go back to her.

I knock on her door.

"Come in."

She is sitting on the edge of the bed in my clothes. They are too big for her. The pants are rolled at the ankle. The shirt is loose at the shoulder. Her hair is wet down her back. The collar of the shirt has slipped off one of her collarbones.

I'm thrown.

I had been preparing for fury — at me, at Lila, at having ended up wet in the cottage after meeting my friends.

"Thank you."