What I want him to say is,Don’t go on the show.
What I want him to say is,Stay.
Even though it makes no sense. Even though our lives are so different, and everything in them is pulling us in opposite directions.
“Nate, I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what I want. Not anymore. I thought I did, but—”But meeting you changed everything.It’s too cringey to say aloud: how in such a short time, Nate has reminded me of what’s possible when I stop following a list of perfectly valid reasons to date someone, and instead, just follow my heart.
“Are you sure?” he asks, his voice almost a whisper.
“Am I sure… what?”
“That you don’t know what you want. Because—maybe youdoknow what you want.”
I bite my lip. Does he know? Is it obvious exactly what I want? “What doyouwant, Nate?”
And then, under the water, I feel his hand, tentative and slow, finding contact with my waist, my hip—just the slightest, gentlest tug forward. “This,” he says.
I touch his arm. Trace my hand up to his muscular shoulder. And then both his hands are on my hips, and I’m wrapping my arms around him and—I suck in a breath, waiting, letting him close the gap between us fully. Letting his lips land softly, inquisitively, on my lips. Letting his tongue part them. So different from our first or second kiss, where we smashed together helplessly and urgently. This feels loaded, intentional—and yet hesitant.
Before, we were just two strangers attracted to each other.
But now…
The kiss is heady, slow, deep.
We’re holding onto each other so tenderly—exploring each other. Getting to know each other all over again, in a new way. I can feel his heartbeat racing as I kiss him like I may never see him again. Like I don’t want to lose him.
Then I pull away, keeping my face close to his. A smile plays lightly on his face, and it reflects onto me—I’m smiling, too, and then kissing him again, savoring everything about this moment. I feel emotion rising up in my chest, in my throat, a mix of wanting to laugh, and wanting to cry, and wanting more than anything to lose myself in him.
His thumbs press into my hips, then his arms are wrapped around me, almost like a hug. With our bodies fully pressed up against each other, it’s like electricity has run through my entire being. Like I’ve become a firefly—bioluminescent.
I shiver against him. It’s pleasure, vibrating through me as we kiss, but he pulls back and rubs my arms. “Are you cold?”
I nod—only cold now because he’s not up against me.
“Let me warm you up,” he says, and I think of that moment in the dressing room, how he’d warmed me up then, too, and I didn’t want him to let go, even though I was the first to pull away.
Now, he takes my hand, and I let him pull me through the lake toward the shore.
We walk through the water silently—as if a single word could shatter the moment somehow. As we move into shallower water, I feel the wind touch my skin, feeling increasingly exposed, like I’m slowly being undressed.
When we reach ankle-depth, I realize he’s not pulling me toward the house in the distance but toward Camp Bennet.
I pause at the door, heart hammering nervously, breath shuddering in my chest, water still dripping off me, feet muddy from the shoreline, but I don’t even care.
“Are we really doing this?” I whisper. “I mean, I want to, but everything between our families is already so tangled…”
Nate just holds my gaze, a soft smile spread across his beautiful, kiss-swollen lips. “Sometimes the best things are,” he says. “Spaghetti. Christmas lights. Your hair…” He reaches up and twines a few strands between his fingers, brushing them lightly back from my face, thumb grazing my cheek.
God, he’s right.I’d untangle a hundred strands of Christmas lights if it meant he could keep touching me like this.
And with that, I nod as Nate opens the door and pulls me inside.
OUR KISSES BEFORE HADbeen slow and lush, but there’s nothing measured aboutthis. My lips crash into his as soon as we’re inside the cabin. His hands find my waist, and he lifts me off the ground. My legs wrap around him again like they did in the lake on that first night as he staggers forward until I’m pressed up against the closed door.
He smells like the lake, like the Dial soap I know is stocked in the shower, and beneath that, the warm smell of Nate, like fresh sawdust and thunderstorms.
His movements are sure as he sets me down. His fingers tangle in my hair, tipping my head back to deepen the kiss. His tongue dips against mine before he moves from my mouth to my neck, his stubble scraping along the side of my jaw. I let out a gasp as his mouth closes around a spot on my neck, triggering a sensation I didn’t know existed. My knees buckle, and I sway into him.
