I lift my head. Our faces are too close. His mouth is right there, water clinging to his lower lip. His eyes drop to my mouth, and the cove goes quiet around us.
I should move, but I don’t. Neither does he. For one dizzy second, I imagine it. His mouth on mine. His hands pulling me closer. The water holding us up while I let a younger, wilder man kiss me in a hidden cove less than twenty-four hours after I arrived in town.
A woman like me should not want that. A woman like me should remember the word reckless exists for a reason. But I am so tired of knowing better.
Hudson’s gaze comes back to mine.
“Layla,” he says, low enough that it is almost not a word.
It feels like a possible warning mixed with a question. My fingers tighten behind his neck.
Then someone cheers. The sound snaps us apart, but not completely. Hudson still has one hand at my waist, keeping me steady. My arms drop from his neck as heat floods my face.
Across the cove, two teenage boys stand on the far trail, one with a towel over his shoulder and the other holding a phone.
“Nice jump!” one calls.
I want the lake to swallow me again.
Hudson turns his head, expression instantly hard. “Put the phone down.”
The boy lowers it fast. “I wasn’t recording.”
“Good. Keep it that way.”
The tone is calm. The threat is not. A shiver moves through me, and this time it has nothing to do with cold.
Hudson looks back at me. “You good?”
Am I? I jumped off a cliff. I survived. I wrapped myself around a younger man in the water and almost begged him with my eyes to kiss me. My heart is pounding like it wants out of my body.
“I’m good,” I say.
His gaze searches mine.
Then he nods toward the lower rocks. “Swim that way.”
We swim to a sunlit shelf where the rock slopes into the water. Hudson climbs out first, then turns and offers me his hand. I take it. He pulls me up easily, as if my curvy body weighs nothing, as if strength like his was made for lifting women out of deep water and setting them safely in the sun.
My feet hit the warm rock. I wobble. His hands go to my waist again. I freeze. He freezes too.
The boys across the cove continue down the far trail, their voices fading.
Hudson’s thumbs rest against my wet shirt. My tank top clings to me. My shorts cling too. I am suddenly aware of my breasts, my hips, my thighs, the softness of my body and the hard lines of his.
“Sit,” he says.
Hudson lowers himself beside me, close enough that our shoulders almost touch. Sun warms my wet skin. Water drips from my braid onto my collarbone. My pulse is still racing, but now the fear has changed shape. It is no longer about the cliff.
Hudson looks out over the cove. “How do you feel?”
I consider lying. Then I remember the ledge. The choice. The way he waited.
“Alive,” I say.
His head turns. The word hangs there between us, honest and too revealing. I tuck one foot beneath my leg without thinking. Hudson’s gaze drops.
“Stop hiding them.”
