Page 21 of Shattered In Darkness

“Bet you couldn’t,” I say, but my voice is thinner than I want.

We stare at each other. The wind lifts my hair and curls it around my cheek. He doesn’t break eye contact, not even for a blink.

He does this all the time, waiting, watching, but never pouncing. Never making the first move.

I step closer anyway. “Prove it.”

He smirks, just a fraction, then walks straight into the sea, no hesitation at all. The water goes up to his knees almost instantly. I hesitate at the edge. It’s freezing, but now there’s no way I’m backing down.

Sophie shouts behind us. “You’re nuts! It’s, like, negative degrees in the water!”

“We’ll live,” I yell back.

Brody twists and gestures like I should follow.

I go in. The cold stings so bad my ankles burn. I scream, but that only makes him smirk more. He waits until I’m next to him, then dips his hand in the water and flicks a huge wave at my chest. My tank top is soaked instantly. Suddenly, I am self-conscious; my bra barely hides my nipples peaking through the cotton.

I gasp. “Asshole!”

He shrugs again. “Told you.”

We splash at each other. Brody moves differently in the water. Looser, more carefree. The muscles in his arms show, but not in a gross jock way. I keep staring, not that he seems to care. Then he gets this weird look, like he wants to say something and can’t. He looks at the water, then at me, then at the water again.

His hand brushes my shoulder for no reason. “You cold?” he asks, voice low. I don’t trust myself to answer, instead nodding. He grabs my wrist—just a squeeze—then lets go. “Come on.”

It’s not playful now. It’s ferocious, even the way he moves. He drags me out of the surf, up onto the dry sand, and we both flop down like corpses. Sophie brings us towels. She puts hers around my shoulder, then sits beside Lucas, who looks annoyed that nobody is playing soccer.

“Should we build a fire?” Sophie says.

Lucas shrugs. “We can’t. They said no fires.”

“Well, that sucks.”

Brody sits really close to me, close enough that I feel the heat coming off his skin. He never says anything about it, doesn’t act weird, just takes up space like he owns it. His eyes are on the horizon, or maybe on my thighs, which are wet and sandy and shaking a little.

Sophie and Lucas start arguing about something, rules, or who won a card game last night. The noise blurs out. All I can feel is Brody’s shoulder brushing mine.

He finally leans in. “You look miserable,” he whispers.

“You look like a serial killer,” I whisper back.

He laughs, just a puff of air. “Takes one to know one, Bambi.”

I want to tell him something. I want to say, I think about you all the time. I want to see what your hands would do if I let you. But nothing comes out,so I bump his shoulder and say, “Next time, I’ll beat you. Promise.”

His mouth twists. “Try me.”

My chest won’t stop pounding.

We spend hours like that. Nobody moves. Nobody does anything except get sunburned and cover themselves in sand and fight over dumb jokes. Lucas and Sophie go for a walk, but I stay. I can’t leave Brody alone, not when he’s sitting so close, not when I know he could snap and break me in two if he cared enough. He never does, though. He’s always careful. Always holding himself back. Every once in a while, he glances sideways at me like he wants to ask something. Yet the questions never come.

When the sky starts to turn gold, I lean back and close my eyes. For a second, I let myself imagine it’s just us. Not Sophie, not Lucas, not the voices from the deck. Just us and the ocean and this low ache that never goes away.

Eventually, Sophie comes back, dragging Lucas. “They’re grilling. Food’s ready!”

Brody pulls himself to his feet and offers a hand to me. I take it, his grip tight enough to hurt.Once I’m standing, his fingers linger on my wrist for a second too long.

We head back up the hill. Sophie skips ahead, yelling about burgers while Lucas actually runs. Only Brody holds back, keeping pace with me, like he doesn’t want this walk to end, and neither do I. At the top, we peel off our towels and toss them over the balcony. Someone yells at us from the kitchen but Sophie flips them off and laughs.