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But then he stops, adjusts the uncomfortable bulge in his pants, and says, “I really do need that swim.”

13

Luna

Igive up on the books just before noon.

It’s not that they’re boring. I’m surrounded by texts most collectors would sell a kidney for. It’s that I’ve read the same paragraph four times now and retained precisely nothing because all I can think about is Kim.

I read the paragraph a fifth time. Nothing. Then I cross to the library window to see if I can catch a glimpse of him.

However, he’s not swimming. Through the long glass wall of the pool house, I can see him sitting at the deep end with his jeans rolled up and his feet in the water, his coffee mug beside him, staring at nothing.

I watch him for a minute.

Then I go to my room and put on the bikini Lucien bought me under my clothes.

Outside, the February air bites at my skin as I hurry across the terrace to the pool house – a long glass building that steams gently against the flat blue sky. Inside, the warmth wraps around me.

“You do know we’re supposed to be researching,” I say. “You said you’d come back after your swim.”

Kim looks up and shields his eyes. “I’m researching the pool.”

“Well, you must be doing a very thorough job.”

“Extremely. Initial findings suggest it’s wet.”

I slip off my sandals and sit down beside him, easing my feet into the water.

I glance at him and smile. “So, are you still overheating?”

He gives me a sideways look, and then he grins and flicks a handful of water at my knees. “I wasn’t. But now you’re here, so…”

We sit for a while without talking. It’s the kind of quiet I never had with Steven, where silence was always the build up to something. This is just... quiet.

When I glance at Kim, he’s gone somewhere else. He’s looking down at his left hand, and his thumb is moving slowly over the base of his ring finger – circling it, back and forth, like he’s tracing the outline of something that isn’t there.

I’ve seen him do that before, I realise. But I never thought about what it meant.

I do now.

“You were married?”

I am dangling my feet in the pool. I want to get in, but the thought of taking off my clothes and stripping down to my bikini in front of Kim is weirdly unsettling.

I’ve always felt comfortable around him.

Apart from the time he walked in on me half naked.

Maybe it’s because of the sunlight. Because I know it would exaggerate my scars. Make him ask me questions.

“I was.” Kim looks at his finger and strokes it as if he’s picturing the outline of the ring.

“What happened?” I reach down and scoop some water into my hand, let it trickle between my fingers like silk.

“She was killed on our wedding day.” Kim’s throat constricts as he speaks, like the words are swelling in his throat.

I blink at him. That wasn’t what I was expecting. I thought he’d say he was divorced. That she had an affair, or he did, or they were childhood sweethearts and realised they weren’t meant to be. Or that they were still friends now. Or that she was awful to him and he left. The way I should have left Steven.