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But kissing Asher would be a Very Bad Idea and break my Number One Rule and a bunch of other Capitalized Adjectives that served to protect my heart from this man. But I could not be this close to him on such a glorious morning, after hearing such a declaration, and do nothing.
Before I could talk myself out of it, I kissed the tip of my index finger and touched it to the furrow between his brows. It smoothed out instantly as Asher’s expression relaxed into a kind of mild surprise, his eyes darkening and his breath catching.
“What was that?” he asked gruffly.
I swallowed hard, scared my voice was going to be high and fluttery like the erratic beats of my heart. “That was a thank you.”
“For what?”
“Being you.”
We were floating a mile from shore with a half a dozen other people nearby and yet we might as well have been alone in the middle of the ocean. Asher’s intense gaze held mine and then dropped to my mouth. For a few breathless seconds, I thought he was going to shatter my Number One Rule and kiss me. His Adam’s apple bobbed in a hard swallow, on the brink of breaking free of his restraint…and then he wrenched his gaze away.
“Time to head back.”
He took hold of the nose of the surfboard and swam me back to the boat. We said nothing on the return voyage to the marina, but when it came time to disembark, Asher handed the crutches to his captain friend and wordlessly offered me his hands. I took them, and he pulled the maneuver he had the other day at the shave ice stand—he spun to give me his broad back and I wrapped my arms around his neck. He piggy-backed me off the boat and onto the gently swaying dock. We said our goodbyes, but still, he didn’t put me down. He took the crutches and carried them and me until we got to solid ground.
But when it came to my feelings for Asher Mackey, there was no solid ground. I was standing on a precipice, about to fall in. Or jump.
