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I didn’t know what I expected when I found her. Maybe that we could come to some understanding. Maybe that she would accept my apology. Maybe that she’d give me a reason to hate her as viscerally as she hated me. What I didn’t expect her to do was kiss me.
I should have stopped myself. I should have walked away. I should have done many more noble things, but I didn’t. I took the invitation of her body with the desperation of a man starved. It wasn’t until she turned me away that the truth struck me like lightning. I didn’t want to walk away from her.
But like I’d said—this was complicated enough already. I was compromised, unable to take her to the mat because at the first sign of her distress, I folded like a lawn chair.
With a growl, I headed out of the alley to the SUV. My mask hadn’t just cracked—it’d slipped off and busted into a thousand pieces at Poppy’s feet. Thankfully, no one was around, at least no one close enough to talk to me. So I hurried into the driver’s seat and pulled away with no idea where I was going. All I knew was that I needed to cool off, and I couldn’t do that with anyone around.
But I knew just the place.
I pulled a hasty U-turn and made my way toward the swimming hole I’d been to a thousand times a thousand years ago. Fed by an aquifer, the small limestone pool was crystalline, fresh, and cold as fuck.
If that couldn’t quench the wildfire in me, nothing could.
The slight problem of its location was workable enough. I’d be off Poppy’s property long before she had any idea I was there.
I shrugged off my coat as I sped toward the Blum’s farm, nearly out of my shirt when I pulled into the old trail, hidden by underbrush. I couldn’t count the number of times I’d snuck onto the farm by this route to meet Poppy. I parked in a turn-out across the way, glancing up and down the dark country road, lit only by the full moon in the cloudless sky. Stars sparkled, more stars than I’d seen in a long, long time, lighting my way through the patch of woods surrounding the pool. Careful with my footing in dress shoes, I took the incline slowly, catching sight of it in the shadow of a craggy rise. Water trickled onto a ledge and into the pool, the sound soothing and familiar.
I kicked off my shoes as I whipped off my shirt, dropping my pants and stepping out of them, already on a trot to the edge of the ledge. Without stopping, I dove, weightless for an endless moment of freedom before cutting into the icy water in a shock so total, so complete, my heart nearly stopped.
Rather than swim to the surface, I floated, suspended, taking in my surroundings, visible in the moonlight. When I looked up, I marked the glassy plane that divided water from air, a split of elements with that thin point of contact their only commonality. Here, and there. Like my past and present. The boy and the man. There was no overlap, just the fragile membrane between the two. Times like these, I didn’t know which side I belonged on.
I shook my head and kicked up to the surface, the air cool when I inhaled. A shudder rolled through me, but I didn’t hurry to exit. Instead, I closed my eyes, extending my arms, feeling the chill of the breeze on my chest as I floated again, the sound of the waterfall in my ears and the phrase, “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”
I opened my eyes to find my furious ex standing next to the pile of my clothes with a shotgun in the crook of her elbow.
She was still in her clothes from the debate, though her heels were gone and her hair was unbound, cascading down her shoulders. She’d unbuttoned her tailored shirt to the space between her breasts, and for a second, my eyes hung there. My cock answered, despite the freezing water.
“Don’t worry, I was just going,” I promised, stretching for the edge of the pool at her feet.
“I should shoot you.”
“Murder wouldn’t look good on your resumé.”
“Who said anything about killing you?”
“I assumed you wouldn’t be able to help yourself.”
“You assume a lot,” she said.
“Maybe. But you couldn’t help yourself earlier either.”
“That’s it.” She raised the shotgun and aimed at me. “Get the fuck off my property, Duke.”
I treaded water, raising my hands in surrender. “Like I said, I was just going.”
“You shouldn’t have come here.”
“If I thought you’d have the same idea, I wouldn’t have. You don’t have a towel on you, by chance, do you?”
Poppy pumped the shotgun, loading shells into the chamber.
