AllFreeNovel
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“Where are we going?”
“You’ll see. Just need to make a quick stop.”
“It’s after midnight. Everything is closed,” he pointed out, sounding baffled.
I drove two blocks past our neighborhood and turned right at the end of the street, pulling into an abandoned gravel lot.
“What are we doing here?”
“I just felt like we needed a refresher.”
Carlisle sat up a little straighter, taking in the empty lot. “A refresher? From what?”
“Our jobs, our life. Selfish girls that wanna steal my brother's happiness.”
Carlisle laughed, but I saw the edges of his lips turn up into a grin for the first time in hours.
“And the old rock quarry is going to give that back to us?” He sounded skeptical but hopeful.
“Fuck yeah. Don’t you remember all the fun we’ve had here growing up as kids?”
Carlisle was fully smiling now. “I don’t think I’ve been back here since our senior year.”
“Oh yeah, grad night! Do you remember how drunk I was?”
“I remember daring you to jump in without your clothes on.”
“And I did!”
“And you did,” he agreed fondly, laughing along with me. “And then I tied your clothes to a rock and sank them at the bottom of the lake.”
“Fucker!” I nudged him playfully. “I went home naked, and Mom was waiting up for us. I’m glad I wasn’t the only one that got in trouble that night.” Carlisle laughed, looking at me with a wicked gleam in his eyes, so identical to mine.
“I dare you.”
“Dare me to do what?”
“Jump in without your clothes on.”
“Oh, it’s on.”
I opened the car door, stepped out, and shucked my clothes in a matter of seconds, tossing them onto the front seat, and took off at a dead run toward the quarry. It was pitch black, only the light of the moon lit the water’s edge as I jumped over the rocky cliff, my body hitting the water with a loud splash. The water was bitter cold and stung for a minute, like submerging myself in an ice bath, before my body adjusted. When I surfaced, the night air was chilly on my wet skin, making my teeth chatter.
“You’re fucking nuts!” My brother shouted from the ledge above. I could barely make out his shadowy form in the darkness.
“Come on, join me. Don’t be a chicken.”
“Oh my God, what are you, ten? You’re gonna peer pressure me to jump in with the old chicken joke?”
“Is it working?” I called out over the clacking of my teeth.
“Fuck it,” he decided and shucked his clothes as well, jumping over the ledge with a high-pitched scream. When he hit the water, he shrieked again, and I swam over to him, grabbing his arm when he surfaced. I would jump in this lake a thousand times without a care for my well-being, but when it came to my brother, I had to make sure he was safe and hadn’t injured himself on the jagged rocks below the murky surface.
“You good?”
“Yeah. Cold as ice, though. My balls are numb.”
“Mine, too,” I wheezed. We laughed, taking turns dunking each other’s heads under the frigid water. After just twenty minutes, we were exhausted and turning blue. It was definitely time to get out. I helped Carly scale the rocks, making our way back up to the top of the cliff where we parked, and grabbed a blanket from the trunk of my car. I wrapped Carly in the worn flannel, basically doing the pee-pee dance while I froze my nuts off waiting for him to get warm.
