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Only there’s no girl trying to keep decent, just the man who got away, standing a few feet back… looking more than a little uneasy.
Shit. “Hey, sorry, man. I didn’t know anyone was out here.”
What the hell is he doing here?
But then, I glance up at the house and see what I missed swimming in. The warm glow of lights cutting through the trees of a property that, to the best of my knowledge, has been unoccupied for the last two years.
“I— I rented it from Finch for a month this summer.” He lets out a strained laugh and takes a step closer, which still leaves half a dozen feet between us.
“Cool. That’s great.” I grip the back of my neck, hating the way every awkward second is systematically stripping away a memory so precious to me, I can barely breathe through it. “Let me get out of your way, here.” I swallow. “Now that I know you’re here, I’ll swim in the other direction.”
I slide my feet over the side, the cool water doing little to ease the burn of too many things within me. I’m about to drop back into the lake when a warm hand meets my shoulder before abruptly pulling back.
“You don’t have to go. Yet. I mean, you could hang out. Catch up a little.” He takes a quick breath that has me slowly turning around. “Didn’t get a chance to talk to you at the party.”
Resisting the urge to ask what happened with Laura, I shrug. “Too many people for me after a long day.”
He clears his throat and steps closer, and I swear there’s a shift in the air around us. He gestures to my right. “Mind if I?”
“It’s your dock,” I say, aiming for light, but my nerves make it come off kind of dickish. So I quickly add, “But yeah. Take a load off.”
There’s a glint of his teeth like maybe he’s smiling, and then that big hockey body that is definitely bigger than it was the last time I saw it— touched it —drops down beside me, leaving an ambiguous space between us.
It’s not close enough to touch. Not a come-on, that’s for sure. But not so far it feels like he’s making a point either. He’s just there, a few inches away, on the dock where we had our first kiss four— or maybe four million —years ago.
And that’s got to be why he wants me to stay.
This spot is private. Safe. It’s the perfect place for a pro athlete with a career on the rise to ask if I’d mind keeping that one time he dipped a toe into the rainbow under wraps.
When he opens his mouth though, it’s not to beg for the privacy I’d give him whether he asked for it or not.
TREVOR
“How’ve you been, man?” I ask, going for casual like my heart isn’t still giving me the Shake Weight treatment, and I wasn’t just lying here asking myself if I’d made a monumental mistake coming back.
God, he looks good.
Like some kind of aquatic god with lake water running in rivulets from his hair. Poseidon… if he were twenty-two and wearing a criminally hot, thigh-cut Speedo with a pair of clear goggles clutched in his fist.
He also looks a little confused, like he might have been expecting me to say something else. But what are you supposed to say to the first guy who blew your mind and changed your life forever… then told you goodbye?
No idea, man.
But I try again, because he’s here. Swimming right out of my damn thoughts.
And self-destructive or not, I don’t want him to go.
“Heard you’re still working with your dad.” Yeah, I might have asked when I realized he’d left the party while I was letting Laura down in private. “You happy?”
He takes a beat and then relaxes into the question, leaning back on those straight, powerful arms.
“Yeah, I am. To both questions. I actually spent two years at the U and then moved to an online program when my dad needed a surgery.”
“Oh damn, how’s he doing?”
“It took him a while to get up to speed after, but he’s good now, thanks. And he’s got a shiny new hip out of it that we’re hoping will last him through the back nine.”
There’s no bitterness in the way Cam says it, so I mean it when I tell him I’m glad to hear it.
