Something to Someone (Someone, Somewhere #2)

Chapter 10

TE N

LATE NIGHT SWIM

Caroline

It was the calm after the storm. All the children who invaded my house had left, and I’d spent the last hour and a half getting everything back to the way it was.

Natalie, my sister, and my sister’s family had stayed around to help me clean, which I appreciated, but I was happy to have an empty house once again. I liked the quiet.

For the first time that day, I slipped off my swimsuit cover-up and took advantage of my pool. With the sun nearly below the horizon, the night air was several degrees cooler, but when I dove in, the heated water was the perfect temperature.

I swam the length of the pool, back and forth, until my muscles grew tired, and I floated on my back in the middle of the water. My house was too close to the city lights to see any stars, but a few winked into existence as the sky grew darker.

My eyes slowly closed, and I took a deep breath, letting each of my muscles relax. Until I heard a sound, and I quickly righted myself. I spun in a tight circle, surveying my surroundings and slowly beginning to panic. I whipped back around to face the house and that was when I noticed him—Ryder—relatching the back gate.

“What are you doing here?”

I dipped farther down into the water until it was just beneath my chin as Ryder turned and strode toward the edge of the pool. Motioning to the item in his hands, I didn’t recognize what it was until he said, “My mom asked if I would bring this back to you on my way home. She said she already fixed whatever was wrong with it.”

“Oh, okay,” I muttered. It was a dress I’d wanted to wear the next day that had a small rip from where the tag had been removed. And of us two, Natalie was much better at sewing. I knew it would take her less than a few minutes to fix it whereas I would have stabbed myself six times just trying to thread the needle. “You can just put it on one of the chairs.”

Ryder nodded and set the dress on the arm of a chair. Slowly, he turned and began unhurried, measured steps around the pool until he was standing just at the edge, peering down at me. With his hands in his jean pockets, he appraised me. The low lights in the pool and the water cast shadows that danced across his face. His eyes scanned my face before they dropped lower. Everything below my shoulders was distorted by the water, but I knew he could still see the shape of my blue bikini and the rest of my bare skin.

After our incident in the bathroom, I hadn’t stopped reliving those moments for the rest of the day. The image of Ryder on his knees, making dirty promises that I knew he was eager to keep would forever be burned into my brain.

A muscle tensed in his jaw, and I watched his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed. Even in the warmth of the water, goose bumps appeared down my arms and over my legs under the intensity of his stare.

Although he was silent as he watched me, his expression was loud. All the desire he’d expressed to me before was simmering and ch urning, apparent in every subtle dilation of his eyes and twitch of his muscles.

Then he shifted and toed off one shoe. It wasn’t until he started on the other and tugged off the flannel he’d tossed on over his white T-shirt that I found my voice.

“What are you doing?” I spluttered.

Ryder didn’t stop. He pushed his shoes to the side and let his flannel drop on top of them.

“Getting in,” he said like it was a foregone conclusion. Like it was obvious that he would get in with me.

Shaking my head, I straightened. The cooler air was a stark difference to the heated water around me, and I immediately felt my nipples harden to little points. Not even the thicker swimsuit fabric could hide the inconvenient evidence of the change in temperature. Quickly, I resubmerged until the tops of my shoulders were exposed.

“Why the hell would you do that?”

He shrugged and reached behind his head for the collar of his T-shirt. “Because it looks…tempting,” he reasoned. I swallowed past the excitement in my throat as he clarified, “The water, that is. It’s hard to resist.”

But the way he said it, in a tone belying all the dirty thoughts in his head, I knew he couldn’t be talking about the water.

“Ryder—” I tried to say when he whipped his shirt off and exposed the shallow yet defined muscles of his stomach and the broad planes of his chest where a small smattering of neat, dark hair began. Of their own accord, my eyes followed the path it created until it disappeared behind his belt.

“Yes, Caroline?” he asked, and I whipped my attention back to his face. The cocky little grin titling his lips made me second-guess my inadvertent ogling. “If you really want me to stop, I will, but you have to tell me to. I’ll give you ten seconds.”

The imaginary timer started, but he didn’t stop. He gripped his belt and unfastened it, tugging it open while maintaining eye contac t with me. In my head, I counted backward from ten as his fingers brushed against the button of his jeans.

I urged myself to say something, anything. To tell him how wrong it was and how badly it would end, but voicing those thoughts was pointless when I’d barely convinced myself. I knew it was frowned upon to desire your best friend’s son, and I had no doubt that whatever started— if it started—would probably end poorly. But all the reasoning in the world couldn’t make me speak before the imaginary timer rang.

Ten seconds later, Ryder pushed his zipper down and stepped out of his jeans only a moment before he dove into the pool. I caught a glimpse of his tight, black briefs before he swam past me beneath the water.

Generally, I was a confident person. In my work and in my everyday life, I was decisive and trusted my instincts. Even when I dated, I was unwavering. Which was why I was unnerved by how hesitant I was of my actions around Ryder. I second guessed every word and every movement.

It was truly unsettling the effect he had on me. Actually, it was terrifying.

And attempting to act like that wasn’t the case was growing harder and harder every second we spent together. But still I tried as I stood stock-still in the middle of the pool and subtly glanced in the water around me. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of his moving form, but that didn’t keep me from startling when he breached the surface directly behind me.

A few droplets of water hit my back, and I sucked in a sharp breath. He was close, so close that I could feel the heat of his body against my back, and his rushed exhale against the side of my neck. Of course, I couldn’t see him, but the images my imagination conjured were vivid enough.

Small beads of water stuck to his smooth, tanned skin and were reflected in the new moonlight. There was subtle movement behind me, and I imagined he pushed a hand through his dishev eled hair, pushing back the black locks that always fell over his forehead back.

For a second, I thought it was still my imagination running wild when I felt the almost imperceptible brush of his fingers against my arms, but it wasn’t. I glanced down to see his hands moving through the water, carefully stroking my skin like he wanted to make sure I was really there.

I took a grounding breath that did little to calm my nerves, and instead, said, “You might as well say what you came in here to say. I know you didn’t jump in here because the water ‘ looked tempting. ’”

He chuckled, and his hands fell away. I pointedly ignored the disappointment that tugged at the back of my mind.

“Hmm…” he hummed. “It does with you in it.”

I rolled my eyes and shook my head. I set myself up for that one. “Seriously, Ryder, get on with?—”

“I don’t want a relationship, Caroline. I just want you in whatever way you’re willing.”

“How is that fair?” I argued, trying not to remember the similar statement he’d made on his knees in my bathroom hours earlier.

“I don’t give a shit about fair. I’ve wanted you for as long as I can remember. Do you want me to tell you about that Fourth of July party how ever many years ago? That was the first time I saw you. You were wearing a little red, white, and blue bikini with cutoff shorts,” he said with a groan I swore I could feel vibrate through his chest. “And the white top you had over it was unbuttoned so I could see your gloriously tan skin. You were so perfect, and you’ve starred in every single one of my dreams since then.”

My throat constricted, and my heart started beating a wild, uncontrollable rhythm. With each word and each second, my walls were crumbling faster than I could reinforce them. The worst was happening, and the longer we stood there together, comple tely alone under the moonlight, the harder it was to fight it.

“Dreams are very different from reality, Ryder.”

He shifted closer, and I held my breath when I felt him brush against my back. “But faced with the possibility of making my dreams a reality, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity.”

I had nothing left to say. Every argument I had, he handily struck down with little effort. He’d obviously thought through the repercussions and had been thinking about it for longer than I’d realized.

“You know what I think scares you the most?” he asked, energy thrumming off his skin in palpable waves.

“Climate change? Nuclear war? Spiders?” I offered not wanting to hear his answer. But he ignored my suggestions and gripped my waist, guiding me to turn toward him. My mind told me to fight him, but I knew it would have been futile. My body had taken the lead.

With sincerity brimming his blue eyes, he clasped his hands on either side of my face. “I think what scares you the most isn’t the fact that I want you, it’s that you want me, too.”

Wow, very astute, I thought to myself because there was no way in hell I was going to admit that aloud no matter how correct it was.

“You don’t have to say anything,” he said. “Your silence is just as loud.” A smirk, the same one that always made me feel like I was a pubescent teenager with her first full-fledged crush, curved his lips, slow and tempting.

My eyes raked over his face as I tried to steady my breathing. Eyes like a dark-blue sky and a jawline that could cut glass covered in a stubble as dark as the hair on top of his head. Hair that fell in messy, loose waves onto his forehead.

All his attention was on me, and I felt lightheaded beneath his gaze. My eyes dropped to the wide set of his shoulders and like he was following my lead, his hands dropped from my face, the he at of his palms vanishing yet appearing once again against the sides of my neck and over my shoulders.

A shiver I had no control over whipped down my spine as my eyes lowered to his chest. It was intentional, I wanted to see if he would follow my eyes with his hands and was simultaneously pleased and horrified when he did just that. Confident yet light, his fingertips grazed the sides of my breasts, lingering over the skin near my swimsuit. I was no longer breathing. I couldn’t do more than one thing at a time, and breathing would require me to think about something other than staying incredibly still and taking in the man in front of me.

Lower and lower his hands fell, dipping beneath the water and finding the smallest part of my waist while I considered what his abs would feel like under my own touch. Finally, at my hips, Ryder’s large hands wrapped around me and squeezed hard enough that I had to force air into my screaming lungs.

“ Please , Caroline,” he whispered. “Let me show you how good I can make you feel. How good it can be. Please.”

And down, down, down came my walls. My eyes shot back to his, but he was already moving, lifting me into his arms and walking toward the edge of the pool.

“Fuck it,” he muttered.