Chapter 14 Wet Ted Is a Certified Hot Person #2
My stomach flips.
“What did you have in mind?” My voice is embarrassingly breathy. What is happening right now?
He drops his hand to sprint in the direction of a clump of teenagers gathering at the edge of a gray stone cliff.
Absolutely not.
I sprint after him. “You’re out of your mind if you think—”
“You need to get out of your head, Beekman,” he calls back, refusing to break his stride.
“I will crack my head. That’s what happens to people who plummet into rocky lakes.”
“ Children are doing it!”
“ Children don’t have fully developed prefrontal cortexes.”
“You’re cooler than this. I know you are.
” He faces me, walking backward on the narrow footpath.
“I know you were scared back then…but it’s different now.
” His words drop me on the top of that waterfall in Lewellen with him.
Just two kids who had no idea that the world was going to kick them in the teeth.
I shake my head. “It’s not—”
“Do you trust me?” he asks.
“Okay, you’re seriously going to kill yourself walking like that.”
He stops short, and it takes all of my lower-body strength not to collide right into him.
“Chuck?” He pierces me with that unfairly striking stare. “Do you trust me?”
“Yes.” I say it without thinking, because that’s never been a question for me. Of course I trust Ethan. He’s Ethan.
My chin tilts up with a confidence I don’t actually possess. Could I bring myself to trust him with every part of me? Even the dark places that repel love like opposing poles? What if I could? I know it’s crazy, but even at the edge of a cliff, I feel safe with him.
His eyes dart around my face, like he might not believe me, but then he blinks. “Okay, then,” he says.
We know we’re at the right spot from the piles of clothes and towels dotting the jagged rock that juts out from the edge. There’s no sign of the teens who left them there, which is troubling, but I refuse to dwell on it.
Ethan lowers his pack to the ground before stripping to his boxers. I keep my eyes on the water and follow suit, pulling down my shorts until I’m in nothing but underwear and a T-shirt.
“Wait,” I tell him, reaching down for his bag.
There’s a fog bank in the distance, hovering over the enormous trees like a gauzy curtain in the sunshine.
Our little rock seems tiny in comparison, the surrounding pines hugging the stone like a benevolent presence.
On top of the forest, I can admire the way the trees and rock roll straight into the clouds.
We’re on the edge of the planet with water dotting the landscape, craters of serene blue.
“I want to take a picture of this real quick.”
“Without pants on?” he asks through a frozen jaw. The chill off the lake is getting to him.
“Is there a dress code?”
He sighs, like my brief interlude is derailing his perfect sequence of spontaneity. After a couple of shots, I stow the camera away, but I pause at the sound of my vibrating phone.
I look up at him. “This is torture. I have enough service up here to see that I have billions of emails coming through from Bob, but not enough to open them.” Is this ledge the cork between heaven and hell?
His inhale flares his nostrils. “Put it away,” he commands, and I throw the phone back in the bag with resignation.
“No more stalling, Beekman.” When he says it, I can’t help but notice him. The way he’s standing close and how the light touches the lines of his bare shoulders, the smattering of hair on his chest and the way it rises and falls with his breaths.
I lick my lips and face ahead. He’s right, I’m stalling.
I don’t mean to, but suddenly, we feel very high up, and I’ve already made the rookie mistake of looking straight down into the water.
Fear rips through my insides like an invasive plant.
This water is nothing like Lake Lewellen. It’s wild and dark and bottomless.
“We shouldn’t do this,” I whisper, peering over the ledge, but I might as well be talking about this moment, last night, this whole damn trip. I’m never reckless like this. I’m never this out of control. My breath has grown ragged, and I’m failing miserably at concealing the unsteadiness of it.
“Look at me, Charley.” Ethan’s voice is steady, a buoy in choppy waters. “Charley,” he repeats, grabbing my face, the tips of his fingers threading into my hair. His hands are so much bigger on my cheeks. Warmer than I’m used to. “I won’t let go of your hand. I promise.”
I nod, watching the bob of his Adam’s apple.
Intellectually, I know we’ll survive this drop with little more than a bruised ass, but I catalog every crease in his face, the way his lip twitches, every small part of him, like it might be the last time I ever see it.
I think he does it to me too. His eyes trail everywhere on my face like little featherlight touches.
We’ve been barreling toward this jump since the day we met, and now, after everything this year has thrown at me, I want to take this leap with him. I need to.
“Don’t let go,” I tell him, right before we jump into the air.
We kick our legs as though they might land on the surface and keep running like one of those water striders. We’re weightless, existing somewhere between water and air, until the momentum and gravity split us apart, and Ethan plummets into the lake a half second before me.
He smacks the surface hard; the splash of his body against the dark water sounds like a cracking tree trunk. It’s the last thing I hear before the freezing lake swallows me whole too, pressing me down like a needle through silk, silencing my senses until I’m caught by the water.
For the span of a single heartbeat, I’m disorientingly buoyant, as though I’m water too. The tension in my muscles spills into the surrounding liquid. By the next beat, my stillness is replaced by the instinct to kick myself back up.
We reach the surface at the same time, both of us gasping for air. He releases an exhilarated whoop and whips his hair to the side. “Holy shit. Can you believe that? Was it everything you imagined, Chuck?”
“I might’ve swallowed a bandage on the way down,” I manage to say back, kicking my legs like mad.
“You’re so full of shit.” He gives me one of his big, toothy grins—his happiest kind—and it pulls my lips into their own smile. “You loved that. Admit it.”
We just stare at each other. Him smiling at me. Me smiling at him. Both of us breathing heavily as our feet pump beneath the surface to keep our heads above water.
This look on his face is my soft landing. I can’t tear my eyes away. My heart is beating like I’ve conquered Everest—I feel invincible—but the only thing I want to do is…exist. Be here, with him, in this moment for as long as possible. A place where I have peace.
But time keeps moving, my legs tire, and we have to swim to shore.
Out of the water, we follow the uneven, pebbled path in the direction of our clothes. I nearly topple back into the lake when my foot falters on a loose rock, but Ethan’s there in an instant.
He grips my waist. “I got you,” he says.
He keeps his hand there as I right myself. It doesn’t mean anything, but knowing that doesn’t stop my stomach from swirling like I’m at the top of the cliff again, leaning over the edge.
But my feet are firmly planted now, and his hand still hasn’t moved.
I turn my head and he’s right there. We’re eye to eye.
I’ve always loved that about us. The way he looks at me dead on like he’s bracing himself for whatever he’s about to see, like I might still surprise him after all this time.
Even though I never do. Ethan’s maybe the only man I’ve ever truly been myself with, utterly transparent.
No shields. No white lies to better package myself. Just me. He makes it safe to be me.
So what’s another risk? I think as my veins course with adrenaline from my last leap into the unknown.
Slowly, I slip my hand around the slick skin of his neck, watching his response.
He swallows hard but doesn’t move. My eyes are slow and brazen as they drag up the column of his throat—a languid finger swiping a dollop of frosting along the side of a birthday cake.
My rapidly shrinking self-consciousness makes me worry he’ll laugh or wince or flinch at the way I’m drinking him in, but he doesn’t do any of that.
Instead, he licks his lips and, for a split second, I can almost taste him.
My thumb sweeps the top of his shoulder, pulling out a ragged puff of air from between his lips. My gaze darts back up to his eyes. Droplets of water sparkle in his eyelashes and tumble down the apples of his cheeks, gathering in the fine creases where his ever-present smile usually sits.
But he’s not smiling now. He’s not blinking.
He’s hardly moving. He’s doing nothing but staring back at me with something like curiosity in those charcoal-rimmed irises.
It’s that look that does me in. Its uncharacteristic intensity that’s only ever been directed toward me in these very specific circumstances.
These what if moments I pretend not to notice.
I thread my fingers into the damp hair at the nape of his neck, hoping to ground myself so I don’t drown in the two of us, our shared history filling my ears, my nose. It’s all too much. We’re too much.
“Chuck.” He blinks his eyes shut—pure agony—his head still leaning into the press of my fingertips as though he can’t help himself.
I know historically Ethan can handle friendships with an occasional benefit.
He said as much at the donut shop. Everything doesn’t have to mean everything .
He’s been daring me to cross this line all day.
The question is, would it have to mean anything to me ?
What are the stakes of giving in? What are the stakes of not?
What if I end this trip without ever knowing for sure what it would be like to have him—really have him—just once, and to have someone who knows the whole truth of me want me back as fervently as I want him? Surely that’s not more frightening than jumping off a literal cliff.
A breeze sweeps goose bumps up my back, but I’m consumed by this familiar discomfort of being on the precipice of Ethan Powell. The exhilaration of feeling as though something, anything, could happen—is about to happen.
But no matter how far this goes or how many lines we cross, he’ll be gone in a week. He’ll go—I know he’ll go—and in that way, Ethan’s not even a risk.
So I do the safest thing I’ve ever done and tilt my mouth to his.
“Me?” he whispers.
Our noses brush. “You.” I want this moment, and I only want it with him.
That’s all it takes. He dives into me without reservations. There are no quick pecks to test the waters this time. Ethan’s mouth is hot. Slow. Responsive. He’s learning me—no, he knows me. It’s as though he’s always known how I need to be kissed. Touched.
I notice every sensation. I catalog every bit: How my paper-thin shirt slides against his body, still sopping from the lake.
The way he holds me so hard, as though he’s worried I might evaporate in his arms like a dream.
The sound of his tiny groans and how they rumble in my throat. How desperate it makes me.
His hands grapple with my waist, my hips, frantic as he anticipates my every mewl of pleasure, my every tiny, happy gasp. Ethan knows me better than anyone. I guess it stands to reason he’d know this too.
The taste of him dances on my tongue. It’s sweet, like he snuck a bite of candy on our hike up the rocky path.
It makes me greedy for more. More of this.
More of everything. It all feels so present.
So immediate. Already within my grasp. It’s been a minute—maybe two—and I’m already consumed by possessiveness. My Ethan. Always.
My palms slide down his chest, and he, honest to god, moans into my mouth as he lets me revel in the feel of him, the firm ridges I’ve only ever glimpsed. But when my fingers reach the lowest part of his abdomen, he breaks himself from the trance.
“Charley,” he says through heaving breaths. “How far are we taking this?”
“All the way,” I say back, just as labored.
His grin presses into my cheek. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. Until you leave,” I promise, tugging at the waistband of his boxer shorts. “Like you said, this doesn’t need to mean anything.”
“Wait.” He grabs my wrist with a gentle hand. “Charley, stop. We’re not having sex for the first time in the woods.”
“Well, I’m not getting back into that canoe. I just paddled and portaged for an hour, and I’m planning to die out here.”
His eyebrows curl inward in the most adorably frustrated way. He’s a puppy who can’t get his treat out of a Kong toy. “This isn’t how I pictured it going.”
I pull a face. He pictured it?
“We can have more time. We don’t need to rush,” he assures me, but his blown-out pupils mirror my fear-backed frenzy. The momentum between us is fragile. If we stop now, we may never start again.
I shake my head. “I’ll lose my nerve.”
“I won’t let you. What if we—”
A twig snaps within earshot—the unmistakable sound of a hiking boot in the woods. Ethan pulls me close.
“Sorry to startle you guys,” a man’s voice says. “Are you Ethan and Charley?”
My legs nearly give out. Ethan at least has the wherewithal to adjust his shorts. “Yep. You with—”
“The lovebirds,” he says, cutting Ethan off.
The man who emerges is thin, pale, and mostly mustache.
He’s undeniably the type of stray Petey and Laurel would pick up in a campground.
His clothes are tattered and threadbare in that style that toes the line between “obscenely trendy” and “lost in the woods—send help!” But, then again, I’m in a soaked-through shirt and underwear and Ethan is still at half-mast, so our house is made of the thinnest glass.
“Our site’s not that far from here,” he continues, gesturing west. “I can take you, but I’ll…um…give you a second to dry off.”
I salute weakly and scramble for my clothes, refusing to fixate on the possibility that either I’ve destroyed a fifteen-year friendship or my perfect, no-strings sexual encounter was just ruined by this man in a bucket hat.