Chapter 14
Chapter fourteen
Jasmine
Once every six months, the town organizes a Saturday Pool Day—except everyone knows it’s really Lake Day.
We all haul coolers and chairs down to the sandy crescent of Golden Heights Lake, claim a spot by the swim buoys, and pretend we don’t know everyone else’s business.
I’m not the biggest fan, but it’s nice to be out where the cottonwoods throw a little shade and the water looks like a sheet of hammered silver.
Riley and I have a standing claim near a shallow cove—a patch we’ve “marked” over the years with a sun-faded umbrella and a mat with a ketchup stain neither of us will own up to.
She left a couple hours before me because she’s in charge of half the sign-ups and the “no glass near the waterline” reminders.
Vice principals are good at rules, apparently.
As my sandals sink into the warm sand, neighbors call out.
“Hey, Jasmine!”
“How’s Scotty’s holding up?”
“You bringing the good lemon bars later?”
“I suppose you’re parking with Riley again?”
I smile, nod, wave, keep moving. When I reach our spot, the umbrella is already planted, our mat spread, a cooler sweating in the shade.
But no Riley.
I scan the lakeshore. Families are staking their umbrellas, teens are daring each other to swim out to the far buoys, and a jet ski tears a hard turn out in the main channel, tossing chop toward the cove. Then—
“Hello,” a voice says behind me.
His voice.
I turn. Asher stands there in a white T-shirt and black shorts that fall just past his knees, dark shades hooked on his collar. Beside him is Brick, his hand looped through Asher’s like it’s second nature.
“Hey, Brick,” I say, wiggling my fingers. He wiggles back, shy smile and all.
“Didn’t think I’d see you here,” Asher says, giving the cove a once-over like he’s patrolling it.
“I’m always here.” It comes out too fast.
He tilts his head. “I suppose it does look like it. This just doesn’t feel like your scene.”
“And you know my scene how, exactly?”
“Well, I don’t see any placards. Or a megaphone.” His mouth twitches.
“Dad.” Brick tugs his arm, eyes already on the water. Asher shoots me a small, apologetic smile and lets himself be led away.
“Oh my God, today’s going to be a disaster,” Riley groans as she hustles up, plopping onto the mat. Her ponytail is half out, and there’s sunscreen on her sunglasses. “We need extra eyes.”
“What?” I drop onto the mat beside her.
“Terry—the seasonal lifeguard—called in sick. I’ve been on the phone with the ranger station and the marina office for an hour. Lake Patrol is short-staffed, and no one wants to volunteer because, and I quote, ‘I came to float, not supervise.’”
“And they still didn’t budge?”
“Not even an inch.”
“Well, maybe there won’t be any emergencies,” I say, digging my toes into warm sand. “This cove’s usually tame.”
“Or,” Riley says, deadpan, “a kid ends up halfway to the fishing pier, and we finally end Pool Day forever.”
I don’t dignify that with a response. I tip my face to the sun, listen to the squeals and splashes, and try to file the lake sounds into the drawer in my brain labeled “calm.” Boat wakes slap the shoreline.
Someone’s Bluetooth speaker leaks 80s rock.
A dad warns a teenager about the drop-off past the second buoy.
My eyes stray—entirely against my will—to Asher and Brick, settling two umbrellas down.
Asher pulls a jar of sunscreen from a tote. I watch him shrug out of his T-shirt. The sun catches on his shoulders, on the line of his collarbone, on the faint scar by his eye. He begins smoothing sunscreen over his chest and throat.
“Jasmine,” Riley hisses.
I blink. “What?”
“What are you staring at, and why are you turning the exact color of your hair?”
“It’s nothing.”
She tracks my gaze—of course she does—and her mouth curves in a slow, wicked grin. “No.”
“Don’t.”
“You were staring for minutes. I have to ask.”
“And I said don’t.”
“You’re as red as a tomato, and it’s not the sunburn.” She leans in. “Do you like him? Is that what this is?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” I tip my sunglasses lower. “He and I are always at each other’s throats. What could possibly come of that?”
My traitor eyes slide back just in time to catch Asher dusting sand off Brick’s shoulders and smearing on sunscreen. He looks up, like he felt me staring, and our eyes catch across the cove. The heat spikes behind my cheeks.
He nods. I manage a smile that feels like it’s made of brittle glass. He holds the look a breath too long, and my stomach does a slow, traitorous roll.
“Really, Jasmine.” Riley groans. “Just march over there and throw your lips at him.”
I choke. “What is wrong with you?”
“How about we stop with the faux-oblivious act? It’s not playing well.”
I flop back, shades pitched at the sky—the endless blue broken by a circling osprey and a single white cloud like a scoop of whipped cream. I try to let the brightness burn away Asher Thoughts. It doesn’t work.
Do I like him? No. Absolutely not. He’s smug and stubborn and thinks the law is a blanket he can throw over nuance. I could say he’s passive—but then I remember him squaring off with two thieves in my diner. The last thing he is, is passive.
A scream rips through the lake air.
“Sabrina!” a woman shrieks. Heads snap up. Half the people on the sand surge toward the waterline, eyes wide, hands cupped to block the glare.
“What is—” I start, already standing.
“Someone’s kid!” Riley is up too, scanning. “There’s no lifeguard—this is exactly what I was worried about—”
“Somebody help!” the woman wails, voice shredding with panic. Out past the swim buoys, a small pair of hands slap at the surface, then vanish. A moment later they pop up again—little mouth, big gasps, the lake’s chop smacking her face.
“Can anyone swim?” a man shouts uselessly, as if that’s the problem.
A figure breaks from the crowd and sprints for the shallows. He dives clean, slicing under the whitecaps from a passing pontoon, and arrowing straight for the girl.
Asher.
My lungs forget their job as he closes the distance with sharp, efficient strokes.
He reaches her, turns her, gets his arm under her chin the way you’re taught—he knows this—and starts for shore.
He keeps her face tipped out of the water when another wake rolls through.
A kid in a kayak turns away from the buoys so fast he nearly flips.
Asher hits knee-deep water and stands, hefting the girl into his arms as the lake slides off them in glittering sheets.
He lays her on the sand just past the wet line and checks for breathing.
Her chest is still. He seals her nose, tilts her chin, and gives a breath.
One, two compressions—calm, steady. The girl’s mother drops to the sand, hands fisted under her chin like prayer.
“Come on, sweetheart,” he murmurs, which I can hear because I’ve drifted closer without realizing it. “Come on. Breathe.”
She sputters. Coughs. A thin stream of lake water spills from the corner of her mouth.
She coughs again, harder this time, and the entire cove exhales at once.
Applause breaks everywhere—ragged, relieved, ridiculous—and then immediately stops because her mother is crying and clutching and kissing every inch of her face.
“She still needs to get checked out,” Asher says, voice firm but gentle, his breath sawing. “Take her to Urgent Care or page the park ranger—they’ll radio Lake Patrol.”
I don’t realize I’ve moved to the front of the crowd until he rises and we’re practically toe-to-toe. Sand clings to his knees, to his forearms, to the sharp V of his hips. His eyes lift to mine.
Everything else bleaches out. The noise, the people, the lake.
Riley was right. (Man, I hate saying that.)
I’m in love with Asher Vaughn.
How the hell did I get here?
“What a day,” Riley mutters later, collapsing back onto the mat like a puppet with cut strings.
She’s just finished ferrying Sabrina and her mom to the ranger cart, which whisked them toward the parking lot.
“I owe Lake Patrol a fruit basket. And Asher a… medal? Cookie? What do you give a man who casually saves lives before lunch?”
“Sunblock?” I say, because my mouth thinks it’s funny. My hands won’t stop shaking.
Riley levels me a look. “You’re rattled.”
“I’m fine.” I’m not. “It’s just—he—” I break off, because Asher is across the cove with Brick again, talking low, ruffling his hair. He’s back in his T-shirt. He looks ordinary. He is not ordinary.
“Just go say thank you like a normal person,” Riley says. “Maybe don’t lead with your usual ‘the law is a hammer’ speech.”
“I don’t give that speech,” I lie.
She snorts. Then she sobers, glancing at the lake, then at me. “Look, I know you want to protect this town from everything—oil rigs, carpetbaggers, bad zoning, evil squirrels—”
“Those squirrels are organized.”
“—but today someone needed protecting from water. He did it. That’s allowed to matter.”
It does. It matters in a way that shoves at other, harder truths: Harold Swanson threatening my livelihood; H.S.
Incorporated waving fat checks at every small business on Brime Street; the way Asher said “more than you know” before he swallowed it.
I wrap my towel tighter, like I can keep all of that out. It flutters anyway.
Across the sand, Brick and Asher build a lopsided moat at the edge of the shore. Every time a pontoon plows by, a new wake sloshes in, wrecks their walls, and Asher laughs like destruction is a game you’re invited to play. Brick laughs too.
“I hate this,” I whisper.
“What?” Riley asks.
“That I like him.”
She leans her shoulder into mine. “Welcome to the worst best club. We have punch.”
“Spiked?” I ask.
“With feelings.”
I groan into my towel. The afternoon slides forward: gulls wheeling overhead, sunscreen and grilled corn on the air, the marina loudspeaker making polite threats about “no glass past the rope line.” The cove groans with families packing up.
At some point Brick trots over and holds out a small plastic shovel like a medal.
“For the cookies,” he says solemnly.
I blink. “What cookies?”
“The scones,” he corrects, like I should know better, then looks to Asher, who’s caught up to him. He gives me that half-smile again, the one I’m starting to suspect is more dangerous than his badge.
“Thank you,” I say, aiming for casual and landing somewhere near breathless. “For—today.”
He shrugs one shoulder. “Couldn’t exactly let Lake Day end with a council meeting and a memorial.”
“Careful,” I say. “You’re starting to sound like a community person.”
“Don’t tell anyone,” he says, then tips his head toward Brick. “We’re grabbing shaved ice at the marina. Want one?”
Riley materializes like a genie. “We absolutely do.”
He orders first—cherry for Brick, tiger’s blood for himself—and when I ask for lemon-lime, the teenager in the booth gives me extra on the house because “Scotty’s cinnamon rolls are life.
” Asher and I stand there, plastic domes sweating in our hands, not looking at each other and very much looking at each other.
“Hey,” he says finally, low enough that only I hear. “I meant what I didn’t quite say the other day.”
“That’s maddeningly unhelpful.”
He huffs a laugh. “I care about you. That’s all.”
The words land like a small, bright stone in my chest, sinking to someplace deep and certain. We both look away at the same time, like that will keep the moment from getting bigger than it already is.
“See you around the cove, Officer Vaughn,” I say, because my mouth still needs to win something.
“Count on it, Ms. Wallace,” he says.
And I do.