Chapter 15 — Wanted Most
Wanted Most
My day started with coffee, six women in my kitchen, and a boat tied to my dock that looked like it had been engineered by people who believed subtlety was a moral failure.
The dealer had called it state of the art.
I called it a lake boat with enough horsepower to make bad ideas arrive faster.
White fiberglass hull, twin engines, sun-warmed vinyl, storage compartments full of ropes and life jackets and things I pretended were organized because Kiki had started organizing them for me.
It sat behind my house, right where it belonged. No marina. No public launch. No loading coolers into cars and pretending this was some normal day trip.
My backyard dropped to the lake. My dock reached out from the grass. My house stood behind us with the sliders open and the sound of six women moving through it like they'd finally stopped asking permission from the walls.
I stood on the dock with my mug cooling in my hand and watched my life walk in and out of the kitchen carrying snacks, towels, sunscreen, and enough emotional consequence to sink a smaller boat.
I wasn't trying to slow it down.
That was the strangest part. A few weeks ago, I'd have stood there with my brain building emergency exits. Too fast. Too much. Too dangerous. Somebody was going to notice. Somebody was going to get hurt. Somebody was going to look at us too closely and see the truth.
Now I watched Kiki come through the sliders with the cooler braced against her hip and thought, yes.
This. Her golden hair was tied up, her bikini top mostly hidden under a loose white shirt she'd stolen from me, her bare feet quick on the deck.
She moved through my space with the warm authority of a woman who knew where I kept the mustard because she'd put it there herself.
"Do not let Tatum near the lemon bars before lunch," she said, setting the cooler down with a thump. "There are decoy cookies in the front pocket. Use them if she gets desperate."
"What kind of emergency requires decoy cookies?"
"Tatum awake before ten."
"Fair."
Kiki kissed my cheek as she passed. Casual. Warm. Like kissing me on my dock in front of everyone wasn't a revolution anymore, only part of the morning.
Shay came next with an armload of towels stacked high enough to hide her face. She made it six steps before the top towel slid off and landed on the dock.
"No one saw that," she said from behind the pile.
Another towel dropped.
"Still no one saw that."
"You know I'm standing right here."
"You see nothing. You're emotionally supportive and visually unreliable."
The third towel went. Shay stopped, looked at the heap around her feet, then looked at me with the grave dignity of a woman facing trial.
"The towels mutinied."
"Obviously."
"I was betrayed by terrycloth. That's not on me."
I took the stack from her before the rest could defect. Shay stretched onto her toes and kissed the corner of my mouth, quick and shameless, then climbed aboard and dumped the towels into a pile she immediately declared nautical.
Tatum arrived at a run because Tatum didn't believe in walking when a surface existed to be attacked.
Copper hair wild, freckles bright, white bikini top under cutoffs, pool noodles under one arm and absolutely nothing useful under the other.
She hit the dock, bounced once on the boards, and launched herself at me like I was both target and landing zone.
I caught her.
Always caught her.
Her legs wrapped around my waist for half a second before she dropped back to the dock, grinning like she'd won something.
"Good morning," she said. "I'm excited. Very excited. Possibly too excited for structural integrity, but that's the dock's problem, not mine."
"Please don't break my dock."
"I make no promises."
Penny descended the deck steps with the kind of composure that made everyone else look like a weather event.
Platinum hair smooth, sunglasses on, white cover-up over a green bikini that made me lose a full second of thought.
She carried a canvas bag in one hand and my attention in the other.
When she reached me, she slid her fingers around my wrist and squeezed once.
"I packed a real first-aid kit," she said. "Because someone is going to do something athletic and poorly considered."
"Shay or Tatum?"
"Yes."
Her mouth curved, and she leaned in enough for her shoulder to brush my chest before stepping onto the boat.
Reese came after her, soft and bright in pale blue shorts and one of my old shirts knotted over her swimsuit.
The sight of that shirt hit harder than it should have.
Not because it was mine. Because it looked right on her.
Because after the Madden house, after her room, after the way she'd fallen asleep on me at my place with her body still soft and wrecked from what we'd done, Reese no longer looked like someone waiting outside the door of her own life.
She looked like she'd walked through it.
She met my eyes, and the smile she gave me was small and full of light.
"Morning, baby," she said.
"Good morning right back at you, gorgeous."
It wasn't much. It didn't need to be. She pressed a water bottle into my hand, brushed her fingers over mine, and climbed aboard with the easy warmth of a woman who knew exactly where she stood.
Eden was the last one out.
Except she wasn't last because she was late.
Eden Archer didn't arrive late by accident.
She appeared in the open slider with her dark hair pulled back, hazel eyes sharp behind my sunglasses, which I hadn't given her, wearing a navy swimsuit under cutoffs and a black tank.
She had one shoulder against the doorframe and a smile on her face that looked lazy if you didn't know how much work Eden could do while standing still.
I knew.
She had been watching all of us. Kiki in my kitchen. Shay on my boat. Tatum in my arms. Penny with her hand on my wrist. Reese glowing in my shirt.
And Eden, not outside it. Never outside it.
Still, not yet across.
She came down the deck steps carrying sunscreen and nothing else.
"You missed your shoulders," she said.
"I haven't put any on yet."
"Then technically you missed everything."
She stopped in front of me, took the mug from my hand, set it on the dock post, and moved behind me. The first touch of her hands on my shoulders was warm and slick with sunscreen. It should have been practical. It was Eden, so it was practical with a blade hidden inside it.
Her palms moved over my skin with steady pressure. Up my shoulders. Across the back of my neck. Down to the edge of my shirt, where her fingers slipped under the fabric and dragged heat across my spine.
I stared at the lake.
That was safer than looking at anyone else.
Her thumbs pressed into the muscle at the base of my neck. Slow. Firm. Not quite a massage. Not innocent either. I could smell coconut sunscreen and the citrus perfume she wore beneath it, bright and warm and too close.
"You burn," she said.
"I tan."
"You pretend. Different thing."
"Control issues?"
Her hands paused. Her mouth was near my ear when she answered.
"Yes."
One word. Calm. Warm. Honest enough to make my pulse kick.
Then she stepped around me, wiped her fingers on the hem of my shirt as if I belonged to the cleaning process, and adjusted my sunglasses on her face.
"These are mine for the day."
"Are they?"
"Obviously."
She climbed into the boat before I could answer, sat in the seat behind the helm, and crossed her legs. My sunglasses on her face. My sunscreen on her hands. Her gaze on me like she'd left fingerprints under my skin and wanted to see if they showed.
We loaded the boat in a storm of food, towels, arguments, and Tatum trying to declare one of the storage compartments emotionally hers.
Kiki vetoed that. Shay tried to claim the anchor.
Penny took over music. Reese helped me coil lines with her shoulder brushing mine in quiet little passes that felt like afterglow in daylight.
Eden stayed near the helm.
When I stepped in, she shifted so her knee touched my thigh. Not hard. Not obvious. Just enough. A small, deliberate point of heat. When I reached for the controls, her hand found my wrist.
"Want help with the lines, captain?"
"You know how to handle lines?"
She smiled. "I know how to handle plenty of things."
Shay made a strangled sound from the back of the boat.
"I'm choosing maturity," she announced.
"That's new," Penny said.
"It hurts."
Eden didn't look away from me.
I started the engine. The boat hummed under us. The dock began to slide back. My house sat in the trees with open doors, claimed rooms, and a kitchen that no longer felt like a bachelor's kitchen at all.
Eden's knee stayed against mine as we pulled away.
Nobody was pretending not to notice.
***
The cove looked like the kind of place summer kept for itself.
Trees crowded close on three sides, throwing green shade over water clear enough to see sand ripples below. A limestone shelf rose on the far bank, and from an old oak branch hung a rope swing that Shay spotted with the expression of a woman recognizing destiny.
"Mine," she said.
"You don't own rope," Penny said from the bow.
"I own vibes."
"Also false."
Shay ignored her, stood on the swim platform, and pointed toward the bank. "Ladies, gentlemen, and people who have made deeply questionable decisions involving my friend group, welcome to the Hollis School of Water Violence. Attendance is mandatory. Dignity isn't provided."
Tatum was over the side before I finished setting the anchor.
She hit the water with a splash that reached the deck, surfaced with a shriek, and shook copper hair out of her face. "It's perfect. It's cold. I'm alive. Shay, if you hesitate, you're legally boring."
Shay gasped. "I have never hesitated in my life."
"You hesitated over brunch last week."
"That was strategic bacon assessment."