Chapter 16
SIXTEEN
This was a terrible fucking idea.
Maybe my worst idea ever.
Because moments before, Hallie stepped into my bedroom dressed in her bathing suit, a small string thing with little bows resting on her full hips, an open cider in her hand, and a nervous smile on her lips.
I almost popped a fucking boner, like a teenager who just saw the hot babysitter in her bathing suit.
I ushered her through the sliding glass doors in my room that led to the hot tub, telling her I’d get my own beers and meet her out there.
But now, I’m panicking, pacing my room, and my eyes keep drifting to the doors. The backlight gleams like a beacon, trying to beckon me on and encourage me to give in to my temptations.
Get it together, King, I tell myself, taking deep breaths to try and settle my heart. She just opened up to you. She has had a very rough day. Don’t be a fucking creep.
With that final reminder, I head into the kitchen, opening the fridge and grabbing three beers for myself. I’m cracking one open before shucking my shirt off and tossing it onto the kitchen island. Then I down half of the beer for courage like some unhinged frat boy.
With one last breath, I make my way back to my room, refusing to pause as I slide open the glass door. The vision sends my pulse racing and my cock hardening.
Hallie is in my hot tub, her hair a bunched mess on top of her head, one arm resting along the side of the hot tub. Her head is tipped back to the darkening sky as if she’s asleep, her chest rising and falling slowly and gently with each breath.
She looks fucking magnificent, the ties of a bathing suit around her neck taunting me. All I can think about, despite my best judgment, is tugging the strings, letting it fall, and revealing the curves that have been tormenting me for some time now.
I can’t deny that, for the past few years, Hallie Young has been someone difficult to ignore, a gorgeous woman I was always able to categorize as never could be mine.
I managed to because it was always supposed to be Hallie and Madden.
One day, they would come to their senses, and my brother would stop fucking around and give her a fresh start, a family, and a white picket fence.
Except she laughed at that idea.
She told me she would never choose Madden.
And more importantly, her final words have been ricocheting through my mind ever since: “If I were to go for a King, it would absolutely be you.”
Her eyes track me as I move across the patio, setting the extra beers into the snow and a fresh one on the side of the hot tub.
She shifts, setting her elbow on the edge of the hot tub, her eyes locked on me as her fingers play with the string of her bathing suit top.
It’s a nervous move, a mindless fidget I don’t think she realizes she does when she’s overthinking things, though usually it’s with the tiny curl of hair at the back of her head that never makes it into a ponytail.
She watches as I move up the small set of stairs and then climb into the hot tub, settling in with a sigh across from her.
At least I still have enough of a rational mind to sit opposite her, I suppose.
Without breaking eye contact, I reach over and grab my drink, taking a long pull before setting it back down.
That’s when she lets out a laugh, a slight shake of her head. “I didn’t think you’d actually do it.” I keep my eyes locked on hers, then raise an eyebrow. “Come in here with me.”
“Want me to leave?” A beat passes, and she holds my gaze before speaking, challenge in the words.
“No. I could use a little company.” Her tongue darts out, wetting her lips, and that goes right to my cock, stiffening it. Thank God for the bubbles of the jets, I suppose.
We sit in silence for a few minutes, Hallie off in some other land, and me stuck on not watching her tits or trying to see through the water at her body before she sinks into the water with a groan.
“Okay, we need to lighten this shit up,” she says with a laugh.
“What?”
“It’s so awkward, Jesse. I can’t sit here in silence with you in a glorified bathtub.”
“This was your idea,” I remind her. She looks me over, eyes lingering on my lips before she takes a sip of her drink and smiles at me.
“I’m aware. But now I’m bored. Let’s play a game.” She sits up, and my cock does too.
So fucking stupid. That’s me. So fucking stupid, sitting in a hot tub with my baby sister’s best friend, my daughter’s pseudo babysitter, with my cock hard as a rock.
But do I leave?
Hell no.
Instead, I encourage her.
“What’s that game you played with Wren on her twenty-first?” I ask about the one time I saw my little sister drunk.
“Never Have I Ever?” she answers, and I nod, remembering the night.
It was the first night I remember actually seeing Hallie, after all.
It’s burned into my memories. We took Wren down to The Mill, before Colt bought it, for her twenty-first birthday.
Madden and I were supposed to be DDs, but he ended up getting smashed as badly as the girls that night.
Hallie decided they’d play a drinking game, which was very clearly framed to get Wren hammered quickly, with Hallie, Nat, and Madden saying things they knew Wren had, in fact, done.
I’d sat back and watched with entertainment before driving everyone back home.
“You want to play Never Have I Ever with me? I know too much about you.”
“Excuse me?” I ask, confused.
“If you play Never Have I Ever, you’ll be hammered in no time.”
Stupid and stubborn. That’s me, apparently.
“Try me,” I say with a smile. “I’ve got a full six-pack in the fridge.” She crosses her arms on her chest, which, to my utter delight and dismay, presses her tits together, raising them a bit. I’m so distracted by the move, I almost miss the fact that she started the game already.
“Never have I ever played hooky from school,” she says, a playful tilt to her lips, probably remembering the time I did just that and got grounded for a week. I glare but roll my eyes and take a sip of my beer, happy to do it to get more of that courage into my veins.
“My turn?” She nods, and I narrow my eyes at her. “Never have I ever gotten high.” She lifts an eyebrow and doesn’t take a drink.
“Really?” I ask in shock, and she beams before she shrugs. “Not even with Madden?”
“Hell no. That’s the kind of thing you do for the first time with someone responsible. Not Madden.”
I let out a laugh, and some of the tension leaves my shoulders. We go back and forth like that for a few rounds, in which she tells me she once won $200 on a lottery ticket, and I tell her I’ve never borrowed anyone’s toothbrush before.
This goes on for a while longer, each of us taking a handful of drinks and laughing.
I hop out into the freezing cold and grab another drink for both of us.
When I step back in, I hiss, my feet tingling with pins and needles as they sink into the hot water, and move to my side of the hot tub once more.
“Can you move closer so I don’t feel like I’m shouting?
” she asks. I hesitate, not sitting, but staring at her.
“I won’t bite, promise.” After a moment of hesitation, I realize that common sense has long fled, and I nod, moving so we’re on the same side of the hot tub.
From this angle, I can see through the water and to the ties that sit perfectly on her hips.
My fingers itch to tug on them, to loosen them and get a better glimpse of the faded tan lines, but then I remind myself to focus.
Despite the attraction, I’m having fun here.
In fact, it’s the most fun I’ve had, the most carefree I’ve felt in a long time.
Probably since last February.
“Okay, whose turn is it next?” I ask once I settle in, the silence stretching between us uncomfortably.
She shakes her head a tiny bit, as if she’d been lost in her head, then shifts, crossing one leg over the other.
As she does, her feet graze along the back of my calf, stopping at the back of my knee, and a red flush that has nothing to do with the cold or the warm weather blooms over her cheeks.
“Sorry! I—” she says.
I roll my eyes, and it’s probably the now two beers in my system, but I reach under the water, gripping her ankle and tugging her along the seat of the hot tub until she’s at my side, legs draped over mine.
This close, the golden flecks in her grass-green eyes are startling as she looks up at me, her full pink lips parted.
Quiet breaths pass between us as we sit like that for a moment before I speak.
“Your turn,” I say eventually, my voice gravelly, and she licks her lips, her eyes a bit hazy before she speaks.
“Never have I ever regretted a haircut,” she murmurs, and I let out a low laugh.
“Unfair,” I say, knowing she’s talking about the time when I was twenty, and Maddon convinced me to shave my head over winter break.
At the time, my hair was longer than it is now, and we didn’t just buzz it, but we took one of Wren’s close-shave razors and made me bald.
It looked absolutely horrific, and I’ve never had short hair since.
She reaches up, brushing hair across my forehead, her fingernails scraping at my scalp as she pushes the unruly locks back. I hold my breath through the entire move.
“Never do that again, yeah?” she asks, fingers still in my hair as she takes another sip of her drink. I don’t know if it’s just to drink or because of the question, but I’m finding I don’t even care anymore. “Your hair looks so much better this way.”
I stare at her, unsure of how to respond, unsure of what else I could do other than stare at her, trying to talk myself into not leaning in and pressing my lips to hers, into not giving in to the desire pumping through my veins.
I’m not drunk, not by a long shot, but I take a sip of my beer and blame my next moves on it.