Chapter 4
Blakelyn
I dream of the river.
Not the real one—the cool, winding one outside my cabin—but a version my mind shapes in sleep. Endless, still, black glass. No banks. No trees. Just water and sky and the shadow of a man standing in the middle of it, like he was always part of it.
Gruene.
In the dream, he doesn’t speak. He just watches me sink below the surface. And I don’t fight it. I just… descend … accepting my fate.
I wake up gasping. I’m slick with sweat. My chest is tight, my thighs are clenched, and my hands are twisted in the sheets like I’ve been holding on for dear life.
My skin prickles. I want to run but not from something… to something… or rather to someone .
Glancing at the clock, I push out of bed and don’t bother with makeup or a change of clothes. Yanking on cutoff shorts over my panties, I don’t bother slipping on a bra under my tank top. My bare feet slap against the wood floor as I move toward the door.
My body hums with something I can’t name… I don’t want to recognize it.
It’s not panic.
It’s need .
It’s barely after 7AM, but the Texas sun is already clawing at the trees. The gravel path stings under my feet as I walk barefoot toward the tubing shack. I don’t even care. I’d walk through fire right now just to see him.
I round the bend—and there he is.
His grey t-shirt clings to his back. Sweat is staining it, down the center of his spine, as he lifts a loaded cooler into the back of a flatbed. He doesn’t see me yet. But I see everything.
The way his muscles ripple under his shirt. The way his scarred arms flex. The way his teeth grit as he slams the tailgate and mutters something I can’t hear. The early morning sunlight catches the line of puckered, raised tissue cutting through his scruff over his jaw.
Stopping just far enough away that he doesn’t notice me, I just stand there for a second.
Watching. Wanting. Wondering how close I can get before I stop pretending it’s not real. I’m dancing in orbit of the sun and no longer scared of getting burned. I already know…
It’s inevitable.
His head turns. His eyes find mine. He doesn’t flinch. He doesn’t smile, he just… stares. And I swear the air warps between us.
Walking the last few steps toward him, I stop when I’m almost touching his chest with mine.
His stormy eyes stay locked on my amber ones. His jaw ticks. “Blakelyn, you good?” he asks, his voice low and rough.
“I didn’t sleep.” I say.
“Nightmares?” He asks.
I nod.
He wipes his hands on a rag from his back pocket while he studies me like he’s searching for the damage.
I close my eyes before looking right at him. “I saw you,” I say quietly.
His brows lift, but he says nothing. He just continues to stare at me, waiting for whatever I’m about to say.
“In my dream.” I reiterate.
He still doesn’t speak, but his fists tighten at his sides.
“You were standing in the river. Watching me as I sank.” He freezes. “And I didn’t want you to save me.”
He looks away and exhales rapidly. “I wouldn’t know how.”
I step closer. “I don’t want you to save me… from you .”
I said it. I can’t take it back.
His throat moves. His fists clench at his sides. His chest rises with a breath that sounds more like surrender than air. He stares past me, at the gravel under my feet. “I’ve gotta load the last raft,” he gruffly says.
That’s it. Okay then.
Nodding, I step back. He moves around me, purposefully not touching me, but I feel him staring at my back as I walk away.
He’s not unaffected. That wasn’t rejection. It just wasn’t surrender.
He’s watching. Breathing hard. Burning… just like me.
I’m back at the riverbank near enough to the launch that I can see, but not disturb, before lunch. I’m between the cabins and the launch dock.
Not to swim. Not to read. Just to be near where he is.
I bring a towel and my water bottle and sit in the shade of the cypress trees, my legs stretched out, and my eyes on the current, but watching him upriver from my peripheral vision. I can’t help it.
I don’t expect him to come to me. But he does. He always does. He’s as aware of me as I am of him.
He approaches me like he’s fighting it, dragging it out of himself one step at a time.
He doesn’t ask to sit with me. He just drops onto the towel beside me and leans back on his hands. We both stare at the river.
Neither of us speak until I break the silence. “Did you know,” I murmur, “the human body can detect touch even when it hasn’t been made yet?”
He glances at me before quickly looking away. His body is as tight as a wire.
“ The space between ,” I say. “The hover. The almost. Our skin feels it. Our nerves anticipate it.”
He shifts slightly, his arm barely brushing against mine. I don’t know if it was intentional.
“So, if I did this —” I move my fingers a breath from his thigh “—you’d feel it.”
“I already do,” he grits out. His voice is low… hoarse.
I swallow hard. “Why haven’t you kissed me? You want to. I want you to.” I’m breathless.
“Because I wouldn’t stop.” He growls.
My pulse stutters. “Maybe I don’t want you to.”
He looks at me—really looks, and something inside him breaks.
He grabs my face like he’s drowning and his hands on my cheeks are his lifeline.
His lips crash into mine like they’ve been waiting too long, held back too hard, and now they’re done asking for permission. He’s not rough. He’s desperate.
So am I. I pull him into me. His weight, his hands, his mouth—I want all of it.
My fingers fist in the sweaty fabric of his shirt as he pushes me back onto the towel, his body half covers mine. Though it’s also like he’s half holding himself back.
I taste coffee on his breath. I smell the river and outside on his skin. And I feel the quake in his shoulders.
He kisses like a man who remembers what loss tastes like… like he knows exactly how fragile a mouth can be. And mine opens for him without question.
His tongue slides over and around mine. Slow. Hungry. Worship and war all in one.
Gasping, I arch under him, my chest pressing into his, my nipples beading and poking into his pecs. He groans like it hurts in the most delicious way.
He pulls back an inch. Just an inch and my hands press against his back, holding him in place.
“Fuck, Blakelyn,” he breathes. “I shouldn’t be doing this. We shouldn’t be doing this.”
“But you are. We are.” I moan, arching into him, completely uncaring of how wanton I look.
“I can’t be gentle.” He growls.
“I’m not asking you to be.” I reply.
He closes his eyes, pressing his forehead to mine and whispers the one thing I didn’t know I needed to hear, “I don’t want you to feel like his hands are on you.”
“They don’t.” I respond instantly.
They don’t. Gruene is all I can think about.
He opens his eyes, staring down at me. And this time, when he kisses me, it’s slower… deeper.
His lips cling to mine. His hands are on the ground on either side of my hips, holding his weight off of me.
My hands are in his hair, cupping his neck, his cheeks, gliding over his shoulders and back.
And still we kiss. His tongue slides over mine before exploring the recesses of my mouth.
Mine traces his teeth and dances with his tongue.
Then, he presses his lips to mine, soft, reverent, like he’s putting the pieces of me…
of himself… back together one touch of our lips and tongue at a time. Like he’s choosing to feel again.
His mouth trails over my chin and down my neck. He presses open-mouth kisses as he breathes into my skin.
I do the same, trailing my lips over the line of his jaw, peppering the scar that cuts through the beautiful perfection with soft kisses.
We kiss for what seems like hours, but we don’t go further. Not yet.
He stays pressed to my side on the towel until the sun shifts behind the trees and the air starts to cool. Neither of us says a word about what just happened.
We don’t have to.
It’s real . It’s now . And it changes everything.
Gruene
The feel of her mouth still lingers on mine. The taste of her still sits on my tongue.
Even hours later, standing under a cold shower that does nothing to settle the burn under my skin, I can still taste her.
Feel her… the way she looked up at me, laid back on that towel—half invitation, half challenge…
the way her body arched into mine like she wasn’t scared. Like she was just… ready.
She trusted me. She asked… practically demanded that I kiss her. And I did. Because I couldn’t stop myself.
That should scare the shit out of me. Instead, it’s all I can think about. She’s all I can think about.
I towel off, grab a clean shirt, and yank the cabin door open like the air outside might help. It doesn’t. The heat’s thick, heavy, slow—Hill Country summer pressing down like it wants to smother everything.
I drag my hands through my wet hair and stalk down the porch steps toward the river.
I need to move. Burn it out. Bleed it out. But she’s already there on the dock.
Blakelyn .
Sitting on the edge of the worn, sun-warmed wood with her legs dangling in the water, her hair loose and blowing in the breeze, and her eyes half-lidded like she knew I’d come, like she was waiting for me.
She doesn’t look surprised when I sit next to her. She doesn’t even look at me. “You’re running,” she says.
I’m sitting right here.
Flinching, I snap, “What? I’m fucking sitting beside you.”
She sighs. “Not with your body, Gruene. You are beside me, but you’re not. Everything else is sprinting.” She laughs but there’s no humor in it. It’s sad. “I’ve done it enough. I recognize it.”
I stare at the river, her words repeating inside my head. “I told you I wasn’t ready.”
She chuckles, but again, it’s not funny. “And I told you neither was I.” She’s also staring straight ahead.
“I shouldn’t have touched you.” I grunt.
She nods. “But you did.”
We’re silent. The lull of the water and the cicadas fill the air.
“You regret kissing me?” she finally asks.