Chapter 8 #2
sister, Patty, was waiting for her when we docked because Jazmine had texted her to come pick her up.
Patty gave me a little wave from her truck, and I waved back, feeling ineffective and concerned.
“Seriously, just let her cool off. She’ll come around,” Seb told me. “Let’s get you back home before we both freeze to death
in these wet clothes.”
I nodded, and after saying goodbye to Benny and promising to meet up again to discuss the key I’d found, we loaded into Seb’s
Bronco, and he sped the entire way back to Heron Cottage. We barely said two words the entire way, both lost in our own thoughts
as the gentle narrator on Seb’s audiobook talked soothingly about visiting castles in Spain.
But after pulling into my driveaway, Seb sighed deeply, shut off the engine, and looked at me.
“Well, that was . . . something,” he said, tugging his wet shorts away from where they stuck to his thighs.
“I know I told you I’d poke around under the hood of your car today.
But I need some clean clothes and a shower, so I better go do that first. God only knows what kind of bacteria were growing in that cave water.
We probably contracted Legionnaires’ disease.
” He shivered violently. “Fuck me! Why are wet clothes so cold?”
“Just . . .” I sighed and pushed open the passenger door. “Take a shower here.”
One brow shot up. “Seriously?”
“Probably have fresh clothes of yours in the cottage—I assume their yours. They were all over the floor of my room, and for
some dumb reason, I didn’t burn them all.”
Seb’s face went from surprised to happy. “That would be great.” He jumped out of the Bronco, with Punkin following. “Really
hope you’ve got my Bun in the Oven T-shirt. People always ask me how far along my wife is when I wear it.”
I groaned and let us inside the cottage, where Punkin raced to the water bowl in the kitchen. “You can take the shower first.
I’ll dig out some clothes and leave them outside the bathroom door.”
“Thanks, Paige. I really appreciate it. Seriously.”
He headed to the bathroom while I went to my bedroom and dug out a trash bag from my closet that contained his clothes—mostly
T-shirts and shorts. A pair of boxers with a Christmas tree print. Several mismatched socks. I pulled out some things and
quickly changed out of my own wet clothes, feeling relieved to slip into an old fuzzy housecoat.
And also anxious. Seb is getting naked two walls away. Was that a normal thing that old friends did, let them shower in your house while you parade around in a housecoat? I briefly
worried Nana would disapprove. Then again, this was sort of an emergency, one might say, so maybe it was totally fine.
By the time I’d placed Seb’s clothes next to the bathroom door, I heard the water in the shower shutting off and knocked on the door. “Hey. Your stuff is sitting here, and I let your dog out through the back because she was barking.”
The door unexpectedly opened, and Seb’s wet head poked out. Soap and shampoo wafted from him as he towel-dried his hair. “That’s
fine. She won’t jump the fence. What’d you say before that?”
There was too much glistening skin on display. And also not enough, because my animal brain was curious to see what was hidden
behind the door. I guess all it took was one accidental boob graze for me to turn into a maniac.
I dropped my eyes to where his clothes sat in a neat pile. “There,” I said, gesturing toward the floor. “Hope that’s good.”
“Sweet! Thank you.” He started to reach for it but hesitated when he couldn’t do so without exposing himself. “Could you just . . . ?”
“Towel around the waist is customary,” I pointed out.
“This is the only one in here,” he argued, shaking the towel he used to dry his hair. “You need to do laundry.”
“Sorry, been too busy spelunking.”
“Is that what the kids are calling it these days?”
I rolled my eyes and picked up his clothes. “For the love of God, just . . . there, take them,” I said, shoving them toward
him while averting my gaze.
“Damn, Paige. My eyes are up here, you know.”
I glanced up—I couldn’t help it—and as my eyes lifted, I caught the smallest glimpse of his bare hip, just a sliver of skin peeking out from behind the door. He shifted farther inside the bathroom, and that sliver disappeared. But I saw it. Hip. Side hip. Was that a thing?
My face warmed before words finally came. “I wasn’t looking at anything.”
“It’s a pretty good view, I’ve been told.” He gripped the edge of the door, offering to open it. “If you want to look, I wouldn’t
blame you.”
My face was on fire. An oven. A forge. The heat from a million dying stars. “Starting to think you really were trying to cop a feel in the cave,” I managed to say.
“Paige, I swear on Wyrd Jack’s ‘Prison Poem’ that I really didn’t mean to do that. Come on. If I really wanted to touch you,
you’d know it.”
“Oh?” I wished I didn’t sound so breathless, but I could feel my pulse in my swollen ankle, and the pain wasn’t helping my
nerves. “Is that right?”
He tapped the edge of the door several times, then blue eyes flicked toward mine, and he stared at me with an intense, dangerous
look I’d never once seen on his face in all the years I’d known him. “You’d have to want me to. That’s the first thing.”
Warm chills raced over my skin. Was he suggesting I give him permission . . . ? A riot of panic-adjacent emotions broke out
inside my chest. Maybe I was confused again. He was only running his mouth, and I was more shaken by that flooded cavern than
I’d previously thought.
“Get dressed, asshole,” I said, turning away from the bathroom.
“If you insist,” he called behind me as I hobbled back to my room.
I didn’t respond. I just stood against the wall in my bedroom—the same wall that separated me from the bathroom, exhaling a shaky breath.
Everything was fine.
I was not thirsting for my childhood friend.
Even if I had to tell myself that a thousand times before it sank in.