39. Max
Max
The river is the one part of this estate I never had to reclaim from my father.
Everything else I’ve rebuilt. The house, the company, all of it reshaped into something that no longer belongs to Theodore Cavill.
But the river was never his. It runs along the edge of the property, and it was here long before he decided to put a wall around it.
It’ll be here long after the last trace of him is gone.
I used to come here as a boy when the house got too loud. I’d sit on the bank and put my feet in and let the cold work its way up through my legs and think about nothing.
I still do.
The water is cold for early morning, sharp enough to register on every nerve, and I let it.
I pull through the current with long, even strokes, feeling the resistance in my shoulders and the familiar burn in my arms. The light is low and pale, cutting across the surface in long ribbons.
Every Saturday morning, this is what I do.
Ethan and Finn both like to sleep in, but I prefer this—the cold and the quiet.
Except this morning, even the river can’t empty my head.
I don’t think about Sophie.
I surface near the far bank, turn, push off, start back. The cold water moving over my skin, the pull of the current against my arms, the silence that exists only near moving water.
I don’t think about the night in the library. The rain in her hair. The way she stood in front of me in her underwear and pointed at every scar and dared me to leave, and asked me how I could love her.
I surface. Turn. Push off again.
I don’t think about Ethan’s hand on her shoulder and the way her face changed when her body stayed still instead of fighting, or about the scent that filled the room after—rain and crushed rose petals pouring off her skin.
I don’t think about the fact that it’s been two days since that night and everything has changed and nothing has changed and I told her I loved her and she fell asleep in my arms.
I reach the near bank, stand, and look up.
Sophie is sitting on the bank.
For a full second I just stare. She’s cross-legged in the grass, her dark hair loose around her shoulders, her shoes off, her chin resting in her hand—and she is watching me with an expression I’ve only seen once before. In the library, right before she jumped.
Open and unguarded.
The moment she realizes I’ve seen her, color floods her cheeks. She sits up straighter and drops her hand from her chin, but she doesn’t look away. A month ago, she would have.
“I was just—” she starts.
“Sophie.” I can’t keep the amusement out of my voice. “How long have you been sitting there?”
“I literally just arrived.”
“You took your shoes off.”
She looks down at her bare feet in the grass as if she’s only just noticed them. Her chin lifts a fraction. “Isn’t the water too cold to be swimming in?”
“Why don’t you come find out for yourself?”
I hold her gaze for one moment, then I turn and push back out into the current.
I don’t look back. I swim to the far bank, turn, start the return length, and I am not thinking about whether she’ll do it. Sophie doesn’t respond to pressure. She never has. She responds to choice—to the door being left open and nobody standing in it.
I’m halfway back when my feet find the bottom. I stand, push my hair out of my face, and look up.
Sophie is stepping into the water.
She’s in a plain black bra and underwear, and she’s walking in with her chin up and her eyes forward as if cold water is just another thing that doesn’t get to tell her what to do.
Jesus fucking Christ.
I’ve seen her body. I’ve seen the scars.
But that’s not what I’m seeing now. It’s the curve of her hips, the fullness of her thighs, the way her breasts move as she walks.
She trains like a fighter and moves like a weapon, but there’s a softness underneath all of it that no amount of training can erase, and I want to put my mouth on every inch of it.
I look away and force my eyes to the bank, where her shirt and jeans are left in a neat stack with her shoes set precisely beside them, which is so entirely her that I almost smile.
It doesn’t help. I can still see her in my peripheral vision, and I am in serious trouble.
“Sophie—” Her name comes out before I can stop it.
She looks up. Her eyes are bright—lit with something close to mischief. “What?” she says. “You told me to find out for myself.”
“It’s really cold.”
She keeps walking. The water climbs to her knees, her thighs, her waist, and I watch her face for the wince, the gasp—
She barely shivers. Her eyes find mine across the water, slightly teasing, one corner of her mouth pulling.
“It’s not that cold.”
I stare at her. “You’re insane.”
She tilts her head. The morning light catches the water on her face, her shoulders, and I am doing a very poor job of not staring.
Then she drops her hand beneath the surface and sends a wall of water directly at my face.
I don’t move fast enough. It hits me full in the chest, and by the time I’ve wiped my eyes she’s already laughing—a real, full laugh, the one I’ve been catching glimpses of for weeks and never quite seen at full volume.
It transforms her face. Her eyes crease at the corners, and she looks young and delighted and entirely without armor.
I splash her back.
She shrieks, and the sound startles a laugh out of me. She retaliates immediately, both hands churning the water toward me, and I’m laughing harder than I have in years. I lunge forward and catch her wrists before she can send another wave.
The moment my hands close around her wrists, we both stop.
She’s in front of me, her chest rising and falling fast, her hair half-soaked and curling at the ends.
Water moves around us both. The laughter fades from her face slowly, replaced by awareness—of my hands on her wrists, of how close we are, of the fact that we’re both half-naked and neither of us is pulling away.
I can see her freckles clearly now. Three across her nose, one high on her cheekbone.
Her breath comes out shaky, but her eyes stay on mine.
“Sophie,” I say softly, my eyes dropping to her lips before I can stop them.
“Let’s go to the house. I’d really like to kiss you, but if I start out here I’m not going to be able to stop, and I’d rather not do this in a river where the water is—” I glance down.
“—doing absolutely nothing to help my situation.”
She follows my gaze. Her eyes widen, and a flush spreads across her cheeks. “Okay,” she says, a little breathless. “The house.”
She wades back to the bank and dresses over her wet skin without ceremony. Her clothes are soaked through before we’ve taken ten steps toward the house, dark with water, clinging to every line of her, and she walks through my front door like none of it is her problem.
I grab two towels from the hallway.
“Your clothes. They’re—”
“I know.” There’s a small smile at the corner of her mouth, almost shy, and I marvel at it. The shyness. The playfulness. It’s like seeing a very different side to her, and I want more of it.
“I can go get you some—”
She pulls her shirt over her head.
I stop talking.
She drops it on the floor without looking at it. Her hands go to the button of her jeans. She pushes them down her legs and steps out of them, and she straightens and looks at me, standing in my hallway in her wet bra and underwear.
There’s no defiance this time. No watching my face for the reaction the way she did in the library, chin up, daring me to flinch. She just takes off her wet clothes because they’re wet, and stands there, and the trust in that simple act makes me realize we’re past the point of no return.
I wrap the towel around her shoulders, my fingers brushing her collarbones, and she pulls it close but doesn’t look away from me. I can feel her skin under my knuckles, cold and damp and covered in goosebumps, and it takes everything I have not to pull her against me right here in the hallway.
Instead, I take the stairs two at a time, grab a shirt from my closet, and come back down.
She’s still standing where I left her, the towel clutched to her chest. I hold the shirt out.
She takes it, drops the towel, and pulls it over her head in one motion.
It falls to mid-thigh, swallowing her, and she pushes the sleeves up to her elbows and I can’t stop watching her.
She catches me staring. “What?” The word comes out light, the small smile still there.
I look at her—the wet hair curling at her shoulders, the freckles I can still see, my shirt on her body, one bare shoulder where the collar has slipped.
“I like seeing you like this,” I say. “Like you’re not trying to be anything. You’re just...” I pause. “You.”
The playfulness fades from her face. “You’ve seen worse,” she says quietly.
“I’ve seen everything. And it only made me want you more.”
She looks at me for what feels like forever. The house is quiet, the river still audible through the open window. Morning light fills the living room, and I know with the same certainty that has defined every important decision I’ve ever made that something is about to change.
“Max,” she says softly.
I cup her face in both hands and kiss her, and it’s hungry and raw and desperate. It’s every moment I’ve spent holding back since the first time I pinned her against the wall in my office, every day I’ve spent trying to forget it, all of it pouring out of me at once.
She gasps against my mouth and I swallow the sound, my hands sliding from her face into her wet hair as I kiss her deeper.
And she lets me.
Her fingers dig into my back and she pulls me against her like she’s trying to climb inside me, and the sound she makes against my mouth nearly brings me to my knees.