23. Cora #2
The swim was my idea, mostly because the water looked unbearably inviting and I had, historically, never resisted a bad idea that came dressed as a good one.
I was in before I'd fully thought it through, gasping at the cold, and Dmitri followed a moment later with none of my dramatics, cutting into the water like a man who'd done this exact thing a hundred times before, alone, in silence, and was only now finding out how much better it was with someone else in it.
"This was your idea," he said, treading water an arm's length away, hair dark and slicked back, looking younger somehow, unguarded in a way the lake seemed to be pulling out of him one layer at a time. "I want that on record."
"Noted. Blame accepted in advance."
"It's freezing."
"It's refreshing. There's a difference, and honestly the fact that you don't see it concerns me a little for the future of this relationship."
"You've used that line already today."
"I have an excellent line and I intend to run it into the ground."
He laughed, and the sound of it out here, with no walls to hold it in, no meeting to return to after, did something to my chest that I felt all the way down.
I swam closer without entirely deciding to, and he met me the rest of the way, one arm coming around my waist under the water, pulling me in against him, both of us treading in lazy circles just to stay afloat, foreheads nearly touching.
"Hi," I said, a little breathless, a little ridiculous.
"Hi."
"This is a very inefficient way to have a conversation."
"I've stopped caring about efficiency for the day."
"Careful. That sounds suspiciously like growth."
He kissed me instead of answering, slow in a way that had nothing urgent behind it, no clock running out anywhere, no phone about to ring, just his mouth on mine and the water holding both of us up while everything else in the world stayed exactly where we'd left it at the end of the driveway.
I wrapped my legs around him without thinking, and he carried us both toward the shallows where he could stand, laughing against my mouth when I nearly slipped straight out of his grip.
"You're going to drown me," he said.
"I'll consider it a team building exercise."
"I've survived worse things than you."
"Have you though? Really?"
He didn't answer that one either, just walked us both up onto the grass at the edge of the dock where the light had gone properly dark now, stars starting to show through the trees, and set me down slow enough that I felt every inch of the transition, water sluicing off both of us, his hands finding my waist, my jaw, in no hurry at all, like its own kind of luxury after everything we'd both spent the last few weeks bracing for.
There was laughter in it still, softer now, his mouth curving against mine every time I said something ridiculous, which, given the circumstances, was often.
"I have grass in places grass should never be," I informed him, somewhere between one kiss and the next.
"I'll take responsibility for that later."
"You'd better."
He made good on it, deliberate and thorough and grinning the entire time like a man who had genuinely forgotten, until today, that this particular version of himself still existed, the one who teased and laughed and took his time because nothing in the world was chasing him for once.
His mouth found the curve of my shoulder first, patient, tracing the line of a strap he hadn't bothered removing yet, and I felt the warmth of his breath against skin still cool from the lake, a contrast that made me shiver for reasons that had nothing to do with temperature.
When his fingers finally worked the strap down, taking their time about it in a way that felt almost like punishment, I heard my own breath catch before I had time to be embarrassed about it.
"You're stalling," I told him, my voice not nearly as steady as I wanted it to be.
"I'm appreciating." His mouth moved lower, tracing my collarbone, and every clever thing I might have said dissolved somewhere behind my ribs. "There's a difference. You taught me that yourself, twice, today."
"I regret all my own lessons."
"No, you don't."
He was right, and I didn't waste breath arguing, not with his hands finding the rest of the fabric between us and easing it away with a patience that felt almost unfair given how long I'd wanted this exact thing without letting myself think the words.
The night air should have been cold against wet skin, and for a moment it was, and then it wasn't, because he covered me with the whole warm weight of himself and every nerve I owned rearranged its priorities at once.
I got my hands under his shirt, impatient in a way he wasn't, dragging it up and off until there was nothing left between us but grass and starlight and the low, steady sound of the lake keeping time somewhere off to the side.
"Slow down," he murmured against my jaw, laughter still threaded through his voice even now, even here.
"I don't know her. I've never met slow down."
"You're about to."