Chapter 13 #2
Her palms felt sweaty, her heart beating just a little bit too hard.
And then she thought about letting go. Once the swing was extended out over the water.
It had always scared her. She had always been afraid that she would miss.
She would end up landing precariously back on shore, or that her jump would be inelegant and she would hurt herself.
She pumped her legs again, reaching her full extension.
He was watching her. And she realized this was how she always wanted him to see her.
Like this. The way they had been. Not a war-torn woman who had let him break her heart without his even knowing.
Not this version of herself she didn’t want to be.
This woman who was running away from him because she had let herself be embroiled in an impossible love.
She wanted to be the girl who had loved him. Big-hearted and reckless, not realizing that it could hurt.
She called on that girl. On all of the strength that she had.
And then she let go of the swing, launching herself forward. She screamed. Loud and feral. The last thought she had before she disappeared beneath the water was that she couldn’t remember when she had stopped screaming like that.
She couldn’t remember when they had stopped playing. When they had stopped being able to find the magic in life.
Maybe around the same time she had realized that the feeling she had for Carson could hurt her. Maybe around the same time she had realized that she couldn’t just assume his feelings matched hers.
Maybe around the same time her body had changed shape and become something men thought existed for them to look at, to touch, rather than for her to enjoy in freedom.
Maybe then.
How she missed this.
She swam up to the surface, and she took a great gasp of air when her head broke the water.
“Pirate princess,” he said. “We should swim over to the cave and look for buried treasure.”
“There is no buried treasure in that cave, my captain,” she said. “Only spiders and moss.”
“Then let us get the moss and the spiders.” He turned and swam away from her, and she followed, paddling beneath the surface, kicking like a frog, because she wasn’t the world’s best swimmer, and she was out of practice.
He swam in long, smooth strokes, and as she swallowed lake water in his wake, she admired the musculature of his shoulders.
Because this couldn’t be a moment of pure childhood joy, could it?
It was infected by the fact that she was all too adult.
When they finally arrived at the shore of the little island in the lake, she was tired. Much more so than she would like to admit.
Her dress was sticking to her, and she stepped out of the water, shivering just slightly, her chest aching from trying to take in enough air.
“This was just the best idea,” she said.
“Yes, it was,” he said.
And he was off, scrambling barefoot into the cave. She followed behind.
“I can’t see,” she said.
He reached out to her and took her hand. And her heart leapt up to her throat.
“Captain,” she said.
“Yes, pirate princess?”
“You’re unhinged. You’re aware of that?”
“Tired,” he said. “I’m fucking exhausted. I just wanted to not be for a minute.”
“Yeah. I get that.”
She had felt that, somehow. They were each other’s only refuge. They always had been. This was the only place they could play. The only person they could play with.
“I wonder when the last time we played pirates was? And why we never realized it was the last time.”
Maybe it was that moment when he’d looked at her as if he was angry, when she’d swum away from him.
They were too old to be playing games, but they had been anyway.
“It wasn’t. Because we’re playing now.”
She laughed but pulled her hand away from his. Then she reached down and took a jagged rock off the cave floor. “I believe this is a gem,” she said.
He smiled at her. “I bet.”
She could see just the outline of his face there in the dim light of the cave mouth.
She was grateful she couldn’t get a great look at his sculpted chest. It had been a minute since she had seen Carson without his shirt.
She could piece together an image still, but she wasn’t going to, not right now.
She was a pirate princess after all. Not that weak. Much stronger than Perry Bramble.
She wished she were deeply interested in rocks and moss. Sadly, she was more interested in Carson’s bare chest. She was answering her own question about when they’d stopped playing pirates and why.
“Okay,” she said. “The cave is dark.”
“Yeah. Fair.”
They turned back out of the cave, and Carson stepped ahead of her, standing on the shoreline. She looked at his bare, broad back, examined the musculature there. He turned his face to the side, and she allowed herself a moment to admire his strong profile.
He started to walk along the edge of the lake, then paused, bending down to pick up a yellow poppy. “Here’s some gold,” he said.
He turned toward her, and she was momentarily immobilized by the sight of him. The heat in his blue eyes, the definition of the muscles in his chest. His ridged abdomen.
And then he was right there. He held the flower out, but she found she couldn’t move her arms. When she didn’t respond, he extended the blossom and tucked it gently behind her ear, moving her hair along with it, his thumb brushing her cheekbone.
She looked up at him, her chest so full, she thought it was going to explode.
She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t think.
The light in his eyes changed then. And it wasn’t like when they were children. Not like when he was a boy. Suddenly, she saw something different there. It was an echo of what she had seen that night out in the truck.
Not completely foreign. But also different. It was more. Deeper. As if whatever had gripped him then was stronger this time.
She was seeing Carson as a man for the first time, she realized. What other women saw when he looked at them. When he was close. When he might kiss them.
That’s how he was looking at her. She couldn’t breathe.
She couldn’t move. She couldn’t do anything to show him that she wanted it.
And that she desperately didn’t at the same time.
That she wanted to run away. That she wanted to hide.
That she wanted to fling herself at him.
Right into his arms. If she didn’t take this opportunity, when would it ever come up again?
If she took this opportunity, would they still be friends?
He was the only one she could play with.
He was the only one who had ever made her this happy. And this sad. This filled with need.
But he was also the one who never come close to satisfying all the need she carried inside her. He was the problem. He was the solution.
Suddenly, he shifted his hand, his large palm cupping her face. That wasn’t ambiguous. It wasn’t in her head. That wasn’t the touch of a friend. Or a captain to a pirate princess. It was a captain to his pirate princess. And that made all the difference in the world.
She wanted to say his name, but her vocal cords wouldn’t work. Her tongue couldn’t move. Her lips felt conspicuous, and she couldn’t force a smile or a word with them either.
She was staring fully into a moment that she had wanted for most of her life.
In which her friend was both familiar and unfamiliar. In which he was both himself and a fantasy version of himself.
She had felt something like this before.
This acknowledgment between them. This connection.
Suddenly, she knew what it was. It was mutual attraction.
It wasn’t just her. In those moments when it felt as if they were sharing thoughts, when it felt as if there was something connecting them, it was attraction. Coming from him too.
There weren’t enough words in the English language to articulate the way she was feeling now. As if a miracle had happened.
He shifted, moving closer. Her eyes fluttered closed. It was the only way she could think of to tell him yes. The only way she could show him what she was feeling.
So she stood there. With expectation. She stood there, feeling breathless with anticipation.
And then, suddenly, he dropped his hand. He took a step away. And with him went the revelations, the miracle.
She opened her eyes. “Carson?”
“Are you good to swim back?”
She felt confused. She felt completely … disoriented.
“I mean, I got here, didn’t I?”
“I just want to make sure that you’ve had enough rest.”
He was going to say something any minute now about the kiss. The one that almost happened. For a moment, he had been different, and she had been different, and all the air between them had been different; he couldn’t be pretending that it hadn’t happened now.
“Come on, pirate princess.”
His tone was light, but far too bright. Like a fake veneer slopped over the top of something genuine.
“Carson,” she said.
“I’ll beat you.”
He started to wade into the water, and she just stood there feeling completely stunned. That bastard was running away. He was acting as if nothing had happened. He was …
“You’re not a pirate captain,” she said. “You’re a scab.” Why not call upon the vocabulary of her youth in this moment? “A yellow-bellied marmot!”
If he heard her, he didn’t show it. And anyway, now he was swimming under the water, swimming away.
She growled and gathered up her wet dress, jumping into the water after him, swimming like an outraged, waterlogged cat to try to catch up with him.
What was she doing?
Why was he turning her away?
There had been a moment that almost changed everything. He hadn’t allowed it. Why?
She shouldn’t push him. She should let it go by. But she was outraged. Because she had realized something. Finally.
The attraction wasn’t just her.
At last they reached the shore, and she climbed out. And for one moment, he looked at her, and she saw something in his eyes. Regret. Fear. And then it was gone. As though it had never been there at all.
“Thanks for going on that ridiculous detour with me.”
Ridiculous detour? That was what he was calling the moment that had affirmed her entire life? The one that had reminded her of the importance of their friendship, while dismantling the relationship at the same time?
How nice.
“Yeah,” she said. “Of course.”
Because she was a coward too. She was weak. She wouldn’t push. She wanted to bite her own tongue out. She wanted to scream.
But she didn’t scream anymore. This last hour had been an anomaly.
Somewhere along the journey to adulthood, she had stopped screaming like a feral animal whenever she felt like it. She had stopped caring for Carson without fear.
She couldn’t go back. And apparently, they couldn’t go forward. Not into the place that she had hoped. That she had thought, for one, brief, shining moment they might go.
“I’d better go. I have … Everything in the house is looking good. I’m going to work on it again tomorrow. But then afterward I’m going out.”
She felt as if he had just taken the earth and pulled it out from under her feet like a rug.
“Are you?”
“Yeah. Marissa and I …”
“Marissa Rivera? My real estate agent?”
“Yes.”
Well. How nice. For all involved in their small town.
But she just smiled. Until she thought her face would break. Because she wasn’t going to show him, not again. She had closed her eyes. She had stood in front of him like that. And what had he been doing? Looking at her with pity?
So she wasn’t going to show him now. No. She wasn’t. “Sounds great. I have a date tomorrow too. So I wouldn’t have seen you anyway.”
“Oh. Great. With who?”
An image of the card with West’s number on it burned in her brain. “West Hancock.”
She really hoped he was free because if he wasn’t, she was walking herself into a ludicrous lie.
“You’re kidding.”
“No. I’m not.”
“After you lectured me on Jessie Jane?”
“I didn’t lecture you. Anyway, I don’t have a brother that wants to jump West’s bones. So I don’t have the same conflict you do.”
“And that was your issue with Jessie Jane? You think that Flynn wants her.”
“Yep.” She was a liar. She was shocked he didn’t call her on it.
“Where are you going?”
Right then, she made a decision. One that was a little bit dark. A little bit mean. And a whole lot reckless. “The Watering Hole.”
“ Really? ”
“Yeah. I want to dance.”
“Why aren’t you going out with Stephen Lee?”
“Stephen is nice,” she said, shrugging. “But … you know. Stephen is the kind of man you marry. That’s not really what I’m in the market for right now. I’m moving, after all. So this is for a good time, not a long time.”
That was possibly the meanest thing she’d ever said, and she made a mental apology to Stephen, who would never know she had said that about him, and no internal apologies to Carson, as she turned on her heel and started to walk back toward the cabin.
She hadn’t done anything foolish. She hadn’t done anything reckless.
And yet she still felt as though something large and chaotic had hit the wall of their friendship.
She would have thought destruction would come with a kiss. Instead, they had cracked the wall with the weight of unspoken words.
It wasn’t even fucking worth it.