16. Chapter 16 #2
“I must have spent hundreds of hours at this beach when I was a teenager,” he says, stretching out his long legs.
I tilt my head to see him. “This spot in particular?”
“The cops don’t come down here,” he says, like a list of ways to evade the local police is something everyone keeps track of.
He laughs at my prissy little, “ Oh .”
“And you can’t see the fire from the road. That was important.”
“That sounds disturbingly like ‘no one can hear you scream.’”
He grins at my joke. His little mischief spot is unexpectedly romantic, and I stretch my legs out too, letting our knees brush, thinking of that look he gave me on the fire escape.
“Tell me you didn’t swim here,” I say. It’s open ocean where we are. The water is frigid.
“Every summer.”
I shake my head. “Ridiculous.”
“One might say invigorating.”
“Hmm. Well, I wouldn’t know. I swam at the state park.” It’s a cove. The water is glass and probably a good five degrees warmer for its protection.
Jamie snorts, and I swing my eyes to him. “What?”
“Of course you did.”
“What does that mean?” I kick his foot, pretending to be offended.
“Nothing, it’s just your memories sound very touristy.”
I bark a laugh. “Oh, you’re that kind of townie, huh?”
“I’m just saying.” He looks down at me, mischief sparking.
“I wasn’t a tourist. I was a… summer resident.”
“Same thing.” He shrugs in a way that’s clearly meant to get under my skin. It works.
“It most certainly is not.”
“Prove it.” He jumps to his feet. “Swim with me.”
“What? In the water ?”
“Hard to swim in sand.”
Before I can argue, he’s made quick work of the buttons on his overshirt. He shrugs it off, then, with barely a quick glance over his shoulder, and zero warning for me, he shoves his jeans down over his hips, stepping out of them as he walks.
I nearly swallow my tongue. He’s standing there in a T-shirt and a pair of skintight, royal blue boxer briefs. They leave absolutely nothing to the imagination. When he gets in the water, they’ll be wet and stuck to those thick, hockey player thighs and… everywhere else. I press a hand to my cheek.
“Someone’s going to see you!” I shout after him. Though, I know that’s not true.
He smiles over his shoulder like the devil himself. “Let ‘em.”
Of course, I take that as explicit permission to look at every magnificent inch of him. Wide shoulders, a slight bow to his legs. I remember that from the vision, how much I liked his body, or what I could see of it.
He has another tattoo on the back of his calf that I haven’t seen yet—a line of pine trees that wrap around the muscle. His body is like a treasure hunt. There’s a scar just below it, jagged and dark.
“Where’d you get that one?” I shout. “On your leg.”
“The trees?”
“No, the scar.”
He looks down. “Fell through a skylight when my buddies and I were on his parents' roof.” When I gasp, he adds, “Not all the way through. Just my leg.”
“You’re a menace.”
“Reformed.”
I watch him walk into the frigid water of the Atlantic in October, and I seriously doubt it. I swear this man has changed my DNA, because it sends a thrill through me.
“Are you coming?” he asks.
Am I ? This seems incredibly reckless swimming off this rocky beach, pitch dark water, but Jamie’s standing there, looking at me with my favorite smile, all that skin beckoning me.
I’m getting to my feet before I even realize what I’m doing, brushing the sand from my thighs and walking toward him with my smile caught in my teeth. I shuck my skirt off as I go, then Jamie’s hoodie and my sweater underneath it. When they fall to my feet, Jamie’s eyes turn as black as the ocean.
Inside, my heart takes off in a canter, and so do I, running toward the surf. I squeal when my toes touch the water, but I keep going until I reach him. “You’re crazy,” I say, breathless from the cold water hitting the backs of my knees.
“Let’s be crazy together, then.” He’s staring between us, biting his lip so hard I want to press my thumb there to check for blood.
“Okay.” It’s just a whisper, but it’s enough for him to take the reins.
He steps backward, water hitting the bottom of his boxers, darkening them, and when I follow, he smiles, sliding his hands over my shoulders, down to my waist, then back up, the hem of my tank top caught on his thumbs.
Cold air hits my stomach, the bottom of my breasts, and my hips tilt toward his, seeking heat.
He stops when my tank is up around my rib cage, pausing to let me decide the rest. It’s an easy decision. I’m completely under this spell.
I take over, lifting the cotton over my breasts, and freeing my arms. Jamie takes it from me, casting a web of goosebumps over my skin as his eyes trail over me.
I’ve worn a simple black bra. Cotton. But I’m not self-conscious.
Fate promised me this man and I’d like to collect now, thankyouverymuch.
Jamie’s eyes are hooded, lips slightly parted. He’s so serious right now, tension thicker than the black water swirling between us.
I’m serious too when I tell him, “Your turn.” And God that grin. It’s my final undoing.
I help him roll his T-shirt up, running my fingers over each inch of skin as it’s revealed to me. I’ve seen him shirtless, of course, in the vision and sitting in the hospital bed, but not where I could touch him, press my hand to flat muscles and soft hair.
We come together again, pulling in twin breaths as bare skin meets bare skin. A swell hits my butt cheeks and I gasp.
Jamie only laughs.
“The urge to splash you is very strong right now,” I say through my chattering teeth.
He grins at me. “You won’t do it. You’re too sweet.”
“Maybe I’m not as sweet as you think I am,” I say, then immediately suck my lip between my teeth.
“If you’re offering me a taste, Noel. I’m going to take it.”
Woah .
I don’t want to misread this because I think I know the future. But I’m also pretty sure I know the future. Even so, my heart goes berserk in my chest, and I remind myself what he said on the fire escape. That’s how you know it’s worth doing.
“I’m offering it,” I say.
Jamie’s eyes flare with something new. Some hunger I think may have been on a very short leash until now. He steps closer, and the moment seems to trip over itself like a die being thrown. Where will it land?
He slides his hand into my hair, then his thumb beneath my chin, tipping it toward him.
My head falls back in enthusiastic agreement, but he doesn’t take my mouth.
No, the first time Jamie Bishop’s lips touch my body is at my neck.
The heat of his breath spills through me, straight down between my legs, and I whimper.
He sucks once, dangerously, teeth right at my pulse point, then moves to my collarbone.
Then, and this is the one that makes my knees go weak, the softest brush over my cheek.
He pulls back, leaving my mouth empty and my eyes clenched shut. When I finally pry them open, a violent shiver shakes my whole body like some embarrassing dance move I pulled out at the wrong moment, and Jamie tips his head back and laughs at the sky.
“Are we swimming?” he asks.
“Bastard.”
“Come on. It’ll be warmer once we go further.” He lobs our shirts to the sand left-handed, and I follow on tiptoes, legs shaking. “Stay with me.” It’s a warning, another quick glimpse into a more serious side he keeps tucked away, and I appease it with a quick cross over my heart.
“I promise.”
Satisfied, he turns toward the water, catching my hand on the way. Ice splashes up my thighs but my heart is glowing warm. I let myself be pulled along, let myself look at him in the moonlight. The freckles on his back, the muscles in his shoulders that I felt on his couch the other night.
But then something else catches my attention, like a hook snaring a fish, and my smile slides.
Another tattoo, curling around his shoulder blade. It’s beautiful. Blue ink, barely more than a pencil sketch in form but it has amazing detail. The artist in me wants a closer look, but the rest of me slows to a stop, confusion pressing behind my breastbone.
It didn’t register at first. I was too caught up in his bare skin, buzzing too brightly at the adventure. Now, my stomach that was just doing little flips and leaps, starts to twist and turn sour.
It’s different. The tattoo I saw in the vision of us. It’s not there.
Jamie’s arm pulls taut when I dig my feet in. He spins toward me. “You gotta stay with me, gorgeous. It’s dark.”
I stare back in response, words lost to the spinning in my brain. How could this be? Am I remembering it wrong ?
But I know I’m not. I recognized the wreath on his bicep, the birds on his forearm. Those were the same.
Of course, I’d seen those in person, on the roof that night. But the freckles on his chest and stomach—I only knew of those from the vision, and there they are.
The tattoo is in the same spot—on his right shoulder blade—but it was words before. A quote maybe, or lyrics?
This artwork takes up a lot of real estate. There’s no way I could have misremembered it. No matter what I told Jamie, I’ve thought about that night far too many times to get this huge thing wrong. Which means the vision was wrong.
“Noel. Are you coming?”
God, if he’d just leaned forward in that hospital bed, I would have seen this too.
I blink up to his face, suddenly freezing and way too aware of the dark. “No. Wait,” I say. “I want to go back.”
I rush back to shore, gathering my discarded clothing as I go. I don’t understand what this means. I saw the future. How could I get this wrong?
Or maybe I didn’t get it wrong. Maybe it changed. And if this can change, what about the rest of it?
The old me who spent two years debunking this entire thing finally found her first hole in all of this.
But the me right now, the one who dashed into the ocean at night with a gorgeous man, who was starting to believe in magic and that maybe it was somehow on her side?
That me’s heart has slid out of her chest and pooled at her feet on this cold sand.
I feel like a tiny toy, batted around by some unknown force for entertainment. Shouldn’t you have to agree to these kinds of cosmic interventions? Sign a waiver maybe? At least a mental health screening. God, what if this whole thing is really a mental breakdown after all?
Suddenly I see this entire scene from somewhere outside my body. A dark beach, a man I barely know. My eyes turned to stars.
Fate, a voice whispers. Then another, Fool.
Jamie’s behind me in an instant. “Noe,” he says, shortening my name in a way that feels too intimate now.
“What’s wrong? What happened?” He pulls me against his bare chest and rubs his hands over the goosebumps on my arms, giving me his warmth.
God, he’s not even shivering. He’s acclimated to this wildness. I never belonged in it.
My teeth knock together violently. The water’s too cold. It’s too dark. We’re not even supposed to be down here.
“I messed it up. That has to be it. Can that be it?”
“What could you have possibly messed up?”
I groan and step out of his grip. “I need to go home.”
“What? Now?”
“Sorry, yeah. I’m just suddenly really tired.”
Disappointment flashes over his face. “Well, can I see you tomorrow?”
“I don’t know. I should probably focus on figuring out my—” I wave a hand near my head. “Mental block or whatever. That’s why I’m here, right?”
Jamie watches me for a long moment, eyes bouncing around my face. It’s cruel, this flimsy explanation I’ve given him. But it’s hitting me like a punch to the face, how flimsy this was from the start. Let’s be friends and see what happens .
I reach down to hold my sneaker still, balancing on one foot while I stuff the other inside, sand and all.
“Noel, if I did something…”
“You didn’t.” My ankle wobbles, and Jamie catches my arm, steadying me. I open my mouth to tell him some version of it’s not him, it’s me, but the words don’t come because I’m distracted by light behind my eyelids.
Then a picture.
It was just a flash this time, not enough to tell what I was looking at, but enough to make my legs feel weak beneath me. “Shoot.”
“What’s wrong?” Jamie adjusts his grip, holding more of my weight.
“Nothing, I—” My brain starts to swim again. My God, I was practically feeling him up a few minutes ago, and nothing. Now this?
If I’ve learned anything, it’s that fighting it makes it worse.
The vision filters in, Jamie and me on a cobblestone street, people mulling around and bass coming from somewhere in the distance.
He’s wearing a beanie instead of the ball cap, long sleeves that hide his tattoos.
It’s a side street lit with lamp light, and it shines on his cheeks, red from the cold and under far more scruff than he has now.
He steps closer, pressing me against the wall of a building, an arm propped above my head.
Then he leans in. People turn and smirk at the PDA.
But I don’t care, because the kiss that follows, it’s not the kind of kiss that was about to happen back there.
That kiss would have had lust behind it if our teasing words and the rough squeeze of his fingers was any indication.
This kiss I’m seeing now, it’s tender. Intimate. It’s the kind of kiss that feels like a confession.
With the slow contraction of darkness, it’s over.
“Noel?” Jamie’s voice sounds like it’s underwater.
When I open my eyes, I’m leaning into his chest, my chin tipped to him the way it was in the vision, but my lower lip trembles.
God, I forgot how unnerving these things are. Even more reason why I shouldn’t be playing with this. Colin said it wouldn’t want to hurt me, well, he’s never had his head possessed.
I step back, and Jamie just watches, his hands flexing like he’s afraid to touch me again. “Please tell me what’s wrong,” he says, and his voice doesn’t crack, but it’s not steady either. Everything about this is unsteady.
“I’m just not feeling very adventurous anymore.”
The muscles in his face fall, then quickly struggle for a smile. “Right,” he says.
“I’m sorry.”
Jamie turns to get his clothes. “Don’t worry about it, Noe. This wasn’t part of the deal. I get it.”
You don’t , I want to say. You only know half of it. But I know better than to say anything else to complicate this moment.