Chapter 20
RAQUEL
Our day out on the lake was loud and fun, but Theo and I were doing a terrible job at pretending nothing had happened last night. No one had seemed to notice so far, but maybe everyone had and they were either too hungover or too polite to say anything about it.
Or maybe they were just too busy swimming, dancing, drinking, and shoving each other off the party island to pay much attention to us. I wasn’t the only woman here, and it seemed to me a few other couples might be forming too.
Either way, every time I looked up, I found him already looking at me, and every time our eyes met, my stomach gave a little flip. It was crazy. I was thirty, not fifteen, but our impulsive hookup seemed to have rewired my brain.
Despite giving myself a stern talking-to this morning about how it’d only been a one-night thing and that I couldn’t get attached to him, he was the only person I really wanted to spend time with.
He was goofing off with the guys while I watched, convinced one of them was going to lose a tooth if they kept jumping off the boat in such quick succession.
While it looked like he was having fun, he also kept glancing at me where I lay on the seat right at the front of the boat, my foot bopping in time with the music as I soaked up the sun.
Eventually, when I caught him looking at me again, I stood up and slid my sunglasses off, going over to where he was heaving himself back out of the water.
“Have you ever paddleboarded before?” I asked.
He glanced up at me, water running in little rivulets from his hair down to his chest. He smirked when my eyes dropped to drink in the sight, but then shook his head. “No. If it’s anything like surfboarding, I can guarantee that I’m bad at it, though.”
“You’ll be fine.” I laughed, motioning toward a pair of boards lying on the sandy banks of the shore. We weren’t far out into the water, people swimming back and forth all the time. “Come on, let’s go try it out.”
Without waiting for an answer, I dove into the lake, the water icy against my sun-baked skin, but also refreshing. When I surfaced, Theo was right beside me, grinning as I came up. “I’ll race you there.”
He took off without any pretense of letting me win, barely making a splash as he sliced through the water at professional speed. I stared at him for a beat, those broad shoulders and the dark tattoos shimmering with droplets of water.
When I finally managed to follow, there was no way I could win, so I lazily paddled over, then smirked when I reached the shore. “Not everything in life is a competition.”
“Says second place?” he asked playfully but then glanced at the boards. “Actually, scratch that. There’s no way I’m going to win on those. How does it even work?”
I walked him through the basics, handed over a board, and followed him back into the lake with my own, but ten minutes later, I was laughing so hard, my stomach hurt.
Theo never lasted more than six seconds on the board, his attempts to maintain his composure while failing so spectacularly hilarious
“I object,” he said as he surfaced, slicking his wet hair back from his face.
I lay on my board beside him, arching an eyebrow when those green eyes flickered over to mine. “What are you objecting to, falling?”
“No, I’m objecting to this entire activity.”
“Just keep trying.”
His eyes widened. “I just did.”
“You stood up.”
“I think the more accurate phrasing is that I fell down.”
I chuckled. “Sure, but practice makes perfect.”
He held my gaze for a beat, his eyes sparkling with laughter, but then he muttered something under his breath and climbed back onto the board. Three seconds later, he fell again, his head shaking even as he surfaced.
“Okay, this is getting personal now.”
I laughed even harder than before when he scowled. “Show that board who’s the boss.”
He snorted. “It’s not me. That’s for sure.”
“Not yet, but it will be.”
It wasn’t. By the seventh attempt, even Theo was laughing and I was practically crying. He was so earnest about his struggles that it endeared him to me even more.
“I rode a motorcycle across North America. By myself,” he sputtered when he came up again, glaring at the board like he was about to bully it into submission. “I climbed a glacier and I survived truck-stop sushi a few times. This cannot be what takes me out.”
After trying a few more times, he finally flopped dramatically onto his back on the board and flung an arm over his eyes. “That’s it. I’m retiring.”
“You can’t give up,” I said, paddling over to him. “You lasted almost a full minute that time.”
“Exactly. I think I’ve achieved all I’m going to achieve in my paddleboarding career. The only board that understands me is a snowboard, so I’ll stick to that from now on. Surfboards, skateboards, and paddleboards clearly just don’t have the emotional capacity to handle me.”
I laughed again. “Are you really giving up?”
“I’ll drown if I don’t,” he muttered. “I’m exhausted. I need a vacation and a massage.”
I almost offered the massage right on the spot, especially since his bright purple swim trunks were clinging to his legs, showing off a pretty impressive outline of something I definitely shouldn’t have been noticing with my brother on the boat so close nearby.
But in the end, I ignored the desire burning up my bloodstream and tethered our boards together.
The only reason I’d asked him to try this was to spend time with him anyway. I didn’t have any interest in him drowning trying to prove he couldn’t do it. After lying down on my back on my own board, we drifted farther from the main group, the lake rocking gently beneath us.
I hooked my hands behind my head and stared up at the bright blue sky. Theo did the same, both of us quiet for a long minute before he finally spoke. “I think I prefer floating.”
I smiled. “Is it because you’re bad at paddleboarding?”
“Nah, it’s because I’m excellent at floating.”
“It’s a useful skill to have,” I said. “I’m sure it took years to master it at this level.”
“Oh, yeah. Relentless training. You should see the regimen I had to follow.”
“It must’ve been crazy,” I agreed, my eyes drifting shut as we fell into another comfortable silence.
One of my favorite things about him was this, that it never felt like work being around him. I didn’t have to force conversation or pretend. I could just exist and he was perfectly content doing it with me.
We kept floating, talking on and off while the sun warmed our bodies and the water lapped gently at the boards. Naturally, just as the peace of the moment wound its way into my muscles, the growl of a boat engine interrupted it.
I opened one eye. “Oh no.”
Theo groaned. “It’s Avery, isn’t it?”
As if to answer him, the pontoon boat appeared around the bend, music blasting and the others cheering as they raced toward us, the Party Island following behind them like a parade float. Avery cut the boat toward us, shouting as he waved.
“Hey! We’re going to attach the tube to the boat now.”
Theo finally sat up, shaking his head as Avery pulled up to us and cut the engine. “Leave us alone!”
“Get in!” Avery countered, grinning as he waved at the giant inflatable tube being tied behind the boat. “I promise to take it easy on you.”
I snorted. “I’ve heard that before.”
“Oh, come on,” he coaxed, pointing at both of us. “Think of it as a bonding activity. Get your lazy asses on that tube.”
It took a few more minutes to realize he wasn’t going to let us go. We relented, leaving the paddleboards to Luis and Jared while Theo and I hauled ourselves into the tube. Avery grinned like he’d achieved a tremendously important task, but at least Theo was the person I was about to die alongside.
He lay beside me, one arm draped across the tube to grab the handle at the front while the other was firmly wrapped around the handle on the side. While the others got themselves ready, he glanced at me, the look in his eyes strangely serious for the moment.
“Can I ask you something?”
I arched an eyebrow at him. “Now?”
“Well, yeah.”
He glanced toward the boat, but no one was paying attention to us. They were flipping open coolers and passing around more drinks while we bobbed behind them, a private moment despite half the town being on the lake right now.
When Theo’s gaze returned to mine, my stomach twisted itself into dozens of tiny little knots, but I nodded anyway. “Sure, go ahead.”
“It’s nothing bad,” he said quietly. “I just don’t want this to be weird between us.”
“Is it weird?” I asked, a little confused. Today hadn’t been weird at all. It should’ve been, but so far, it’d been way too easy.
Theo held my gaze, his head shaking slightly before he finally allowed a tiny smile to slip through. “No, it hasn’t been weird, but I think we need to consider what we’re doing.”
I sucked in a sharp, utterly involuntary breath. I’d been trying so hard to avoid exactly what he was suggesting, choosing to not acknowledge the reality that he was from out of town. Eventually, Martha would be all fixed up, and once she was, he’d leave.
“You’re breaking up with me already?” I teased instead of letting him see how badly I wanted it not to be true.
He laughed. “No.”
“Well, that’s good. It would’ve been pretty awkward, hanging here with you and being forced to stay if you were breaking up with me.”
“Nah.” Those eyes searched mine for a beat, warm but without any humor shimmering in them for once. “It’s just that I’m not from here, Raquel. I think we both need to consider what that means for us.”
“Yeah, we probably do.” I nodded slowly. “I don’t just hook up with people though, you know.”
Theo winced, so guilty that I couldn’t help laughing. “Oh.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, well, uh…” When he trailed off, my eyebrows shot up, but I kept laughing.
“You can’t say the same, can you?”
“Uh. No?”
“Are you asking me?”
He groaned. “Don’t look at me like that. You’re judging.”
“I am not.” I sighed. “Okay, maybe a little, but the point is that it’s still true. I don’t just hook up with people.”
“It wasn’t just hooking up to me,” he murmured, the humor fading from his eyes again as they locked on mine. “I don’t want you to think it didn’t mean anything to me. It’s just that at the same time, we both need to remember that I don’t live in Quartz Pass.”
As I stared back at him, I appreciated what he was trying to do. We really did both have to manage our expectations here, but with him looking at me so intently, I almost melted completely into his gaze, convinced that we could work something out.
Until Avery revved the boat’s engine and someone yelled, “Hang onto your butts!”
The next moment, the boat surged forward and our tube launched like a missile. A scream tore out of me just as Theo started cursing under his breath. His muscles tensed as he clung on for dear life.
Avery might’ve sworn to take it easy on us, but he did not keep his promise.
He took off directly for a wake and hit it hard, launching us into the air when we hit seconds later.
One moment, I was still holding on, but the next, I was flying through the air and then I was underwater, mentally cussing at my brother.
As soon as I resurfaced, Theo was beside me, which had to mean that he’d let go of the tube as soon as I’d fallen off. Concern was etched into his features as he found my hand underwater. “Holy shit. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I assured him. “That’s Avery for you. It’s his personal mission to make sure no one stays on for longer than a minute. I think it’s his way of trying to save on gas for the damn boat.”
“Are you sure you’re okay?” he repeated, squeezing my hand with his eyes once again locked on mine. “It looked like you hit the water pretty hard.”
“I’m fine.” I smiled. “That wasn’t my first rodeo and I’m not made of glass. I swear, I’m okay. For now. I’m going to kill my brother later, though. I might need you to bail me out of jail.”
He chuckled. “I’ll do my best.”
Tugging me a little closer, he searched my face carefully, as if he just needed to reassure himself, not at all caring about the water dripping into his eyes from his hair.
Sunlight danced across the lake around us, those green eyes so vibrant in this light that I felt completely mesmerized by them.
My eyes dropped briefly to his mouth, and when I glanced up, he was staring at my lips in turn.
I started bending toward him, the distance between us shrinking slightly as he did the same.
My pulse sped up, his hand tightened on mine, but before anything else could happen, the boat pulled up beside us.
Avery leaned over the pontoon. “Nobody died, right?”
Instantly, the moment shattered and I closed my eyes. Theo groaned, but Avery just grinned at both of us, then waved us back onto the boat. “Come on, slowpokes. I’ve got a cold beer waiting for each of you and Luis says it’s his turn on the tube.”