Chapter 19 #3
I wrap my fingers around the figurine and push my feet against the tile floor in the same instant.
My face breaks the surface and I suck in air.
As soon as I get my bearings, I find Nox, staring at me from the top of the steps.
Nothing in his face gives him away, but I know, somehow, that he’s proud of me.
I can sense it, across the pool, underneath his inscrutable expression, in the warmth gathering beneath my skin.
Logically, I know that the little gleam in his eyes is just a reflection of the sunlight streaming through the window, and yet, deep down, I’m absolutely positive it’s something else too—triumph.
As though my victory is his victory, even if it spells his defeat.
We’re on the same team.
I’m not sure when it happened—during the laser tag game all those weeks ago, before that when he shouted that I’m a distraction, or even further back, the very first moment he carried me from the lake. I don’t know.
But it’s true.
We’re a team.
So I do what any good teammate would do and cinch the win.
Nox groans audibly the second I unfurl my fingers. The sea creature is laughably easy for anyone born this millennium, thanks to a little film I used to obsessively watch about a lost lonely fish from—wouldn’t you know it—Australia.
“Clown fish,” I announce cheerfully.
Nox drops his face into his hands. I can’t help but laugh. I’m actually about to tell him he doesn’t have to go through with it, just the idea is victory enough, when a shout rings across the pool deck.
“WA-SA-BI! WA-SA-BI!”
I spin in the water. Justin hollers from the lifeguard stand.
Three other swim team members circle the base, chanting with him.
I didn’t realize we’d gained an audience, but now that I take a second to look around, I see Coach Fleishman rolling his eyes from his seat in the bleachers.
Two other people here for free swim have also stopped their laps to check out the commotion.
And by the locker room doors, a few more guys from the team poke their heads out and join the chant.
Nox offers me a flat stare, his brow raised accusingly as if this whole game weren’t his genius idea in the first place.
“You don’t have to—” I start to call.
But it’s done.
He puts the spoon in his mouth. He already had it ready to go, as if he knew even before I started swimming that this would be his fate all along.
Cheers erupt from across the pool. Tears leak from the corners of his squeezed eyes before he finishes swallowing.
His entire face scrunches. I hate how adorable it makes him look, like a little boy, as he starts to shake his wrists and bounce on his toes, fighting the pain.
The muscles along his neck flare as his jaw clenches.
When he opens his eyes, they’re bloodshot.
I’m about to apologize when he suddenly releases a victory bellow and cannonballs into the pool.
Water flings onto my cheeks a second before hands grip my waist. He’s laughing when he surfaces, tall and dripping and so insanely magnetic I immediately forget anyone else is even here, every single nerve in my body so attuned to his wavelengths, nothing exists outside of him.
My sides buzz beneath his fingers. Energy crackles under my skin.
“I hope you enjoyed that,” he wheezes, still unable to fully speak through the pain as his grip on me tightens. “Because it’s never happening again.”
“No?” I ask, my voice thin, slightly hoarse.
“Never,” he whispers back.
“I bet I could convince you,” I murmur, no longer entirely sure what I’m talking about, what I’m provoking as my hands find his bared arms and slide up to his shoulders. “If I wanted to.”
He pauses to swallow, Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat.
The laugh lines at the corners of his eyes melt back into his skin as the tension shifts, pulls taut.
His gaze dips to my mouth, stays there, studying my lips as a confession spills from his own, so quickly, so quietly, it feels like an accident. “If you wanted me to, I would.”
Beneath dark lashes still coated with fine droplets, his green eyes smolder.
Rivulets of water stream from his dark hair, down his cheeks, to that little dimple in his chin where it collects before spilling over his jaw.
My fingers itch to trace the path along his skin, to dig into his hair, to drag him closer.
If I wanted him to, he would.
But would he?
Would he really?
Under the water, Nox runs his thumbs slowly across the bottom edge of my ribs, pulling me infinitesimally closer, as if he’s fighting the same internal battle, as if he’s also losing.
I inhale sharply at the contact.
Something flashes in his eyes.
We’re balanced on a knife’s edge. Is he pushing? Am I pulling? Are we fusing together? Or ripping apart?
I’ll never know.
A whistle sounds.
We snap away from each other.
My head jerks to the lifeguard stand, but Justin isn’t even looking at us.
He’s staring in the opposite direction where some idiot is trying to throw some other idiot into the pool.
I silently thank him for saving this idiot from making an even bigger mistake than I already have.
Because the end goal of this whole thing isn’t to get closer to Nox—it’s to fly ten thousand miles away to the other side of the world.
And it’s working.
I swam.
The thought bubbles up inside me like fizzy champagne as I climb the steps out of the water, a realization so potent even my moment of temporary insanity can’t dull it.
I actually swam. Under the water. Across the pool. I kicked. I paddled. I swam.
I really, truly swam.
“Hey, Clara.”
I stop, turn, not sure what to expect. An acknowledgment? An apology? Both? Neither? But his mantle is back on. Inscrutable. Impenetrable. Walls almost as thick as my own.
“Same time next week,” he says, giving nothing away.
I nod, giving nothing in return.
Yet I can’t help but notice that seven days later when I step onto the pool deck, he’s brought reinforcements, as if maybe, just maybe, he doesn’t quite trust himself to be alone with me either.