by Lexi Ryan
I bite my tongue against saying something inappropriate but then decide fuck it. Brogan cheated on her and they broke up. I don’t need to censor myself out of respect for him anymore. “I’m pretty fond of the size of your ass, Mia.”
Her eyes go wide and her jaw drops a fraction, and she stares at me as if she truly can’t believe what I just said. When I just wink at her, she smacks me in the arm with the back of her hand.
“What?” I ask.
“You can’t say that stuff to me.”
“Why not?”
“Because . . . Arrow, we’re friends. That’s important to me above all the other petty shit. You don’t say stuff like that to your friends.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“Hmm. I don’t know. I think you’re thinking of mean things. You don’t say mean things to your friends. What I said definitely doesn’t qualify. If you’d like, I can elaborate, and you’d know just how kind my feelings about your ass really are.”
“Ice cream.” She points at the road and bites back a grin, but her eyes are already smiling. “Stay focused.”
I’m so proud of myself for making her smile, it’s all I can do not to give a little victory fist pump. “Yes, ma’am.”
We go to the Dairy Maid drive-through, and Mia orders a four-scoop chocolate and peanut butter sundae with the works. I order a turtle sundae of similar size so she won’t feel self-conscious, but I know I won’t be able to eat it, not when my stomach is in knots over having her by my side. Single. No longer Brogan’s.
And fuck it. It’s not like I don’t know there are rules. You don’t go out with your best friend’s ex. Maybe it would be acceptable after a respectable period of time passes, like, say, three or four years, but most definitely not the night she dumped him.
I’m not going to do anything. Nothing but make her smile. Make her laugh.
“Where do you want to go?” I ask as I pull out of the Dairy Maid lot. “We could watch B-grade horror flicks at the dorm or maybe play laser tag?”
At a stop sign, light from the streetlamp illuminates her face. Her cheeks are still pink from the tequila. She arches a brow. “Laser tag?”
“After we finish our ice cream. Sure. You could pretend the opponents are all Brogan and Trish and shoot them repeatedly.”
She laughs. Really laughs. A bright, beautiful sound that seems to fill the car. “No, thanks. Not sure I’ll be able to button my jeans after I’m done eating this, let alone run around in them.”
“Fair enough,” I say, but I have to grip the steering wheel a little tighter and try very hard not to think about activities that involve Mia unbuttoning her jeans. Because damn. “So, how about the movies?”
She pokes at her ice cream with her spoon. “Could we just . . . go somewhere private and talk? Not my apartment. Brogan’s probably looking for me, and I’m not ready to face him.”
“The dorms?” It’s more a horrified question than a suggestion. I don’t know how much more Mia-on-my-bed I can handle without acting on seriously poor judgment.
“I don’t think so,” she says. “There are always people coming in and out of your quad, and I don’t feel like pretending to be okay tonight.”
Private. Private sounds dangerous. “Whatever you need.” I go to the light and pull a U-turn, heading back out of Blackhawk Valley and toward my father’s house, all the while trying to decide if this is the worst idea I’ve ever had. I’ve always done my best to be worthy of Brogan’s friendship, and I know there’s no way I can tell Mia how I feel tonight without being a complete scumbag, which is why I was trying to suggest very public activities. But I can’t turn her down.
On the way to my dad’s property, she pokes at her ice cream, only taking a bite or two and abandoning it altogether when I pull up to the gates and drive into the estate.
Straightening, she sits the ice cream in the cup holder beside her. “We’re going to your dad’s house?”
“Not exactly.” I’m trying to be mysterious, but she’s too distracted, her eyes scanning the horizon as we follow the rolling hills to the back of the property.
“That’s where you grew up?” she asks, as I drive on past the house.
I shrug. “It’s just a house, Mia. A big one, sure, but we had our problems like anyone else.”
“Right. Brogan said your mom died when you were in high school. I’m sorry about that.” She turns her head and watches as it goes by, but soon I pull onto a gravel road at the back of the property and it’s out of sight.
When I reach the lake, I bring the car to a stop near the bank, and she gasps. The lake is irregularly shaped and has fingers that stretch along a lot of the property, but this alcove surrounded by trees is by far my favorite. Water cascades from the creek down the stone-lined wall on the far side, making a little waterfall.
Clouds dim the moon and stars tonight, and my headlights offer the only illumination of the waterfall and alcove.
“I know this place,” she whispers. “Bailey and I came here when we were kids.” She throws her hand over her mouth and grimaces. “We . . . snuck in. This is yours?”
“My dad’s, I guess. It’s quiet back here. I like to come here to think.”
“And swim, right?” She grins. “Bail and I swam here. God, what I’d give to go back to those days. Life was so much simpler.”
“You have no idea how hard I’m kicking myself for not spending more time down here when I was in high school.”
She bites her bottom lip and, ice cream forgotten, opens her door and climbs out of the car, rendering me temporarily helpless.
I’m frozen in place. Because Mia is walking toward the lake in the path of my headlights and pulling her shirt off over her head. Her bra is dark. Lace. Fuck. She tosses the shirt onto the ground then toes out of her shoes and drops her shorts before running to the end of the dock.
When she stretches her arms over her head and dives into the dark lake in nothing but her bra and panties, I snap out of my stupor and jump out of the car. “Mia!”
She bobs to the surface and shivers. “It’s cold.”
“No shit? It’s October. Get out here before you get hypothermia or worse.”
She laughs. “It’s been an Indian summer. It’s not that cold.”
“Come on, Mia.”
She answers by diving down again, and the light from my headlights isn’t strong enough to allow me to see under the surface of the water. I wouldn’t be comfortable with her swimming alone in the best of conditions, but in the dark, buzzed and maybe drunk, it worries the shit out of me.
“Fuck,” I mutter. I pull off my shirt and shoes, drop my jeans, and dive in behind her, and fuck is it cold. My nuts immediately retreat, trying to draw up into my stomach, I swear.
Mia laughs. “You’re so tough on the field, plowing through all those big guys, but put you in a little cold water and you look like you’re being tortured.”
“You’re crazy. The tequila you chugged in my room is the only explanation for why swimming in this could seem even remotely like a good idea.”
“You didn’t have to get in,” she says through her laughter.
Her swimming in the dark makes me nervous as hell and the water is cold enough it makes my teeth chatter, but it’s worth it. She’s laughing. Smiling. Her dark hair is wet and slicked back, and the smooth skin of her arms peeks in and out of the water as she wades. God, she’s tempting, and tonight is threatening to use up the last of my restraint.
She needs a friend. Yep, I anticipate reminding myself of that ninety times in the next five minutes.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” she asks.
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. Like . . .” The smile falls from her face and she swallows hard.
Like I want to kiss you? Like I’m in love with you? “Like I want you to get your ass out of this lake before you make yourself sick?”
“No,” she says. “That’s not how you wer
e looking at me.”
I hold my breath, waiting for her to say more, but she spins in the water and starts swimming toward the waterfall and out of the beam of my headlights.
“You’re fucking kidding me!”
“Loosen up, Arrow. It’s not that bad.”
I follow her through the water, and once I let myself relax a little, I realize she’s right. The water still holds on to the late summer heat, and now that my body’s adjusted, it feels good to swim with the cool night air above us.
I can’t see as well over here, but I can make out her silhouette as she climbs onto a large flat stone next to the fall, draws her knees up to her chin, and wraps her arms around her legs. The rational part of me is grateful for the darkness, glad I can’t see the smooth skin of her back or her long legs. The greedy part of me wants full sun on her so I can look at every inch and save the memory for my lonely nights.
“You’re shivering.” I push up onto the stone and settle down next to her. “You okay?”
“I don’t know,” she whispers. She shudders. “I don’t know if I’m okay at all.”
“I’m sorry,” I say. I’m glad I won’t see Brogan tonight. I’d probably do something I’d regret. Like kicking him in the balls.
“What are you apologizing for? Brogan made his own decisions. You’re not responsible.”
“I’m sorry you’re hurting.”
“Arrow?” The word floats into the night air, mixes with the whisper of the leaves and the music of the trickling waterfall, but I hear it as clearly as if she said it right into my ear.
“Yeah?”
“How can my heart be so broken and I want . . .”
The unspoken part of her sentence sends something hard and sharp tugging at my heart and piercing my lungs. I can’t breathe. I want too much with Mia, and I don’t trust my instincts. I want to believe I’m the thing she wants, but maybe she was thinking something entirely different.
She shifts onto her knees and presses her palm against my bare chest. “Do you ever wonder if things would have been different if you’d kissed me the day we met?” She swallows. “Or if Brogan had never seen my phone number on Bailey’s door?”
There’s no hiding how I feel when her hand is pressed over my pounding heart, but I’m ashamed to admit it. All I can do is cover her hand with mine and close my eyes. “He’s a fucking idiot for screwing this up. You’re the best thing he’s ever had.”
I’m a hypocrite. Brogan cheated on me with Trish, and I mentally called him the ugliest names I could think up. And now—hours later—I’m wishing Arrow would kiss me.
We broke up. Sure. But is my being with Arrow really all that different than what Brogan did with Trish?
I love Brogan, and surely my heart hasn’t caught up with my brain yet, but it had a head start. I’ve been harvesting feelings for Arrow for too long, locking them away and hoping they’d disappear. When Brogan let Trish touch him, he didn’t just break my heart. He broke that lock.
Arrow’s skin is hot, the muscles on his chest so solid I want to map them with my fingers. His hand rests softly over mine, but I want it in my hair, behind my neck.
“I’m sick of feeling guilty about being attracted to you.” The words surprise me. I didn’t mean to tell my secret, but without the lock on my heart, I don’t have the strength to hold it in.
“Mia.” His voice is rough, gravelly, and carries more than words.
If there was a moon tonight, I’d be able to see his eyes, read what he’s feeling, but maybe I don’t want to know. There’s so much unsaid between us that I’ve started mentally composing his thoughts without even realizing it. What if I’ve been wrong about how he feels?
The answer is delivered in the form of his kiss. I’ve wanted this for so long without admitting it to myself, and I hold my breath as he lowers his mouth. He tilts my chin up as his lips sweep over mine in that first forbidden touch. He sweeps a second time, more of a brushing of skin than a kiss, and when our mouths finally press together, I’m a contradiction of emotions. I want to melt with the longing and want and the heat of a long-held secret fantasy fulfilled. And at the same time I want to freeze with the horror of what we’re doing. My mind travels too fast, jumping the cart miles ahead of the horse and zipping through thousands of outcomes, none of them good.
But when Arrow’s tongue traces the seam of my lips and touches mine, I don’t care about outcomes anymore. The cold, hard rock under my knees roots me to this moment, and darkness erases every moment before and beyond this.
Arrow’s kiss is soft and tentative. His fingers trace along the side of my neck. His calloused hands send goosebumps racing up my arms and something else altogether pooling low in my belly. When they slip back into my hair, he cups my jaw in his big hand and sighs against my lips.
It’s the sigh that undoes me. As has always been the case with us, so much is spoken with what’s unspoken, and this moment is no different. The sigh tells me he’s waited for this as long as I have and that maybe, just maybe, the touch of our lips is twisting him up inside as much as it is me.
I let my hand drift from his chest to the waistband of his boxer briefs. He breaks the kiss and draws in a sharp breath as he stops me with a hand around my wrist.
“Let me,” I whisper. I pull from his grasp and graze my fingertips against the skin just above his waistband. “Please.”
“Mia.” He rubs his hands down my arms. Goosebumps cover my skin, and his warm hands simultaneously heat it and remind me just how cold I am. “You’re freezing. Let’s go to the car.”
I don’t want to leave. I want to stay right here. On this rock. In this moment where Arrow kisses me and I have the courage to touch him. But he’s already slipping back into the water, taking my moment away.
I follow him, and we swim in silence to the dock and gather our clothes off the shore before heading to the car.
Suddenly too aware of my near-nudity, I step into my shorts and clutch my shirt to my chest. “I don’t want to go home,” I tell his back as he reaches the Mustang. And he can take that however he wants—like I’m some brazen hussy or like I’m avoiding Brogan, who will undoubtedly be looking for me at the apartment. Maybe both are true.
Arrow nods, opens the driver’s-side door, and pops the trunk. He grabs a blanket and wraps it around my shoulders. “So we’ll stay here and watch the sun rise.”
Taking his hand, I climb through the front door into the tiny back seat of Arrow’s Mustang while he turns on the heat, kills the lights, and turns on the dome light. There’s not enough room back here for him to sit comfortably with his long legs, but he follows me anyway, pulling the door closed behind him before wrapping an arm around my shoulders.
I settle into him, leaning my head against his chest. “I don’t understand you,” I say, peeking up at him through my lashes.
“What don’t you understand?”
I take a breath and let it out slowly. “One second I think you like me, I think maybe you want me, and the next . . .”
He squeezes his eyes shut, and I watch his throat move as he swallows. “You’ve been drinking.”
“I’m not trashed. I know what I’m doing.”
“I’m not sure that’s true.”
“Okay,” I admit. “I don’t have a clue what I’m doing. Only what I want.” But that’s not completely true either. I know what I want right now. But tomorrow? Next week?
“You’ve been drinking,” he repeats, but he softens the words by following them with a kiss on top of my head. “Are you warm enough?”
I nod against his chest, then wiggle the blanket off one shoulder so I can wrap it behind him. Now we’re both under the blanket together.
“Tell me something,” he says.
“Like what?”
He swallows. “Something about your childhood. A good memory.”
“I have a lot of those. I had a good childhood. Nic pestered me mercilessly as big brothers do, but we had fun.” I let my eyes float close
d, remembering the good days. “Mom would take us to the park and on these long hikes through the woods. She’d tell us stories about Prince Nicholas and Princess Mia and the adventures they had trying to save their kingdom from various villains. We thought she was the smartest woman ever, and we’d beg for her to tell us more stories, so she’d use them to get us to do our chores. She’d tell us stories while we folded the laundry or helped her with dinner.”
“That sounds nice.”
“It was.” I smile remembering it. She wasn’t just a good mom. She was amazing. “I didn’t know we were poor. I mean, it was clear the other kids at school had more stuff and nicer clothes, but I was probably in fourth grade before I realized that was something worth envying. When my mom was around, life at home was better than good. It was rich. Anything felt possible.” And then she left and took that away. My heart squeezes with the ache of that loss.
“My mom was like that, too,” Arrow says. “I’ve always been surrounded by people who believed in me, but Mom believed in me without expectation. There were never any strings to her affection. She just wanted me to be happy.”
He hardly ever talks about her, and I want to know as much as he’s willing to share. “When did she die?”
“Five years ago this weekend. The end was tough. I was glad when she finally let go. When did your mom leave?” he asks, rubbing my arm under the blanket. I wonder if he even realizes he’s doing it.
I shift against him and wrap an arm around his waist, as if his nearness could protect me from the pain of talking about my mother. “She left the summer before I started high school, so just over five years ago.” I frown at the coincidence of both of us losing our mothers around the same time.
“Did she say why?” he asks.
“I think it was all too much for her. Dad was sober more often back then, but he was still a lazy misogynist. She did everything. She worked nights at the dry cleaners, got us to school every day, cleaned the house, did the shopping, cooked the food, picked up side work as a maid anytime she could for extra cash. She was just done. So she left.”
