Just like that, her mind was made up.
Tyler released his grip on me just marginally, but enough for me to take my first full breath and then take a full step back, until we were no longer touching at all.
He slipped his hands back into his pockets again, and then he offered me something between a smirk and a grimace, and without another word to anyone, he brushed past me, making his way toward the house.
Morgan and Oliver shook hands with every member of the band, and her dad talked money with the lead singer while her mom talked to the other two bands waiting at the edge of the drive.
And I stood there frozen, watching Tyler’s back, still feeling the brand of his hands on mine.
What the hell was that?
The cicadas were singing loudly in the trees that surrounded the Wagner’s property later that night when I slipped out onto the back patio, my laptop in tow. The sun had set hours ago and taken the warmth of the day with it, so I wrapped my thick cardigan around me a little tighter as I made my way to the large table next to their pool.
Steam gently rose from the aqua depths, the water dark but for the small bit of light the moon offered. That same moonlight streaked across the lake in the distance, but otherwise, the yard was dim and quiet.
I debated dangling my bare feet in the pool, knowing the water was heated, but thought better of it, since I hadn’t brought a towel with me. Instead, I sat my laptop up on the table, tucking my feet underneath me in the plush chair that accompanied it.
I typed in my password, rubbing my tired eyes and then taking a moment to just enjoy the evening around me as my home screen loaded.
As much as I didn’t ever want to come back to Bridgechester, I had missed it.
I missed the leaves turning colors in the fall, missed having seasons — period. It was the same one all the time in California, a perpetual spring. I’d found it lovely at first, but over time, found myself longing for red and yellow leaves, for snow, and even for the muddy season that always wedged its way between winter and spring.
I missed the charm of our small town, the smell of my Aunt Laura’s favorite coffee and her famous banana bread in the oven, the nights spent riding around town with Morgan and Tyler, doing nothing at all but staying up until the sun rose over our town’s winding roads.
Morgan had called a rain check on our night of catching up, mostly because Oliver was in town and she had so much of the wedding planning to catch him up on. I figured most of the two weeks I’d be here would be like that — her caught up in the wedding — and that was exactly how it should be.
I had work to do, anyway, but sitting outside had me reminiscing, thinking about how many summer nights Tyler, Morgan, and I had played in that pool, sometimes even getting brave enough to ditch it and run straight down to jump off the dock and into the lake, which was far from heated, but exhilarating in a way nothing else was to a couple of kids.
A smile found my lips at the memories, but in the next second, something shot up in the middle of the pool, and I screamed, jumping up and grabbing my laptop over my head like it was a weapon ready to strike.
When the source of the disruption came into focus, Tyler shaking his head and sending water flying everywhere off the ends of his shaggy hair, I let out a long, relieved breath, lowering my laptop as my heart pounded in my chest.
“Jesus Christ, Tyler,” I said, setting my laptop back down on the table. “You scared the shit out of me. What the hell are you doing?”
Even in the dim light, I could see the smirk on his stupid face as he made two long strides toward me. “Swimming, of course.”
“Swimming involves moving,” I pointed out. “I’ve been out here for at least two minutes and there hasn’t been a single splash in that pool.”
“Two minutes, huh?” he asked, draping his arms over the edge of the pool and looking up at me. The way his arms rested, his biceps bulged, the muscles in his shoulders and traps accented by the shadows and the moonlight. “Might be a new record.”
I cocked a brow.
“I was sitting at the bottom,” he explained.
“Holding your breath,” I deadpanned. “Like a child.”
“Hey, don’t knock it until you try it. It’s peaceful down there.”
My heart was still pounding hard, trying to level itself out after my near heart attack as I sat back down at the table. I adjusted the screen of my laptop, deciding it was better to pretend Tyler wasn’t there at all and do what I’d come outside to do in the first place.
Work.
“Wanna try it?”
I was already slipping into work mode, pulling up my outline for the podcast I was guest starring on in a few days. “Try what?”
“Sitting at the bottom.”
“I’ll pass.”
He chuckled, and in my peripheral, I saw him lift himself out of the water on two strong arms. He sat on the edge, facing me with one leg still dangling in the water.
I didn’t dare look at the rest of him.
“You know, the Jasmine I used to know liked to have fun. She was spontaneous. Goofy.”
My nose flared, and the longer I tried to read my outline, the more I read the same sentence over and over with a red filter fogging my vision. “Yeah, well, I’m not the girl you used to know.” I looked at him then. “Maybe you never knew me at all.”
I didn’t watch him long enough to see his reaction to that. I just turned my attention back to work, tuning him out.
Except the motherfucker laughed, and stood, walking over to me with water dripping off every inch of him. His swim trunks were black, and they were the only thing covering him. The rest of him stood on display in the dim moonlight, the mounds and dips of his abs having only grown more defined in the years since I’d been gone. A thin trail of hair sprawled up from the band of his shorts to the middle of his chest, which was new and unfamiliar, but I still remembered the way his abs creased where they met his hips in a thick V.
I swallowed the nearer he came, snapping my eyes back to my laptop screen when he was close enough to possibly notice the way I was staring at him.
“You’re so prickly,” he said.
And then, his wet hands reached forward and shut my laptop.
“Hey!”
“Come on,” he said, reaching out a hand for mine. “I haven’t seen you in years. Swim with me.”
I scowled, flipping my laptop back up. “I’m working.”
“It’s ten o’clock at night,” he said, as if that mattered. “And you’ve been working all day. Maybe not on your podcast, but on my sister’s wedding, which is just as difficult. Come on,” he said again. “Take a break.”
It wasn’t like me to be prickly, as he had so casually pointed out. He was right — I was the happy, bubbly girl. The life of the party. I didn’t do conflict. If anything, I did everything I could to avoid the things in my life that were painful.
But there was something about that man that drove me absolutely mad.
And I couldn’t just avoid him.
Not anymore.
“Look,” I snapped. “Maybe you can afford to just take time off and dick around, but I’ve got an outline to review for a podcast I’ll be on in three days that has seven-million listeners per episode on average. Okay? So, please, sit at the bottom of the pool or swim or do whatever you want but just… leave me alone.”