down out there so I don’t get any of my dirty clothes on your floor. Do you want to join me?”
For a full second Lane’s brain was hung up on the words strip down and join me. She knew that they were separate. She did. But there was something about him saying them in such close succession that snagged her brain and just sort of hung there. Like the stickers against her dress.
“In the lake,” she said finally.
“Yeah,” he returned slowly.
“Sure. Yeah. I’ll just... I’ll go get ready while you... Strip down.” She cleared her throat and scampered her ass out of the room.
She forced her brain into a blank space while she undressed and pulled her bikini on. The idea of walking out in her bathing suit seemed weird somehow. Even though they were only going to swim together, which they had done a million times. She growled and grabbed her dress, tugging it over the top of her swimsuit. There.
But was he done getting dressed? That was the question.
She hemmed and hawed for a minute before finally exiting her bedroom and making her way cautiously back to the front door. She peeked out the curtain again, and saw him standing there in nothing but a pair of shorts.
Well, he was dressed. Sort of.
He had a towel hung over his arm, and that reminded her she needed to grab one. She detoured back to the bathroom and took one off the shelf, then burst outside, not hesitating this time. “I’m ready,” she said.
He looked at her, a strange light in his eyes. “Okay,” he said.
The gravel was warm beneath her feet, and she kept her eyes down, making sure she didn’t step on anything sharp as they walked down the well-worn path to the lake.
There were houses all around the perimeter of the lake, but mostly on the other side, around a slight curve that kept everything from view. Those were larger houses, more desirable.
Lane’s friend Rebecca had owned one of the more modest houses on that end of the lake, near to Gage West’s extravagant lakeside cabin.
Lane’s house wasn’t exactly lakeside. Neither was it extravagant. But still she owned a little bit of the shoreline. The first year she’d been financially solvent she had had a dock put in, and then she had commissioned Jonathan Bear, Rebecca’s brother, to build her a bench swing that hung from a tree that stretched over the water.
It was her sanctuary.
Finn bent down and picked up a rock, running his fingers over the smooth-looking edges. And she tried not to think about why that made her stomach feel hollow.
He drew his arms back, then flung the rock toward the lake. It skipped three times across the surface before sinking to the bottom. “Want to make a wish?” he asked. “I’ve got three.”
This had been their game for a long time. Skipping rocks and earning wishes. Mostly because she couldn’t do it. So he always got to portion out the wishes he earned with his superior skills.
“I will get my own,” she said, bending to choose her own rock.
“It’s not flat enough,” he said.
“It’s fine,” she countered, moving to the edge of the lake.
She repeated the same motion he’d just done, running her fingers over the cool surface of the stone, ignoring that hers wasn’t perfectly smooth.
Then she cocked her arm back and flung the rock forward.
It hit the surface of the water and crashed on through, a splash like a fountain rising up in its wake.
“One wish,” she said, holding up her finger. “I get one.”
“No,” he explained. “It has to skip.”
“You got three! If the first one doesn’t count you should only get two.”
“The first one counts if it’s a skip and not sinking,” he said.
“You’re mean. And I think this game is rigged.”
“Do you want a wish or not?”
“I wish you would jump in a lake,” she snipped.
He turned and smiled at her, that crooked grin of his making something inside her feel off balance too. “Your wish is my command.”
He took two long strides to the dock and then another long one off, diving headfirst into the still, serene water, leaving nothing but a circular ripple behind as he disappeared beneath the surface.
He reappeared a second later, whipping his head back, a stream of water flying from his dark hair. He rubbed his hand over his face, pushing water drops from his skin while he kept himself afloat.
“Come on.” He gestured broadly, slapping the surface of the lake.
She rolled her eyes and reach down, grabbing the hem of her dress and shimmying slightly as she pulled it over her head. She could feel him watching her, and for some reason it felt incredibly awkward.
Apparently stripping her dress off in front of him was more awkward than just walking out in her bikini would have been. Even though she knew she had a swimsuit on underneath, she felt somehow strange and insecure. Like maybe she was wrong, and she had forgotten something crucial and she might be getting naked in front of him without realizing it.
She flung the dress to the side, letting it land in a patch of grass. And then she checked quickly to see that she was—in fact—wearing her suit.
She wrapped her arms around herself, clinging to her own midsection as she shuffled across the dock. The wood was warm beneath her feet, but she knew the water was going to be cold.
“How is it, Donnelly?”
“Like a hot tub,” he said, smiling in a way that let her know he was lying. And not even very well.
“Somehow, I’m skeptical of that.”
“You think I would lie to you?” He swam nearer to the dock.
“Yes,” she said.
He gripped the end of the dock, looking up at her, his brows lifted, his forehead slightly wrinkled. He was the picture of boyish innocence. Except for his muscles. For some reason, she found herself drawn to the way the water droplets slid down the ridges of his shoulders, over his chest.
She blinked.
“I’m shocked,” he said, doing a very good impression of someone who might be wounded. “How could you not trust me? One of your very oldest friends?”
“That’s exactly why, Finn,” she said, leaning down slightly. “Because I’ve known you for far too long. And I think that you want me to jump in and freeze myself. Because you’ll think it’s funny. You’re a child. And I know you well enough to know that.”
“Really?”
She bent down lower, hands on her knees. “Really.”
And that was the last thing she said before Finn reached up, wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her up against him, bringing her down beneath the surface of the water with him. He brought her right back up again, still holding on to her.
She sputtered, a hank of dark hair drooping in her face, lake water streaming down into her mouth. “You brat!” She shrieked, pushing her hair up out of her face, feeling it resting there on top of her head in an inglorious mat. She reached out, holding on to the dock while kicking her legs, the cool lake water swirling around her.
“You were going to get in anyway. I saved us both a bunch of time and shrieking.”
“I’m still shrieking!”
“But not as much as you would have if you’d worked your way in slowly.”
“Oh,” she said, “okay, you saved shrieking.