Never Sweeter(30)

And immediately regretted it.

He didn’t yank hard. But then again he didn’t need to. One fairly firm pull was all it took to send her plummeting headfirst into the water, and once there things started to go really wrong. She was not a strong swimmer under normal circumstances, but these were not normal at all. These were terrifying and unexpected circumstances. She wasn’t prepared for a face full of water, or to dive to the bottom while fully dressed. Now she was choking and blind, with two tons of wool and denim weighing her down.

She kicked, and got absolutely nowhere.

She struck out with her right arm, and got tangled in her sleeve.

At which point she really began to panic.

Maybe this had been his plan all alongearn her trust and then murder her in a swimming pool. “Her clothes dragged her down, Officer, there was nothing I could do,” she thought, and almost lost it completely. That tight feeling was starting to happen, in her chest. Her arms just weren’t cutting through the water. It was entirely possible that she might die like this.

And then she felt his hands on her, strong, strong, strong. So strong he hauled her clean out of the water, then almost right over his head. She had to grab on to him just to stop herself going, when all she really wanted to do was murder him right back. She wanted to scream at him for doing that, but instead wound up with an arm tight around his shoulders and the other around his waist.

She was glad though, in the end.

If she had screamed and punched him, she wouldn’t have gotten the full extent of his apology. She might have heard him saying sorry twenty times in that frightened tone, but she would have missed the hand spread over her back. She would never have known what it was like to feel him stroking the back of her head in these little frantic motionsas though he knew he had to fix things super fast. He had to prove the whole thing was just a joke, before she escaped him forever.

And he succeeded, too. He succeeded because of this:

“I just forgot I wasn’t always your friend.”

That was where they were nowon such good terms that he could pull a prank on her and assume that she would laugh. Their past had almost been erased for him, to the point where she was just his buddy and he was just her buddy and that wasgood god, she didn’t know what that was. Soothing, her mind informed her.

Though it was possible that was just the feel of his hand on her back.

He was rubbing her in these soft, slow circles, so good she almost forgot they weren’t always friends, too. The only thing in her head was how nice it felt, to just give in to this. Every tensed muscle unwound and every nerve in her stopped fizzing, until finally she was just a boneless weight against him. Her cheek was against his shoulder and her arms were draped around his, everything so still and quiet suddenly that she could have almost kind of…kind of…

“Are you…are you falling asleep?”

“I was just nearly killed. I’m entitled to a rest.”

“Hey, I wasn’t complaining. Sleeping on me seems way better than never wanting to speak to me again. Or trying to kill me in return. I mean, you are fully capable of doing it now.”

“I was going to get you in a headlock.”

“Yeah?”

“But then I got comfy.”

“Is that what I am? Comfortable?”

There was amusement in his voice.

Good amusement. Warm amusement.

Plus, he was still stroking her back and her hair.

“Like a big couch.”

“Never thought being called a couch would make me feel so good.”

“Does it really? Make you feel good, I mean?”

“Nothing has ever made me feel better,” he said, then seemed to hesitate. As though whatever he was going to say next might cost him. And when he started speaking, haltingly, she could understand why. “Know how many times I wished I could have done this for you after the bluff? Must have been a hundred. A thousand. A million.”

It cost her, just to hear it.

“Well, you almost killed me again. But you saved me this time. You saved me,” she said, intending it as a half joke to lighten things a little. Only somehow, it didn’t work at all. Her voice came out brittle and broken, and when she was done he didn’t reply. He didn’t so much as whisper a word.

He just bunched her hair into his fist, like some kind of weird reflex.

Then pressed his face against her temple. Squeezed her hard in his big arms.

And he did it all for a long, long time. So long she could feel her throat starting to tighten. Her eyes starting to sting. This is what regret feels like when someone puts it in the form of an embrace, she thought, then suddenly that stinging sensation was twenty times worse. If she didn’t say something soon, she was going to lose it. Though even more frightening was the idea that he might.