"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 were 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.