Page 61 of The Space Between Heartbeats
“Look up,” he said.
I tilted my head back. The sky was thick with stars, more than I’d ever seen. They spread across the darkness like spilled glitter across black paint.
“You know the lake won’t hurt you, right?” His voice was close to my ear now. When had he moved closer? “I won’t let it.”
“How do you always know when I’m scared?”
He moved his hand and I found myself almost flush with his chest.
“Because I’m always watching you.”
My breath hitched. We were floating in the middle of the lake, his hand on my back, and I couldn’t see his face in the darkness but I could feel the weight of his stare.
“That’s kind of creepy when you say it like that,” I whispered.
He blew out a breath. “Yeah, well, you make it hard not to watch you, Sawyer.”
My brain shorted out. How was I supposed to respond?
Before I could think of something, he shifted, bringing his other arm around to my stomach, pulling me against him. With my back pressed to his chest, and I could feel every inch of him, the hard planes of his torso, his heart beating against my shoulder blades, his breath against my neck.
“Sorry,” he murmured, but he didn’t let go. “It’s easier to keep you up this way.”
It was a lie. We both knew it.
But I didn’t call him on it. Instead, I let myself melt into him, resting my head back against his shoulder while his arm tightened around my waist.
We floated like that for what felt like hours but was probably only minutes. His thumb kept dragging slow strokes on my stomach through my wet tank top. Each touch had heat spreading into every inch of my body. I could feel his breaths, in and out. The tension in his body as he held me tight.
My hand drifted down to cover his. Our fingers laced together against my stomach. We didn’t speak, just breathed together. There was only the sound of water lapping gently against us and the distant call of a night bird. It was peaceful and perfect, but I wanted so much more.
“Knox,” I said, sounding huskier than normal.
At the sound of my voice, his thumb stopped. His whole body went rigid behind me.
“We should head back,” he said. “Are you okay to swim?”
Before I could respond, before I could ask why, he let go. The sudden absence of his touch felt like plunging into ice water all over again.
“Uh,” I mumbled. “Yeah, I’m?—”
Once I said yes, he swam ahead, putting distance between us, but close enough that he could still easily hear me. I followed slowly, my body still tingling everywhere he’d touched me.
On the dock, I was shivering, not from being cold, but from confusion, from the abruptness of it all. He must have noticed, since he immediately grabbed a towel someone had left draped over the railing and wrapped it around my shoulders. His hands lingered for a moment, gripping the edges of the towel.
“Tonight stays between us,” he said, not meeting my eyes.
“Why?”
“Because.” He dropped his hands and looked out at the water. “Tonight doesn’t need to get turned into something it’s not. Because, Thorne, tonight is ours.”
I didn’t know what he meant but I nodded.
Ours.
He grabbed his shirt and shorts, not bothering with a towel. For a moment he just stood there, water dripping from his hair into his eyes, looking at me like he wanted to say something else.
“Get to bed before someone notices you’re gone,” he finally said.
