Page 15 of Her Ex-Husband's Brother

Oh shit, she just jumped in the pool.

It’s not a smooth entry like a dive or even a careful step-down, but one of those full-commitment splashes when someone just flings themselves into the water before the more sensible part of their brain can object.

I immediately start swimming towards her as she lets out a yelp that isn’t a scream exactly. More like every vowel leaving her lungs simultaneously.

Because she jumped in a sixty-two-degree pool in January in a camisole and gym shorts. After having been in a hot tub for thebetter part of half an hour, which means her core temperature is elevated. Which means the cold shock is going to hit her harder than it would otherwise.

And she is not swimming, which is kind of the entire key to surviving in sixty-two-degree water.

“Hey,” I call, almost to her. “Hey, you need to move. Right now, start moving.”

“I’m—” Her teeth are already chattering. “I’mmoving?—”

“Swimming, I mean. Actual swimming. Your body needs to generate heat or the cold wins fast.”

I get to her in four strokes. She’s standing in the shallow end, arms wrapped around herself, eyes wide with something that’s equal parts shock and not regret, not exactly. Something more likeoh. So this is what this shocking fucking cold feels like.

“I didn’t—” She gasps. “You do thisevery day?—?”

“I’m also not getting in straight from a hot tub in January my first time. Either get out now or swim to the wall.”

She looks at me. She looks at the far wall. She makes a sound of pure indignation at the distance between here and there and then shegoes.

Not gracefully, or with any technique to speak of. Mostly it’s controlled flailing, but she goes, and I follow at a distance. She’s a stranger who just got in a sixty-two-degree pool and if she goes under, I need to be close enough to do something about it.

She swims to the wall. Then turns and looks back at me with an expression of genuine triumph. Like she’s just won something.

“See,” she gasps. “Swimming!”

“That was not swimming.”

“It wasapproximatelyswimming.” She flails to keep herself afloat in the deep end. She looks like the world’s most adorable drowning rat.

“Okay, back to the shallow end now, hero.”

She makes three laps total. On the third one she slows badly coming back and I come up beside her. She grabs onto my arm and says, with tremendous dignity through her chattering teeth, “T-t-think I’m done now.”

“Hot tub,” I say.

“Hot tub,” she agrees.

I get out first so I can make sure she’s got her footing on the steps because her legs are going wobbly and unreliable after the cold water. But she makes it out and stands on the deck and I help her to the hot tub.

Her eyes fly back open wide the second she steps down inside the bubbling hot water. “Pins and needles!”

I grin. “But good pins and needles, right?”

Another noise comes from lower in her throat. “I can’t decide yet!”

But after another twenty seconds she sinks lower in the bubbling water. “Definitely good pins and needles. Holy shit! I feel amazing.”

A chuckle erupts from deep in my chest. “That’s kinda the point.”

Her eyes close for a moment as her entire body relaxes and then fly back open. “Holy shit,” she whispers it this time. “And you do this every night.”

“When I can.”

“Woooow,” she breathes out. “Thank you for not letting me drown, by the way.”