Page 13 of On the Line

Yesterday I didn’t know she existed. Today she’s on my boat, stealing drinks out of my cooler and laughing with my friends like she’s known them forever, and I like it a lot more than a guy who signed up out of boredom has any right to.

I’ve watched this happen to every single one of my buddies. Some woman walks into their life and they stop behaving like reasonable human beings, and I figured they’d all lost their minds.

Then Delaney tucks her hair behind her ear and smiles up at me.

Shit. Maybe they were onto something.

Chapter Four

Delaney

By Saturday night, the pretending is turning into a problem.

Liam has been touching me all day. Not constantly, which might actually be easier to ignore. It’s little things. His hand on my waist when I step off the boat, his fingers brushing mine when he passes me a drink, his palm resting on my thigh while we all sit around the firepit after dinner. None of it feels fake anymore, and half the time nobody’s even watching.

It’s confusing. Is he touching me just because he wants to?

Around eleven, people start heading inside. Nora yawns and announces that she’s going to bed, Kelsey and Mark follow her in, and then it’s just me and Liam and the fire. Past the trees the lake is completely black. I tuck my legs under me in the Adirondack chair.

“So,” I say.

He looks over. “So.”

“We survived day two.”

“Barely. Your friends interrogated me for forty-five minutes.”

“They like you.”

“I noticed.”

“Nora asked me this afternoon if I thought you were the One.”

His eyebrows go up. “What’d you say?”

“That she was insane.”

“Ouch.”

I laugh. “You’re impossible.”

He doesn’t say anything to that. He just watches me for a second with the firelight on his face. He’s been quieter tonight, and I don’t know what to do with a quiet Liam. My stomach goes tight.

“Want to go for a ride?” he asks.

“Now?”

He nods toward the dock. “The lake’s best at night.”

I should say no. Ten minutes later I’m barefoot on his boat in a borrowed sweatshirt, and we’re easing away from the dock.

He doesn’t take us far, just out to open water where the lights along the shore look tiny. Then he cuts the engine, and it’s so quiet I can hear the water tapping against the hull. I tip my head back. The sky is packed with stars.

“Wow.”

“Told you.”

“I can see the Milky Way. I don’t think I’ve seen it since I was a kid.”