But then I do. I stop. I back away from him, lower my head and gasp, while looking at his blurry hands, there, on my hips beneath the water. I stop because I’m afraid of Knox wanting to go away again. I want to, I really want to, but I can’t. Not yet.
But Knox doesn’t go any further. He doesn’t say a word. He justexhales heavily, just like me. And then I feel his cheek against mine. His wet lashes brushing my temples. His heart beating against my chest. It’s quick.
“I could do it,” he says.
My lips pucker against his skin when I smile. All of a sudden, we’re not in the pool anymore. We’re in the movie theater. The moment repeats.
“What could you do?”
“Be ready.” His breath brushes my ear and suddenly there’s a hot pulsing between my legs.
When I speak, my voice is husky and out of breath. “For what?”
His lips leave a warm and damp trace across my cheeks that get lost at the corners of my mouth. Knox looks at me, hardly an inch of space between us. “To change myself for you.” The end of his nose brushes mine. I feel his breath on my skin. “If you want.”
A gust of icy snow blows through the air. I can see it. I am sure.
“I do,” I say. “Be prepared, Knox.”
He smiles against my lips.
Kisses chase kisses and nothing has ever felt so right.
30
There Is Beauty in Surviving
Knox
We pushed the lounge chairs together and covered them with pillows and blankets. Tucked in nice and warm, each of us with a hot chocolate in hand, we’re roasting marshmallows from the linen cabinet over the fire.
The sky is dark. Silent snowfall. Protected by the awning we’re waiting for the sunrise because I told her that the moment the sun begins to rise behind the Aspen Highlands and the sky looks like it’s been painted in pastels is something that feels a little bit like magic.
We don’t have a lot of time, because we both have to go to training, but I notice how Paisley is trying to stretch the moment out. She’s holding her cup with both hands and blows into it multiple times before taking a sip. She puts it to the side and has to bend down over the edge of the sofa to keep her marshmallow over the fire. It slowly turns golden brown. She holds it to her lips and breathes it in. I watch it. I watch every one of her tiny movements.
She looks at me. Laughs. “What’s up?”Whashup?
“Nothing.” The caramelized sugar sticks to the corner of her mouth. I reach out my hand and run my thumb across it. “I want things to work out between us.”
“Yeah,” she says. Swallows the marshmallow and puts the stick to the side. “Me too.”
“But I don’t have any idea how that works.”
“How what works?”
I observe my own marshmallow, but do nothing. I held it directly into the flames, and now it’s just a sticky black mass dripping onto the wood. I put my own stick to the side. “Doing it right.”
Paisley observes my tar-like mass of marshmallow. The flames reflect in the glassy haze of her eyes. She licks her lips, and I want to kiss her again.
Again and again and again.
“There’s no right or wrong between us. We’ll make mistakes, but we’re allowed. Weshould. For this to function doesn’t mean everything has to run smoothly. It just needs to bereal, Knox.”
I know that that’s what I want to be. For her. It might be tough though, because I haven’t been that for a long time.Real. But I’m certain that I can be if I’m with Paisley. When I’m with her, I want to be myself. I have the feeling that she hates me the moment I pretend, the moment I’m no longerKnox, but loves discovering me, loves when I show more of myself. When I allow her to get a deeper look. Like a ragged, brittle map that you have to unroll carefully, piece by piece and not too quickly or otherwise everything will fall apart and then all is lost.
“Both of us,” I say and tug at the tattered drawstrings of her hoodie. “Both of us have to be real.”
Paisley turns away to watch a lonely piece of chocolate floating in her cup.
