Chapter Nineteen
He's So Bad ~ late August
“Isee you’ve found the correct grandson’s lap this time.” Lois Prewitt fixes me with a knowing stare as she folds one hand over the other on top of her signature bejeweled cane. My face flames hotter than the sun high above us as I sit halfway on Noah’s lap. I didn’t intend to sit this way, but when I went to sit beside him on the edge of the hourglass-shaped saltwater pool, he tugged me close and wouldn’t let me go.
Naturally, I didn’t put up a fight. Look at him! He’s golden and glistening from the water. He smells like sunshine, salt, and citrus. Like happily ever afters are real.
But Lois’s comment has me inching away, and Noah lets me this time, though my hand stays firmly locked with his. Lois and Link weren’t out here earlier when he plopped me down like he was my personal throne.
This is the first time I’m seeing the Prewitt family after finding Noah, and I fretted as I drove all the way here, wondering if they would fully accept me into their family.
I had feared for nothing.
The moment my old truck pulled into the driveway, Branda was racing to open my door, pulling me into a tight hug as her bangled wrists dug into the bare skin on the backs of my shoulders. “We’re, like, sisters now!” she’d shouted. I couldn’t fight the smile off my face if I wanted to as she had led me toward the door where Noah had stood with crossed arms, pouting about how he was supposed to greet me and not his sister.
Noah’s deep voice brings me back to the present. “Is there something I need to know about?” I don’t turn around to see his eyes, but I surmise they’re bouncing back and forth between me and Ashton, who is setting the water volleyball net up with Branda’s and Vance’s help.
“It was an accident, Ashley. Chill,” Branda retorts, using his middle name as she often does when she wants to pick at him.
“I second the statement,” I say, raising my eyebrows at Lois who simply shrugs and hobbles over to take a seat in one of the white reclining chairs under a huge tan umbrella.
Beside me, Noah rises. From my seated position on the pool’s edge, I watch as he stretches, momentarily entranced by the way his muscles ripple. My eyes flick down to a barely visible scar on his side, a faint white color against his sun-darkened skin. A swell of gratitude blooms in my chest, the same one I get every time I remember what he did for me over a year ago.
God, help me remember it,I pray silently. But I know that even if I never fully remember my time on Bora Bora, Noah is helping me trust that it’s probably for the best. While I wrote the attack scene fairly accurately, Noah says it was much darker than the hazy images my brain conjures when I attempt to recall the moment. But he still won’t tell me the details; he only shudders, kisses my forehead, and says that it’s best I don’t remember.
We are still working on getting him to stop taking others’ burdens. It’s a slow process. His ability to care for me and others with such a huge heart is part of the reason I’ve fallen in love with him.
But then I hear Ashton, in a cautious warning, say, “Don’t you even think about it.”
Noah looks down at me, wearing a mischievous smile that says Ashton isn’t going to like whatever is coming to him in a moment. Burdened to help my friend, I place my hand on Noah’s calf, capturing his attention. “Leave the poor man alone. It was my fault. I tripped and fell on top of him.”
“But she lingered,” Lois pipes up, wearing a wicked smile.
And this is how I know I’ve been fully accepted into the family.
Noah’s lip twitches before he bends down and swoops me into his arms. His drying black curls hang loosely in his face as his hazel eyes twinkle. “I can’t let you off the hook, now can I?”
“Noah Ashley Prewitt. Don’t you—”
He kisses my forehead and chucks me into the water, the second Prewitt man to do so. It kisses my hot skin before warming around me as I kick my way to the surface, preparing to find Noah and… Well, I don’t know what I’m going to do. Maybe I’ll bide my time.
Good choice, my little author. We can seek revenge in the confines of our book,fictional Noah states. He doesn't talk to me much these days; it’s bittersweet.
As I break the surface, I’m met with a monster of a splash. In front of me, Ashton and Noah are wrestling, creating a maelstrom in the water as they go round and round. Vance decides it’s a good idea to join them.
Definitely will seek my revenge at a later date.
I swim away to the shallow end where Branda looks upon her brothers and friend with disdain. She sighs as I stand beside her in the chest-deep water. “Every time they want to play watervolleyball, this happens. And I’m left with setting up the net all by myself.”
“Hey, I’m here.” I bump her shoulder. Branda’s dejected look instantly shifts.
“I’m so glad another woman is in the picture.”
I comb my fingers through my hair, pushing the soaked brown strands out of my face. “Put me to work, boss.”
Within minutes, we finish setting the net up and exit the pool as the men continue to go at each other playfully. I can’t lie; it’s a sight that warms my heart. Being here, sitting next to Branda and Lois under this giant umbrella, while Link grills under the pavilion across from the pool, is like being home. Like I found people who were never supposed to be mine but, somehow, they are.
“I’m so glad you found my boy,” Lois says as she stares at the brawling group. She tsks and continues. “He scared me.”
