“I’m not sure. How long can he hold his breath?”
“A minute, I think,” Ash answers, swimming closer to the dock.
I set my hands on my knees and lean over, trying to get a better look at Shade’s flailing arms. Every few seconds, he manages to land a hit on Rowe’s chest, making him grunt and wince.
The brute of a sixteen-year-old responsible for the splash of water finally releases Shade. A blanket of black hair droops into his face before he tosses his head back and jumps right on Rowe. He manages to gain an advantage and pushes him beneath the water with the weight of his body.
I think Rowe let him do it.
I’m proven right the moment he shoves Shade off him and breaks the surface, only to swim away. I try not to gawk when he stops at the edge of the dock and sets both hands on the wood. His fingers are long, and the veins on the backs of his hands bulge as he pulls himself up. There’s no sound of struggle, only the whoosh and drip of water when his body leaves the lake.
I blink quickly, an unfamiliar sense of heat building in my belly at the same time he sits beside me, stretching his arms ahead of him. Their muscles strain, almost . . . rippling with the easy movement like they do in the movies. I’m suddenlyhyperaware of how close he sat to me and that I can feel his body heat against my side.
The skin on my arms and neck prickles, hairs rising. I clear my throat and try to act normal. Yeah, normal. Definitely not like I’m struggling to pull air into my lungs or anything. That would be so weird. Especially considering he’s my brother’s best friend. I’ve known him since he was too short to ride a horse by himself and would pitch fits about it.
“What are you doing up here?” I blurt out.
He shrugs a shoulder, causing our skin to touch briefly. “I don’t want to kill him.”
“You won’t. He’s annoying, but in the same way family is.”
“My family isn’t annoying. They’re a pain in the ass,” he grunts.
I laugh, unable to help myself. It’s a good break in the tension, though. “Yeah, yours does kind of suck. That’s why you’re a part of ours now.”
“Is that right?”
“Don’t act coy. You know my parents love you. They’d adopt you if they could.”
Maybe that would be enough to cut this new attraction. I can’t very well think my could-be adopted brother is hot, right?
To make matters worse, he’s a cowboy. And not the type that just wears the hat and boots to get laid. The real kind. He walks funny from how long he spends in a saddle and has to shower before leaving the ranch because of the horse smell that always clings to him. If he’s not hanging out with us or at school when he bothers to show up, he’s working for his dad, training horses or riding the bucking ones to try and practice for when he starts entering rodeos.
I’m so used to him wearing dirty shirts and jeans that I haven’t noticed the way he’s somehow grown abs and biceps thesize of my thighs this year. This is the first day we’ve all been at the lake since last summer, and now . . .
“Your parents are nice people,” he says, almost softly.
I swallow, folding my hands into my lap. “Don’t give them too much credit now. You know how my mom can get.”
“Right. That’s where you get it from.”
“What does that mean?” I gawk, lips parting.
His cheek dimples as he fights a smile. “There’s a reason nobody ever compliments you.”
“Because it makes everyone else feel inadequate?”
He scoffs in the back of his throat. “No. Because you don’t need any more confidence than you already have. You’re a man-eater, hellcat.”
“Or maybe they don’t give compliments as well as you do, so they don’t even try,” I counter, skin flaming.
“That wasn’t even a compliment.”
“It was to me. There’s nothing I love more than making a man’s life miserable.”
“I feel bad for your future husband, then.”
It’s a joke. One that I usually wouldn’t have thought twice about. In this moment, it clips the wings of the butterflies that were flapping in my stomach.
