Though he narrows his eyes, catching my change of subject, Derek finally dunks his head back and rinses his hair. He only gets half of the shampoo out before he’s upright again and watching me as soapy water runs down his body. “Do you like being on the ranch?”
“It’s my home.”
He frowns. “What makes it home?”
“Everything, I suppose.” Too much to sum up in a single answer, but I want to try. Something familiar in the way he’s studying me makes me want to share it with him so he’ll stop looking so…lost.
His emotions are still subtle, but he looks the same way I felt when I first got to Pops as a teen.
Swallowing, I shrug and act like my whole life didn’t change when I ended up in Utah. “It’s where I learned a lot about who I am and what really matters to me because the rest of the world doesn’t reach it.”
“It sounds nice.”
I nod. “On the banks of a river like this is my most favorite place in the world. Solace Creek is a close second.”
For a moment, he looks like he’s trying to picture the ranch, his eyes growing distant, and I try to imagine him in another place I love. A Hollywood socialite with a two-hundred dollar haircut and a slew ofpeople who work for him, drinking coffee from a thermos from the back porch during the first snowfall of the year… I don’t know if I can see it.
With his impressive career and his struggle with perfectionism on top of it, I wonder when he last took time to just sit in silence and rest. I can’t imagine he does that very often.
Derek opens his mouth, but then he swears and jumps backward, losing his footing and slipping under the water. He comes back up, spluttering, and says something about a fish before a rivulet of shampoo runs into his eye and prompts another curse and another slide in the mud.
As a snicker escapes me, I realize something important. Derek ishuman. I may have told him earlier that he doesn’t have to be perfect, but until this moment, as I watch him struggle to stand up straight again, I’m not sure I believed my own words. But he’s just as hopeless as the rest of us, and even a legend like him needs help sometimes.
Rolling my eyes, I scoot back into the water and grab his arm to stop him flailing. “Relax,” I tell him and brush my palm across his forehead before he gets attacked by more shampoo.
“A fish swam between my legs,” he says breathlessly, as if worried I missed the first explanation.
“That’s good luck, you know.” My thumb runs across his eyebrow next, and I hold back a comment about how well-maintained it is. He’s too pretty for his own good. “Here, lie back.” Do I practically push him deeper into the water to hide his chest now that I’m close to him again? Maybe. But the joke’s on me because as soon as I start rinsing the soap from his hair, he closes his eyes and gets the most blissful look on his face, like he has never been treated so gently.
My dumb heart aches for this man and the insanity that is his life.
I know from experience that even though he has everything he could want, he needs to be treated gently. To be taken care of. I can only imagine how much energy he spends being the perfect man, and I wouldbet money that everyone around him, his friends included, have no idea how tiring his life really is because he’s so good at hiding it. When he’s the one who needs someone to lean on, is anyone ever there?
I take my time rinsing his hair, and when the shampoo is gone, I don’t stop running my fingers along his temples and forehead. Across his cheekbones and bruised jaw. He doesn’t move except to furrow his brow. What would he do if I leaned over and kissed him? The answer worries me, mostly because I think he would kiss me right back, and then where would we be?
Heartbroken when we go back to reality and realize our worlds don’t mix and we were doomed from the start.
But until then?
Someone clears their throat on the shore.
Derek opens his eyes, looking up at me for half a second with a million thoughts behind his eyes before we both look over to find Hunter standing on the beach, his arms folded over his chest and a scowl darkening his features.
“There was a fish,” Derek tells his bodyguard weakly.
Laughing in a poor attempt to dispel the tension still thick between us, I splash some water in Derek’s face and climb out of the water, patting Hunter’s bicep as I head to my tent to dry off and change into something a little less likely to lead to whatever that was that just happened.
No, I know exactly what happened. Derek asked me questions no one has ever asked me, and I think I just traded a part of my heart for his.
That’s not going to end well.
Chapter Sixteen
Derek
Hunterisn’ttalkingtome, which is another first I can add to my list. After Donovan left the river, he told me I was being careless and should stay focused on the reason I’m here. I told him that I was asking her questions about the life of a river guide. He toldmethat I’m acting like Liam and being reckless, which made me snap back at him for speaking poorly about one of my best friends, and he said he doesn’t want to have to protect my heart as well as my body but will do it if he has to.
Then he stormed off, apparently to make friends with the middle-aged group because, in his words, “They aren’t idiots distracted by pretty faceslike the rest of you.”
