Why am I like this?
Derek breaks the silence first, a soft curse slipping off his tongue as he stares at the rapid ahead with a furrowed brow. “I hate to say it,” he mutters, rubbing his hands on his thighs, “but I’m glad you’re rowing tomorrow.”
Lifting an eyebrow, I study his face carefully. He’s not giving me much, but there are hints of worry around his eyes. I’m glad he started the conversation, though. It makes my decision to come out here feel less pointless. “If you had tried some of the rapids yesterday, this wouldn’t be so intimidating.”
“Maybe.”
“Why didn’t you want to row? I thought the whole point was learning to handle whitewater.”
Grimacing, he rolls his shoulders as if trying to shake his discomfort. “I didn’t want to…” He grits his teeth. “…mess up.”
“Right.” I don’t want to make light of his struggles, and he seems more likely to open up when he’s leading the conversation. But I want to know. “You’re talented, Derek, but there’s no way you’re immediately good at everything you do. Messing up is part of learning.”
“Messing up here feels bigger.” He drops his eyes to the rocks at our feet and sighs. “And I think Brody got in my head.”
“Brody?” I nudge my shoulder into his. “You’re telling me that you can ignore tabloids and dumb comments on the internet, but a toolbag with ego issues can get to you?” I scoff. “You’re Derek Riley. You’re rich, famous, handsome, and an insanely talented actor, so of course he’s going to see you as a threat, but he’s nothing compared to you.”
Derek looks up, a smile lifting the corners of his mouth and spiking my internal temperature. He inches closer to me, cutting the distance between us in half, and suddenly I’m less certain that he was avoiding me because he doesn’t like me. “Handsome?” he repeats, tilting his head.
I roll my eyes. “This isn’t news to you, Supes. Calm the ego.”
“Insanelytalented?” he says next, emphasizing the first word as he moves even closer. “That’s high praise coming from the great Nova Tate.”
That earns him another eye roll, mostly because I’m hoping it masks the blush rising along my face. He’s too close. Too beautiful. I press a hand to his chest to keep him from crossing the last bit of space between us, but the feel of his hard muscle beneath my palm leaves me breathless. I can’t help but look down at my fingers as they dig into his soft t-shirt, but then I’m back to gazing into his bright blue eyes and feeling entirely safe with him in a way I rarely am. He’s so…perfect.
Bringing him out here was a bad idea.
Clearing my throat, I drop my hand and take a step to the side. “If you were going to row this rapid, what would you do?”
It takes a long time for Derek to look away from me—I feel his eyes even when I’m not looking—and turn to the rapid below us. “I don’t see any rocks that would cause problems,” he says after taking a moment to study the rushing water. “So I would run it just right of center and hit those waves as straight as I can.” He says it almost like a question, his body tense as he looks at me for confirmation.
I lift an eyebrow. “Are you sure?”
He stiffens even more, examining the river for another minute before nodding without any of his usual confidence. “Yes?”
“Sounds like it would be a good ride.”
He exhales. “Then why did you question me?”
“Becauseyouwere questioning you. One thing I’ve learned from the river is that you can’t second-guess yourself. You have all the information you need, and if you change your mind halfway through, you’re going to run into trouble.” Disliking the distance I put between us, I lean over and bump my shoulder into his. “For someone so confident, you really surprise me with your uncertainty sometimes, Derek.”
Taking a deep breath, he lets it out slowly and shifts his focus farther downstream. “Like you said, I’m a good actor.” He growls that last word, and though helooksrelaxed, I can almost feel the tension growing in his body as he tries to get a good look at the next rapid down, Big Drop 2. “There are some rocks at the top of that one, right?”
Yes, but I’m more interested in why he doesn’t like the idea of acting when that’s literally his job. “Derek.”
“I watched some videos before the trip, but they were in lower water than what we have now. How does the rapidchange in—”
“Derek.”
He sighs, slippings his hands into his pockets as he turns his head just enough to look at me withoutreallylooking. “What?”
“It’s just me.” I gesture to the landscape around us, free of people and cameras and tabloids. “No one is asking you to act right now. You don’t have to be perfect with me.”
Letting out a short, humorless laugh, he sits on a nearby rock, resting his elbows on his knees and stuffing his hands into his hair. “I know. But I can’t…” He groans. “It’s not something I can turn off, you know?”
“Yeah.” Finding a spot on the rock that looks moderately flat, I settle next to him and put my hand on his thigh. I’m sitting closer than I should be, but I can’t find it in me to care. “You said you got into acting because you can do something over if you mess it up, right?”
Moving his hands to the back of his neck, he looks over at me and nods. Something vulnerable in his eyes holds me captive, like he just cracked open a door to let me see inside. A door that has been firmly closed over the last few days, even with all the things he’s told me so far. Tomorrow we run the Big Drops, and we’ll camp for one last night before we motor out and I’ll never see this man again. He’s told me things he doesn’t tell anyone, but there’s still something deep inside him that needs to get out. I can feel it as much as I can see it in his eyes.
