The Speedo clung tight as I dove into the water. My body cut through it in clean, practiced lines. The silence underwater was everything. The weightless quiet gave me just enough space to breathe again.
I swam laps until my arms burned, and my legs felt weak. I swam until I had nothing left to outrun. But when I came back inside—hair wet, skin dripping—I found him waiting in the hall outside my bedroom.
Dare stepped into my path, blocking the way like a shadow dropped out of nowhere. I stopped short. He didn’t say a word, just stared at me.
His eyes flicked over my chest, down my torso, pausing where the fabric clung too tightly. My skin prickled with nerves. Water dripped down my ribs. His nostrils flared like he could smell the chlorine, or maybe something more.
Slowly, deliberately, Dare raised one hand and pressed against the wall above my shoulder.
Trapped.
I forgot how to breathe.
His eyes didn’t meet mine. They were everywhere else—dipping to the hollow of my throat, across my collarbone, my hardened nipples, over the stretch of bare thigh. His body was so close I could feel the heat rolling off of him, could see the flutter of his pulse in his throat.
My chest rose and fell in shallow, panicked beats. My voice failed me.
Was he going to hit me? Spit venom in my face again? Another slur? Another cruel joke? My knees locked. I didn’t dare move.
But Dare didn’t touch me. Not quite. He leaned in. Closer. Too close. And for one long beat, everything stilled.
He stared at my mouth.
His breath ghosted over my cheek. And in that second, I hated myself. Because I wanted him to kiss me. I wanted it more than I wanted to run.
My lips parted without thinking. I felt myself leaning forward, caught in a gravity that was stronger than sense. But then something shifted. A flicker in his eyes. A flash of recognition. Of panic.
Dare jerked back as if he’d been burned. His laugh was cruel and loud. I didn’t know if he was laughing at me or at himself.
“God,” he scoffed, “you were really gonna let me, weren’t you?”
I flinched, feeling his words cut like daggers.
He sneered, stepping back. “Desperate much?”
My stomach curled in on itself.
He walked away as if he hadn’t just almost kissed me. As if I hadn’t almost let him.
I didn’t even realize I was shaking until I tried to turn the doorknob to my room and missed. My hand slipped once, then again. I gritted my teeth and tried to focus, but everything was spinning—too loud, too fast, too fucking much.
I closed the door behind me with a soft click and leaned my back against it. The breath I’d been holding stuttered out of my lungs. I slid down to the floor and buried my face in my hands.
What the hell just happened?
Living under the same roof as him was akin to sleeping next to a ticking bomb and pretending I couldn’t hear the countdown. At some point, one or both of us was going to implode.
I pressed the heels of my palms into my eyes, hoping the pressure might erase the heat still clinging to my skin. My lips were burning. Not from contact—because there hadn’t been any—but from the memory of what almost was. From the sick, pathetic way my body responded, like it didn’t know better, or care that he was going to weaponize it. It didn’t care he’d already made a sport out of hurting me.
Iwantedhim to kiss me.
Even now, knowing what he did—what he said—I still wanted it. Still felt the charge of him leaning in, the promise of closeness, of something I’ve been starving for.
God, I was so stupid!
As if one little kiss could convince him to rewrite history, to choose me, to accept his attraction and stop denying his sexuality. The real world didn’t work like that. This wasn’t a rom-com.
I crawled across the floor on numb knees and grabbed mysketchpad off the nightstand, flipped to a blank page, and started drawing.
