Moments later, a splash pierced the quiet.
Heart pounding, I stepped outside. The backyard was bathed in moonlight, the pool’s black surface rippling where he’d plunged in. He surfaced, droplets glinting off his hair. He looked back at me, lips curved in that reckless grin I thought I’d never see again.
“Come on,” he called. “One more night in space before we grow up and move away and become boring and responsible.”
I hesitated only for a second, then shrugged off my shirt and dove in after him.
The cold hit was shocking, but in that weightless world, the chaos melted away. I broke the surface, matching his grin.
He treaded water a few feet away, arms open. “Come on. Swim with me, Tru. No holding back.”
I drifted closer. The only sound was our breathing, the water lapping gently against the pool’s edge. He stopped, and I floated beside him, shoulders nearly brushing. Moonlight shimmered across his face and collarbone.
“Dare—”
He cut me off with a look. Softer than I’d ever seen.
“I’m serious,” he said. “We’ve got one night. Just us. No past. No future. Just now.”
I closed my eyes, tasting chlorine and something like hope. “Okay.”
We floated there, the world narrowing to the soft rhythm of our breaths—the fragile illusion of forgiveness wrapping around us like starlight.
Dare hesitated, his voice quiet, uncertain. “You think everything would’ve been different if we kissed again?”
I didn’t answer because my answer would’ve beenyes. And I couldn’t survive him knowing that.
He turned and swam away without another word. And I stayed there, heart-wrecked and burning, mouth still aching from thealmost.
I didn’t know what we were anymore.
Only what we weren’t.
PART FOUR: DOUBLE DARED
CHAPTER 21
TRU
The silence between us wasn’t the same as before. It wasn’t angry. Just… fragile.
He satbeside me in the driver’s seat almost a stranger, but everything in me remembered the sound of his laugh—the way his mouth curved up when I said something dumb, the way he’d slap my shoulder when he was proud. It was strange, sitting this close and feeling so far away.
Dare stared straight ahead, knuckles white around the steering wheel. “You got twenty bucks for gas?” His voice came out clipped, afraid the guilt might slip through.
“I filled it up day before yesterday,” I said.
He nodded, jaw working. “I—drove Lauren around. Said goodbye to everyone.”
A dry laugh escaped me before I could stop it. “Guess you better come up with twenty bucks then.”
He fished in his pocket without meeting my eyes.For a second, I almost reached over, almost touched his hand. But I didn’t. I kept both hands in my lap, where they couldn’t betray me.
The highway unspooled ahead, gray, endless, and quiet, where every unspoken thing found room to breathe and every mile felt like a countdown. I wondered how long it would take before this drive started to feel like freedom… or how long before it felt like regret.
When he finally turned off the exit, the campus rose ahead of us, sunlight glinting off brick and glass. Students moved like ants across the quad, all motion and possibility.
“This is it,” he said softly, pulling into a loop lined with maple trees.
