I nodded as we headed closer to his friends, and took a deep breath at what I’d have to do next. I’d never really been too self-conscious about being in a bathing suit before, but that was mostly because I’d given up comparing myself to others. When you have one sister who works out all day and you have another sister and mom who are both slim and perfectly proportioned no matter how much they ate, you kind of had to. I was pretty small all around, except for my thighs and butt, but it was nothing to note when I’d seen Jasmine’s buns of steel every day for years. There was nothing worse than comparing yourself to another woman because there was always going to be something that they had that you didn’t. Always. It helped that my mom had always told me I was pretty just the way I was, even if I didn’t always completely believe her. That’s the kind of thing moms said. She’d even told my brothers they were handsome and those two looked likegremlins.
What might have also helped, as Aaron and I dropped our towels close to where Des was stationed on a lounger, with two arms crossed behind his head and sunglasses over his face, was that Aaron didn’t see me as… more than a friend. I didn’t have anything to prove to him… even if I would have wanted to. With my towel extended long-wise, I dropped the rest of my things on top of it and faced the direction of the water as I pulled my cover-up over my head and let itfalltoo.
I didn’t bother looking behind me as I lowered myself onto my towel and settled on my butt, snatching the bottle of sunblock I’d brought and pouring a handful into my palm so I could start applying it to my legs. Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted Des sitting up and going to pick on a sleeping Brittany before they both stumbled toward the water. I managed to get both my legs saturated before I glanced to the side to find Aaron sitting there with his own towel maybe three inches away from mine. His gaze was so focused on the beach break, I frowned. I hadn’t thought too much of how quiet he’d been, but… What was going through his head? Something bad? I could remember how quiet my brother had been for a while after he’d gotten back from his tour following his injury, and I didn’t like Aaron doing the same thing, especially when I didn’t know him well enough to have a solution… if there evenwasone.
Feeling something pretty close to panic, or maybe it was desperation, filling my belly, I reached over to poke him, not knowing what else to say or do to get him to stop making thatdistantface.
Luckily that was enough to get him out of his trance because he blinked once and turned to face me, an easygoing expression on his face finally, not the strange one that had been on there right before. “You okay?” he asked, looking at me like it was the first time he’d seen me in a long time, his gaze going from my face down, being totally obvious about checking out mybathingsuit.
I wasn’t going to thinkaboutit.
“Yes,” I said to him, noticing he still hadn’t taken his shirt off. “Areyou?”
He did that quick nod again that made my stomach clench. What was going onwithhim?
“Sure?”
“Yeah,” he said, his gaze finally swinging slightly lower, a dimple prickling at his cheek. “That’scute.”
My face turned as red as my bathing suit. At the rate I was going, I needed to get a sunburn all over so it wouldn’t be so obviouseveryday.
His index finger touched my right strap so lightly, I almost didn’t feel it. “Did youmakeit?”
I fought the urge to squirm. “Mybathingsuit?”
“Uh-huh,” he said, now checking out the little gold clasp right between where my barely B-cupboobswere.
No one had ever looked anywhere below my neck before. “No. It was Jasmine’s, but she gave it to me.” I picked at the strap he’d just finished touching, giving it a pop. “It looks better on her, but Ilikeit.”
The smile that came over Aaron’s mouth was the most gradual, slowest thing I’d ever seen. It was almost pitying, but something about it cut that corner and made it so sweet, it confused me even more. And of all the words he could’ve said to me, he went with, “I doubt it, RC.” And with that expression still on his face, he lifted his chin and frowned down at my skin. “You don’t haveascar.”
I made a noise in my throat loud enough for him to glance up at. “From my surgery?” I basically croaked, even though I knew that had to be what he was talkingabout.
Aaron nodded, his gaze flicking back down at the triangle of exposed skin on mychest.
“They didn’t… the catheters were by my…” I waved my hand around mygroin. “Hips.”
That had him glancing back at me, one eyebrowup. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” Ismiled.
Another slow smile crawled across that mouth I’d probably be daydreaming over for the rest of my life. “All right. Hurry up and finish putting sunblock on then,wouldyou?”
I wrinkled my nose but reached for the tube, part of me glad he was letting the surgery talk go. I put more sunblock on my palm as I bounced my gaze from my palm to Aaron and back again, attempting to move the conversation along before he changed his mind. “Did you notbringany?”
Like every other man I’d ever known, he didn’t “need”any.
I tipped my head to the side and gave him a flat look that had him cracking into a grin like he hadn’t just been staring off into space minutes ago and then staring at my bathing suit and chest. “Fine,” he finally groaned, taking the sunblock from where I’d left it balanced on mythigh.
Trying my best not to be obvious as I spread the cream over my forearms before moving up to my biceps and shoulders, I watched as he rubbed the barest amount into his legs, the white getting stuck in the light brown hairs and over the tops of his big, almost pale feet. There was a line somewhere a few inches above his ankle bone where the color of his legs changed almost dramatically to the shade of light tan his feet were. From his boots, Ifigured.
“Hey, don’t be stingy. Get some more sunblock if you need it,” Itoldhim.
He let out this little snicker in his nose. But that was all. I smiled at him and he smiled back at me, before he dropped his hand and went back to applying sunscreen, his hands dipping beneath the hem of his shirt to rub at his chest without exposing more than a sliver of a lean hip and an inch of skin above his swimtrunks.
I finished putting sunscreen on my face when Aaron rolled up to his knees on his own towel, his body facing mine. He didn’t move for a second, and I didn’t want to look at his face to see what he was focused on, until finally he said, “You missedaspot.”
When his thumb went to the shell of my ear, smoothing sunblock on it before swiping down to rub at my earlobe, moving the small star-shaped studs there, I let him. I shouldn’t have, but I did. Keeping my gaze on the center of my chest so he couldn’t see the struggle going on inside of me was harder than I’d ever imagined, especially when he did the same thing to my other ear, and I had to hold in my breath to keep frompanting.
