Stay in Beaufort. At a bed and breakfast. He’d been thinking about this. It was a sweet possibility, the two of us, cosy in the cab of his cherry-red truck, a short drive back to a quaint hotel, not having to kiss goodnight at the door …
‘Or we can drive back to Savannah, it’s no big deal,’ he added hurriedly, his confidence uncertain when I didn’t answer right away. ‘I only thought—’
‘That sounds great,’ I pushed the words through my lips and made them real. ‘I would love that.’
‘The drive-in or …’
‘All of it,’ I said, tiny sparks flicking at my fingertips. ‘It all sounds great.’
It didn’t sound great, it sounded heavenly. Bell House was my home but it was Ashley’s home too. This place was a mansion but with Jackson glooming around like a bitter shadow and the now unshakable threat of Ileen Stovell’s spy cameras, we would never truly be alone. But the two of us at a bed and breakfast in another town … I could imagine myself waking up in his arms. And everything that came before that too. My skin burned.
‘Is it hot in here or is it me?’ Wyn muttered, taking a step backwards and walking over to the window. ‘Would you look at that pool. I am ready to jump right in. Unless pools aren’t safe for you? We could hang out in the AC and watch a movie?’
‘Pools are fine,’ I said, slipping down from the counter, the tiled floor cool against my hot feet. ‘As far as I know. I’m basically a toddler, can’t be left by water unsupervised.’
‘Good thing I can’t take my eyes off of you.’
My teeth bit down into my bottom lip, tempering a smile so big I was afraid it might force every flower on the island into bloom.
‘I’m going to go change,’ I said as he peeled off his T-shirt, already in swimming shorts. As if I wasn’t struggling to contain myself already.
‘Don’t take too long,’ Wyn called as I headed for the stairs. ‘We only have forever.’
Whenever the skies were clear and the sun was high, my dad called it a top dollar day. Walking out of the house and into the backyard I wished more than anything he was with me. It was such a top dollar day, the enormous swimming pool sparkling the exact same shade as the sky, it was hard to tell who was reflecting whom.
‘You were gone too long,’ Wyn chided, breaking the surface of the water and bursting up like some sort of Greek god.
‘I was gone five minutes.’
‘Like I said, you were gone too long,’ he said again.
Grinning so hard it made my face hurt, I hopped onto the blazing hot concrete that surrounded the pool, hastily makingmy way into the water. The temperature was perfect, cool, not cold, and I walked then swam over to Wyn, testing my front crawl and my magic.
‘You’re good?’ he asked when I reached him, arms sliding back around his neck, where they always wanted to be.
‘More than,’ I confirmed as my legs locked around his waist. It might’ve made me nervous on dry land, to be so intimate, but in the water it felt natural.
‘Wish we had a pool.’ Wyn leaned back, soaking his hair until it was slicked back from his head and almost jet black. ‘My gramps had an above ground pool when we were kids, but he never cleaned it right and my mom wouldn’t let us swim in it.’
‘That’s almost as harsh as eating my still-beating heart,’ I joked, but he didn’t laugh. ‘Too soon?’
‘Not too soon because it’s not going to happen.’
He sounded so sure it was almost easy to believe him.
‘I’ve been thinking of more things we should do,’ he said, his cheeks turning slightly pink as I shifted against the waistband of his shorts. ‘SCAD has an open day next week, thought we could go check it out.’
‘The art school?’
He nodded. ‘I know you could go to just about any school you wanted, but we could take a look. It’s not just art degrees, they have a bunch of stuff.’
‘I hadn’t considered it,’ I confessed. ‘Not so long ago, school was all I could think about. Now it’s the last thing on my mind.’
‘That’s understandable. There’s no law that says you have to go next year, but if you do, there’s still time. Applications aren’t due for a couple of months.’
Water lapped at my skin, blinding sunlight bouncing off its glassy surface.
‘For years I convinced myself college was going to be the thing that defined me,’ I confessed. ‘I was so sure I was going to roll up to some ultra-impressive school and they would hand me a personality at orientation, like, a little envelope with my room key, dining hall card and a list of all the proper things you’re supposed to like and dislike. Everything I missed out on because of all the years I spent travelling with my dad. Joke’s on me, I guess.’
