I blink up at him. I can’t believe I want to laugh, too. I don’t, because that seems risky—acknowledging that he and I have an inside joke. But maybe I smile a little.
Silence falls over us again, but it’s not the same as before—it’s not the standoff of the van. This is a tentative silence, an inviting silence.
“Can’t sleep?” he says finally, keeping his voice quiet. He stays in his spot by the gate, waiting to see if I’ll take him up on answering this simple question.
There’s no stone lodged in my throat now, and there probably should be.
“No. I’m guessing you can’t either?”
He shrugs, coming a few steps closer and crouching at the edge of the pool. He cups a hand and dunks it in, then brings it up to the top of his head, letting the water drip down and cool the back of his neck. I cross one leg over the other, mortified by my quick, hot, pulsing reaction to this, to him: his face, his body, his breathing. The way he rises from his crouch and sets his hands low on his hips.
The way he says, “Are you doing okay?” as though all he cares about in this whole world is how I am.
It’s so disarming.
“I’m sorry,” I say, before I can change my mind. “I’m sorry I ruined things today.”
He drops his hands and looks at me for a long time. The rippling water from the low-lit pool plays across the parts of his skin I can see. When he comes closer and gestures to the chair beside me, a question in his eyes, I’m powerless to do anything but nod.
“Sorry if I stink,” he says as he sits, not reclining. But he doesn’t stink. He smells like saltwater and wind and delicious sweat, and whatever deodorant he wears. All I want is to get closer to it.
I shouldnothave let him sit down.
“You didn’t ruin things.”
My only answer is a look. Ayeah, rightlook.
Adam shrugs. “He was always going to be difficult. And he was trying to rile you and your sister. That’s not your fault.”
“It’s my fault for letting him.”
God, it’d made me somad, hearing him talk about Mom. It’d made me so mad, to have him look at me like I’m her carbon copy.
I shove the thought away, focusing instead on my apology. On the man sitting next to me, his breathing slowing by degrees with every second that passes.
“You were—you did a good job.” It sounds as though I’m being forced to say it. I try to soften my voice, but it doesn’t come naturally. “You seemed calm. Nothing he said got to you.”
I can see him swallow, but he doesn’t respond. Usually, I don’t have any problem being the one to let the silence stretch. In fact, usually I prefer it.
But tonight I feel different. Raw and sad and uncertain of myself.
“I hope I didn’t cause problems for you. With Salem, I mean.”
One side of his mouth hitches up. “You hope that, huh?”
I think from anyone else, it might sound snarky, maybe even censuring. I’ve made no secret of not wanting to participate in this, and it’d be fair enough for Adam to think the way I acted today was about sabotage, about me derailing this thing I never wanted to do. Somehow, though, Adam doesn’t seem to mean it that way. Or if he does, he doesn’t seem to mind it.
“She’ll be fine,” he continues, waving a hand. A single, cool drop of pool water from his fingers flicks onto my calf and it feels so nice I barely suppress a hum of pleasure. I’m halfway to thinking about how it would feel if he would set his hand to my thigh and run it down to my ankle, cooling the whole length of my leg, before I stop myself.
I can’t be thinking of Adam Hawkins this way.
Right?
“And Tegan?” he says, which does the work of refocusing my attention, and answering the question I posed to myself. I stiffen in my chair—automatic, defensive. I know he notices, and when I meet his eyes, there’s something soft and understanding in his expression.
He adds quietly, “Is she okay?”
I gust out a sigh and tip my head back, staring at the dark, swaying shapes of the palm trees above me. I want to pretend, just for a little while, that he’snotAdam Hawkins. I want to pretend that he’s a stranger whose job doesn’t have anything to do with my past, my sister’s past, my mother’s past. I want to pretend like I wasn’t just thinking of his hand on my leg.
