“Doesn't matter who said you could swim,” I say. “Water that cold can cause shock.”
“Yeah, I heard you the first time. Anything else you want to lecture me about, or can I go?”
We're standing close enough I can see the individual water droplets clinging to her eyelashes. Can tell how hard she's shivering, though she's trying to hide it.I'd pull her against me and let her have my body heat if I thought for one second she'd allow it.
“I'm serious. You could've drowned. Feel your skin.” I wrap my fingers around her wrist where she's gripping the blanket. “Ice. Fucking. Cold.”
We're inches apart. Her eyes are blazing, dragging blue fire as that gaze dips down to my jaw, my throat, the width of my shoulders.
If she knows who I am, she's giving absolutely nothing away. No phone. No double-take. Just those blue fiery eyes and that lifted chin and the absolute refusal to be the first one to step back.
As her pulse thrums wildly under my fingers, I realize I'm still holding her wrist. The contrast is almost obscene: my fingers, rope-calloused and guitar-string-worn, knuckles scarred from years of physical work, against her silky, unmarked skin.
She looks down at my hand, then back up at me. Her lips are parted, her cheeks flushed deep pink, and her eyes have dropped to my chest like she just now noticed how close we're standing. How much of me there is.
“You planning to keep manhandling me,” she says, a little breathless now, “or can I get my sweatshirt?”
I drop her wrist like it burned me. “Get in your car. Turn the heat on.”
“That was always the plan.” She turns toward the Explorer, and I hear her mutter, “Entitled, bossy-ass cowboys,” as she yanks open the back hatch.
She pulls the blanket off. I get one more look at thosecurves before she drags her grey sweats on. When she rounds the car to the driver's door she stops.
Then she walks back to me and presses one finger directly into the center of my chest. She has to tip her chin up to hold my eyes. I’ve got close to a foot on her. There's nothing soft about the look on her face.
“I’ll get this blanket back to you because it belongs to your son. Don’t think I’m doing you any type of courtesy.”
“I can’t even expect common sense from you. Why would I expect courtesy?”
Her eyes flare. She opens that perfect mouth, then closes it. Grinds her teeth. Decides I'm not worth the words.
Flouncing back to her car, she doesn't say goodbye. Just slides into the Explorer, slams the door, and guns the engine.
Her taillights disappear down the fire road, dust hanging in the air like smoke.
My heart's still pounding. My hand flexes involuntarily, remembering the feel of her wrist, her soft skin over delicate bone, her wild pulse.The way she looked up at me with those blazing blue eyes.
Angel on the outside, little devil on the inside.
God, when’s the last time someone went at me like that?
Everyone in my life handles me now. My manager with his smooth voice and his talk about “the brand” before I fired him for annoying me with that horseshit. The label execs who smile and nod and say whatever keeps me making music. The women who approach me with their phones already out, already composing the caption to the selfie they’ll post before I've said a word.
Even my own family tiptoes. They're salt-of-the-earth people, bewildered by the moody artist in their midst. They love me and they don't know what to do with me, so mostly they just... step carefully.
But Sadie looked me dead in the eye and jabbed her finger into my chest like it was her right. Called me an entitled, bossy-ass cowboy. Stood there, dripping wet, no deference. No backing down. Fiery as her flaming red hair.
I let out a breath. The crickets are starting up as the summer afternoon fades into evening. There’s a breeze moving through the pines.
I put my boot in the stirrup and swing up onto Journey in one motion, the way I've done ten thousand times. Saddle leather creaks beneath me. The fire road is empty. The dust she kicked up is already gone.
The familiar sense of emptiness settles back into me now that she’s gone.Everything just resumes being exactly what it was before she waded out of that water, like she was never here at all. Like the whole thing was some kind of fever dream.
Except my hand still remembers the wild gallop of her pulse.
Except that was the first real human interaction I’ve had with anyone since I can remember.
She wasn't impressed by me or afraid of me. Didn't handle me. She looked right at me and said exactly what she thought, and for about four minutes on the bank of this lake, I felt fuckingalive.
