“You mean impressive? I agree.” I hold out my canteen, which he accepts before taking a generous swig. His eyes never leave me as he swishes the water around his mouth to clean out what’s left of the sand. The promise of swift retribution has me smiling and sinking my teeth into my lower lip.
“Very,” Thorin finally answers. “Although I am wondering if you were like this in school.”
“I was bullied in school,” I reveal honestly. “I was an average student with average looks in a stable home. I wasn’t smart enough or beautiful enough to make anyone feel inferior, and I was always well-fed and clean, so the reasons why are still a mystery to me.”
“Is there ever really a good reason for bullying?” Khalil returns.
“True.”
“Besides, one could hardly look at you and call you average, Goldilocks.”
“True again,” I say, making Thorin and Khalil groan. I can tell Zeke is listening but pretending not to. “But you didn’t see me when I was thirteen. I was skinny with a too-large head. The boys in school would call me lollipop whenever I walked past. It…was an awkward phase for me. My glow up didn’t come until I started putting on weight.”
“Lucky us,” Thorin murmurs distractedly while eyeing my tits.
I press my finger under his chin to lift his gaze. “When my dad was killed, it got worse instead of better after they heard how he died. The other kids liked to make up stories or repeat the gossip they heard from their parents about the reasons why.You’d think my father was Ted Bundy or something. I was never happier than when my uncle pulled me out of school. I guess that’s what made it so easy for him to mold and control me. He took me away from my peers and isolated me in a world of adults before I ever learned how to stand up for myself. Funny how I didn’t finally learn until my anger was at its highest peak. It was like I had this new superpower I didn’t know how to control, and so it controlled me instead.”
Thorin silently runs his knuckles down my arm, and I don’t fight the urge to melt into him. It feels safe in his arms. Like a magnet being pulled, my gaze helplessly wanders over to Zeke, who is silent.
Seth would have at least gotten a kick out of me making Thorin eat dirt. Right now, Zeke is sitting on the shore of the lake with a handful of rocks. He tosses one, and it skips along the surface. I can only see his profile, but it’s enough to know he’s uncomfortable. The scowl on his face seems permanently etched, and I have a feeling I’m the one who put it there. It’s been two weeks, and he still hasn’t warmed up to me.
Khalil notices where my attention is and walks over to sit with him.
It feels suspiciously like Khalil and Thorin are working hard to split their time between us, making sure neither feels like the odd man out.
I clear my throat. “I assume this torture session has ended. Can we go home now?” I pull my drenched shirt away from my skin with a wrinkled nose. “Don’t get me wrong. It’s a beautiful day, and I’d like to stay out longer, but I can’t stand the feeling of all this sweat sticking to my skin.”
“There’s a nice, cool lake full of fresh water just a few feet that way, songbird.”
I eye the lake and dread pools in my stomach as I’m hit with the memories of falling through the ice. The low rumbling likerolling thunder charging toward me just before the ice gave way beneath my feet. The cutting cold burrowing into my veins and freezing my blood. My silent scream as water filled my lungs.
Endless dark.
No…not endless.
Because Thorin had been there in a flash, plunging into certain death and cutting through the water like a knife to pull me back to the surface. I remember Khalil frantically pulling me out of the frozen water and Seth desperately lending me his body heat.
I look away from the glistening blue surface of the lake and into Thorin’s equally blue eyes. “Will you come with me?”
“I think the better question is, do you really think I’d let you go without me?”
Thorin and I are all smiles as we race to shed our clothes. Of course, he beats me since he wasn’t wearing a shirt, and then he scoops me up bridal style before I can decide whether to shed my sports bra and panties too. Thorin runs full speed into the water while I squeal.
He keeps a tight grip on me when the water becomes too deep to stand in, but I push away from him, and he raises his brows just before I turn and dive underneath the surface.
The fresh water is indeed cool and surprisingly clear, but the deeper I swim, the less I can see. I can feel Thorin shadowing me like an anxious mother hen as I attempt to show off my swimming prowess. But the lake is dangerously deeper than I thought. It keeps going while my heart rate increases with each passing foot.
I feel Thorin grab my ankle a second later, a silent order to stop, and I obey. Immediately, I race for safety with Thorin’s powerful strokes keeping him hot on my heels. I break the rippling surface with a gasp, and Thorin appears next to me a moment later.
“What the fuck was that?” he barks as he wipes the water from his scowling face.
I won’t meet his gaze as I casually tread water. “What was what?”
“Wolf.”
I shrug as I continue to find interest in any- and everything except his probing eyes. “I was just curious.”
“About?”
