But that only replaced one heart-pounding emotion with another.
Without the pool surrounding us, I felt crazy exposed in my dripping wet clothes. Not cold in the slightest, but warm down to my bones. A sensation born from how very aware I was of Daniel. Without a shirt on.
Even when he lowered his hand from my cheek, he didn’t step back.
Suddenly it was like no time had passed between that last moment in the pool and this one. Daniel shifted closer, not touching me, but I could change that with a deep breath. I shivered a little when his hand slid up my arm, over my shoulder, and curled under my jaw. He wasn’t tracing a scar.
“Jill?” he said. And it was a question, a request.
All I had to do was look up. I could feel the warmth of his breath on my skin, the heat from both our bodies. I wasn’t sixteen to him in that moment.
But I was to me.
I stepped back. I half expected to hear him sigh or something, but he didn’t.
I hated that I couldn’t bring myself to look up at him. Had I just ruined everything? Why couldn’t I have moved that half step forward instead of back? I wanted to kiss him. Wow, did I want to kiss him. But kissing Daniel wasn’t something I could just want. I almost couldn’t believe he’d been about to kiss me. He knew better, and he’d almost done it twice in less than ten minutes. It wasn’t like he’d forgotten how old he was or how old I wasn’t. Kissing me would be so much worse for him than it would for me. And then there was that whole thing that he probably kissed on an entirely different level than I would. It sent my heart hydroplaning.
“No, you’re right.” He ran both hands through his hair. “I wasn’t thinking.” And then in a quieter voice, almost to himself, he repeated it.
“Well, we have opposite problems, so we should go before we wake up all the neighbors.” Without waiting for his response, I moved past him to the sidewalk, leaving the shadows cast by the tree.
“Jill, wait.” He jogged up and stepped in front of me. “Hey, I—”
I gasped.
Daniel was standing directly under the streetlight, illuminating what the dark water and shadows had concealed before. The muscles I had felt, but not the myriad of scars that stood out against his pale skin in a way that blinded me to anything else. Burns swirled in ugly patterns along his ribs, recently healed gashes mixed in with shiny patches of older, scarred skin.
I breathed his name, my hand reaching out toward him.
He jerked back from me, the soft look in his eyes hardening in an instant.
I felt dizzy looking at one scar that curved around his stomach from navel to just under his armpit. “What happened to you?”
He yanked his T-shirt on and brushed his still-wet hair back, looking everywhere but at me. “I should get you home.” He started walking again, stopping only when I didn’t follow. “Don’t be such a child, Jill. Let’s go.”
All the playful tenderness evaporated.
It wasn’t hard to ignore the insult of his words when all I could focus on was that he’d been hurt. Badly. And more than once. “Daniel…”
He lifted the shirt back up and I flinched. “Look. See? They’re old. From before I moved, okay?”
No, it wasn’t okay. And they weren’t that old, not all of them. My head was racing. I thought back to that first night I saw him, the way he’d held himself so stiffly. I’d thought it had just been because of the fight with his mom. Now I ached to think of the pain he must have been in.
So many scars. What could do that? He looked like he’d been half split open and no one had bothered to put him back together right. No one.
A series of stupid thoughts ran through my mind, like, how had he been able to climb onto my roof so easily? Or had I hurt him when we were playing around in the pool?
But I couldn’t shake one dominating thought:Someone hurt him.
Questions coiled like snakes in the pit of my stomach as Daniel started walking. When I caught up to him, I brushed my fingers against his and he stopped.
“From before? This is why you moved?”
I could see the irritation when he turned to me. I’d never once seen him look at me that way. It chased away every little detail I’d ever found attractive in his face.
We were totally exposed on the sidewalk with the streetlights flooding down around us. Still, I didn’t care as I searched Daniel’s face, waiting for him to talk to me.
“My dad,” he said with a twisted smile, “isn’t anything like yours.” He licked his lips. “I bet your dad taught you how to ride a bike, drive, replace brake pads? My dad taught me to be quiet. Taught me the difference between my mom crying because she was upset and when she needed to go to the hospital.” He bent and picked up an empty can, hurling it at the wall behind him.
