“Sounds like this will probably be the worst of it,” he says. “This heavy part shouldn’t last much long—”
A flash of lightning cuts him off, casting everything in a split-second shock of brilliant white.
“Thorn!” I squeal.
“Okay, yeah,” he agrees, rushing over to climb in with me, lime-green emergency radio in hand. “Sorry, but I’m about to get everything really wet.”
He’s not kidding—he’s dripping oneverything.
“I’d offer you some of my silk pajamas,” I joke, “but they’re all on the laundry line right now.” Definitelynotany less wet than they were when I hung them out to dry. “It’s a little late for my poncho, but I do have an oversized hoodie—want to try that?”
He glances down at the puddle beneath him. There’s no way either of us will sleep if he gets the rest of the sleeping bag that wet.
“I’ll try it,” he says. “Thanks.”
He peels off his drenched shirt, revealing a torso straight out of my dreams—it’s nothing I haven’t seen before, as he was gloriously shirtless all afternoon at the lake, but it feels different somehow being this close, at night, in my tent. His athletic shorts are every bit as wet as his shirt; after a moment of hesitation, he takes those off, too.
Don’t stare, Sadie.
Do. Not. Stare.
I tear my eyes away and dig around for my hoodie instead. I’m not at all confident it will be big enough for him, but it’s worth a try.
He tugs it on, and we both laugh.
“Oh,thisis a good look for you,” I say. “The black boxer briefs really make it work.”
“And here I was thinking it was the sleeves that made it work.” He stretches out his arms—the ribbed cuffs pull almost all the way up to his elbows, showing off his strong forearms.
“Are you warmer now, at least?”
“Definitely,” he says, though it’s hard not to notice the goosebumps all over his arms. I reach out to rub them away on instinct, and we both look down, registering the contact between my skin and his at the exact same time.
I start to pull my hand away, but it snags his in the process and he holds on.
Stay, his hand says.
So I do.
His fingertips are rougher than mine, but not as rough as I would have expected for someone who lives most of his life outdoors. I look up and find him grinning, watching me.
“What’s the story there?” he asks, nodding to my absolute wreck of a manicure. I never got around to painting the ring and pinky fingers of my right hand.
“A miserable attempt at pampering myself,” I admit. “It sort of turned into a disaster.”
I shift the touch lamp over so he can see the full damage on my sleeping bag.
“Isthatwhat that smell is?” he says, laughing. “I thought maybe you were dissecting something in here.”
“First of all, my best friend will think it’s hilarious that your first thought was thatIwas dissecting something—she teaches middle school science.” She’s never made it through a full story about lab experimentswithout me getting squeamish. “Secondly…yes. That is, unfortunately, the smell. I knocked into it earlier when Joshua started yelling, and…well. You see what happened.”
He shifts his focus back to my hand, lifts it up to inspect it. His touch sends both shivers and warmth coursing through me.
“And that’s why you didn’t finish painting them? It all spilled out?”
I shrug. “Mostly it’s because I got distracted and fell asleep.”
He runs his thumb over my ring finger, considering it. “Want me to finish it for you?”
