It’s the year.
The careful Halden Girl, the neutral smile, the armor she has worn so tight for so long. She’s stripping all of it off in a blaze of pool light with nowhere to step out of the glare, and I have never wanted to say something so badly or known so completely that I can’t.
So I watch.
Underneath the sweater is a pink bralette, and I almost recognize the set before the jeans come down — after one graceless hop to free her second foot — and the black lace panties underneath finish the thought.
I know that set, because I held it once.
The day we met, when her bag burst open across the Sterling courtyard, I crouched on the brick and set the pink bralette on her duffel like it was something I respected, and I folded the black lace without letting myself look.
That day, she couldn’t hide that underwear — and herself — faster.
Tonight, she wore them, on purpose.
The girl who’s spent a year managing every inch of what people are allowed to see went home between the corridor and now and put on that set, and I’m standing here under strict orders to stay quiet while she reaches back, unhooks the bralette, and lets it fall.
It slides off her arms to the tile, and I can’t breathe. Her breasts are bare in the full light, her nipples tightening in the cool air, and the want hits so hard and so fast I have to lock my knees.
I’ve been hard since she set that jacket down and I understood where this was going, and now my cock aches against the front of my sweats, even as she hooks her thumbs in the black lace panties and slides them down her hips.
There’s nothing left between her and the light.
It’s all of her.
The flare of her hips, the softness of her stomach — and the birthmark.
She isn’t performing a second of it. She’s just letting me look, in a blazing-bright room, at the most stripped-back, bravest thing anyone has ever trusted me to see. And I want her so badly and I love her so much it’s hard to stand here and not say it.
She watches me do it. Watches me come apart without moving an inch. And whatever she finds in my face steadies something in hers, because she takes a few steps toward me with a smile on her face.
“Okay,” she says, barely a breath. “You can talk now.”
“Oh, God.Thank you.”It tears out of me all at once, like a dam breaking. “You’re so beautiful I can’t think straight, and so fucking sexy I can barely stand here.” I find her eyes and holdthem. “I love you, Sloane, and you never have to hide a single thing from me. Not ever. Not one inch.”
A breath shudders out of her, but she’s smiling. “Your turn. Get in.”
“I’m still dressed.”
“I know. Get in the water, Rowan.”
So I do. I sit on the edge, swing my legs over, and drop in. The sweats go heavy immediately, dragging at my thighs, the water coming to my chest and soaking my T-shirt. The water is warmer than I expected, and I’m drenched.
She slides in after me, the water closing over her shoulders, her hair fanning dark across the surface. She comes all the way in and wraps her arms around my back, and finally — finally — I get to hold her.
I pull her in and feel the bare length of her against me, her breasts pressing soft into my chest through the soaked cotton as my cock presses hard against her. But that can wait, because after the last few weeks, all I want is to pull her close and breathe her in.
She lets it last for almost a minute, and then she leans back enough to get her hands between us, and grips the hem of my T-shirt. I reach to help her take it off — pure reflex, do-it-faster, do-it-myself — and she swats my hand away and does it herself.
So I keep my hands to myself and let her take her time — and as she works the sweats down my hips, she lets the backs of her knuckles trail slowly up the length of my cock. The air leaves me, my hands fist at my sides, and it takes everything I have not to reach for her.
She smiles, pleased with exactly what that did, and peels the last of it off — sweats and boxers in one sodden lump onto the deck — until there’s nothing left on either of us, and we’re both just here, bare and lit and even.
“There,” she says, looking at all of me and not pretending she isn’t. “My favorite version.”
Before I can say anything, she takes me by the wrist and the shoulder and turns me, slow and certain, and walks me backward a couple of steps with steady pressure, like she’s rehearsed this part too. With her breasts pressed into my back, she guides my torso.
“What are you doing?” I say.
