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Despite the mood lightening at the expense of my own embarrassment, I couldn’t help but smile. Speaking about the past, at least the good stuff, seemed to soften Nate. He was always less guarded, just like he’d been for those brief moments we joked around in the bar. Even now, the tension in his shoulders had visibly smoothed.

He turned to really look at me for the first time. “Do you still want to learn?”

“What?” I asked, taken aback.

He raised the rod in his hand. “Learn to fish. What you call ‘old man hobbies’, I call ‘one of the best ways to relax and unwind’. Your dad was onto something.”

My stomach twisted itself into knots, but I nodded before I could overthink. Look at me, embracing all these skill acquisition lessons from my hot contractors. So empowering.

Nate handed me the rod and tried to direct me on how to hold it. When that obviously failed, he clicked his tongue.

“You’re doing it all wrong,” he murmured, his voice low and gravelly. But there was a small, reluctant smile on his mouth. Before I could lob back a snarky comment about how I never pretended anything physical was my forte, he stepped behind me, closing the distance until I could feel the heat radiating from his chest through my jacket.

“Here,” he whispered, his breath warm against my ear as his large, calloused hands wrapped over mine on the foam grip of the rod. The contact was electric. My heart started beating faster, my pulse kicking up as he pulled me back against him and guided my arms.

What was with these men and their insistence on practical demonstrations?

“It’s all in the wrist,” he said, echoing Deacon’s instruction about how to swing a hammer some time back. It seemed most things were all in the wrist. “Don’t whip it. Smooth acceleration, then snap it forward.”

He moved my hands in a slow, fluid arc, his thighs brushing against mine as we shifted our weight. There was an intimacy to what we were doing that sparked on every point of contact. Even with layers of clothing between us, I could feel his body heat. I could feel the way his muscles contracted. His movement gentle but focused. It made my head spin.

He left his hands over mine just a beat too long, his fingers sliding against my skin, and the tension between us stretched tauter than the fishing line. The silence was heavy, almost expectant, and I felt the sudden need to break it.

“Who taught you how to fish?” I blurted out, trying my best to ignore the slight crack on the final syllable. I cleared my throat, my ears heating up.

I could actually feel his smile.

“My dad and uncle. Jules and I used to spend a lot of summers with him and my aunt when we were still very young. I think our best childhood memories were probably spent in their house, with our cousins,” he said. He hesitated. “The camping trips we took with them were some of the only memories I have of my dad actually being a dad.”

“Was it…your Uncle Andy?” I asked, remembering Julia mentioning that side of the family years ago. “You even lived with them a bit before the big move, right?”

“Yeah,” Nate replied. “He was the one who loaned us his toolkit for the treehouse. My dad was never really into that kind of stuff.”

“The treehouse!” I said excitedly, the memories now flooding back. Then I turned my head to give him a wry smile. “The same one you brought down by chasing us up there, right?”

“Not this again,” he rolled his eyes. “For the last time. You stole my—”

“Inconsequential,” I waved off.

“I rebuilt it for you guys, didn’t I?” he said.

“It was nowhere near the same,” I sighed. “It never sat right on those branches after that. The floor always tilted to the left. Jules and I used to roll our marbles across it just to watch them hit the corner.”

“Always so ungrateful,” he muttered, his eyes cutting down to my face for a split second before returning to the lake. “At least you made up for it by cleaning out the garage a few years later when Jules bailed.”

“I didn’t volunteer, by the way. You forced me to do it and threatened to tell my parents about your sister and me sneaking out if I didn’t,” I reminded him. I shuddered at the memory.

“And look at how your bestie treated your loyalty,” he said with a low chuckle. “Man, I remember you knocking over a shelf of old latex paint. You spent three hours trying to scrub neon blue out of your hair before your school dance.”

“I smelled like paint thinner for a week,” I groaned, but then started helplessly laughing. “Everyone at that dance thought I’d gone rogue with hair dye. Jules still has the pictures.”

“I’d love to take a look at those,” he said, shaking his head.

I was about to counter with another embarrassing memory about Nate when the rod violently doubled over, nearly jerking out of my grip. The nostalgia shattered into real-time excitement. “Nate! Something’s pulling!” I was hit with a massive jolt of adrenaline.

“Reel! Keep the tip up!” Nate barked, his hands immediately clamping over mine again, but this time with a clearly defined purpose.

The reel screamed as the fish fought back, attempting to dive deeper into the safety of the lake’s cold depths. My muscles strained, my breath coming in short, excited pants as I battled the resistance. Suddenly, the water broke twenty feet out with a loud splash. A flash of silver and iridescent pink thrashed in the gray light–a gorgeous, heavy rainbow trout. I reeled it in frantically, whooping with pride as Nate scooped it into the net.