Total pages in book: 91
Estimated words: 84322 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 422(@200wpm)___ 337(@250wpm)___ 281(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 84322 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 422(@200wpm)___ 337(@250wpm)___ 281(@300wpm)
I missed the charm of our small town, the smell of my Aunt Laura’s favorite coffee and her famous banana bread in the oven, the nights spent riding around town with Morgan and Tyler, doing nothing at all but staying up until the sun rose over our town’s winding roads.
Morgan had called a rain check on our night of catching up, mostly because Oliver was in town and she had so much of the wedding planning to catch him up on. I figured most of the two weeks I’d be here would be like that — her caught up in the wedding — and that was exactly how it should be.
I had work to do, anyway, but sitting outside had me reminiscing, thinking about how many summer nights Tyler, Morgan, and I had played in that pool, sometimes even getting brave enough to ditch it and run straight down to jump off the dock and into the lake, which was far from heated, but exhilarating in a way nothing else was to a couple of kids.
A smile found my lips at the memories, but in the next second, something shot up in the middle of the pool, and I screamed, jumping up and grabbing my laptop over my head like it was a weapon ready to strike.
When the source of the disruption came into focus, Tyler shaking his head and sending water flying everywhere off the ends of his shaggy hair, I let out a long, relieved breath, lowering my laptop as my heart pounded in my chest.
“Jesus Christ, Tyler,” I said, setting my laptop back down on the table. “You scared the shit out of me. What the hell are you doing?”
Even in the dim light, I could see the smirk on his stupid face as he made two long strides toward me. “Swimming, of course.”
“Swimming involves moving,” I pointed out. “I’ve been out here for at least two minutes and there hasn’t been a single splash in that pool.”
“Two minutes, huh?” he asked, draping his arms over the edge of the pool and looking up at me. The way his arms rested, his biceps bulged, the muscles in his shoulders and traps accented by the shadows and the moonlight. “Might be a new record.”
I cocked a brow.
“I was sitting at the bottom,” he explained.
“Holding your breath,” I deadpanned. “Like a child.”
“Hey, don’t knock it until you try it. It’s peaceful down there.”
My heart was still pounding hard, trying to level itself out after my near heart attack as I sat back down at the table. I adjusted the screen of my laptop, deciding it was better to pretend Tyler wasn’t there at all and do what I’d come outside to do in the first place.
Work.
“Wanna try it?”
I was already slipping into work mode, pulling up my outline for the podcast I was guest starring on in a few days. “Try what?”
“Sitting at the bottom.”
“I’ll pass.”
He chuckled, and in my peripheral, I saw him lift himself out of the water on two strong arms. He sat on the edge, facing me with one leg still dangling in the water.
I didn’t dare look at the rest of him.
“You know, the Jasmine I used to know liked to have fun. She was spontaneous. Goofy.”
My nose flared, and the longer I tried to read my outline, the more I read the same sentence over and over with a red filter fogging my vision. “Yeah, well, I’m not the girl you used to know.” I looked at him then. “Maybe you never knew me at all.”
I didn’t watch him long enough to see his reaction to that. I just turned my attention back to work, tuning him out.
Except the motherfucker laughed, and stood, walking over to me with water dripping off every inch of him. His swim trunks were black, and they were the only thing covering him. The rest of him stood on display in the dim moonlight, the mounds and dips of his abs having only grown more defined in the years since I’d been gone. A thin trail of hair sprawled up from the band of his shorts to the middle of his chest, which was new and unfamiliar, but I still remembered the way his abs creased where they met his hips in a thick V.
I swallowed the nearer he came, snapping my eyes back to my laptop screen when he was close enough to possibly notice the way I was staring at him.
“You’re so prickly,” he said.
And then, his wet hands reached forward and shut my laptop.
“Hey!”
“Come on,” he said, reaching out a hand for mine. “I haven’t seen you in years. Swim with me.”
I scowled, flipping my laptop back up. “I’m working.”
“It’s ten o’clock at night,” he said, as if that mattered. “And you’ve been working all day. Maybe not on your podcast, but on my sister’s wedding, which is just as difficult. Come on,” he said again. “Take a break.”