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My whole body tingles, and
I know it’s wrong, but I already miss her touch.

When she finishes, I let out a breath
and proceed to gulp in more fresh air. When did it get so freaking hot? Because that’s all I feel now: hot. Burning, actually—still on fire from Cat’s touch.

She folds my shirt perfectly and holds
it out for me. All she says is, “Done” as she hands it to me. I give a slight nod. “Um, thanks. You, uh… are good at taking shirts off,” I say, then want to kick myself the second the words roll out of my mouth. What the hell? ‘Good at taking shirts off?’ Who says that?!

Oh my god, I am such an idiot…

Cat raises her eyebrow and laughs far too loudly. “Wow, that was… smooth.”

My cheeks feel hot
all over again. “Yeah, um, anyway…”

“Yes.
Anyway
. We still need to take care of your shorts.”

It takes me a minut
e to realize what she means by “take care of.”

“Oh! Oh no,” I say, narrowing my eyebrows at her. “No no no. I’m swimming in my shorts. There is
no way
I’m letting you do that.”

She grins. “I know, and t
hat’s fine for now.” She leans in and whispers, “But I assure you, West Ryder, when I’m done with you, those pants will go flying off.”

Chapter 12

We head to the water a few minutes later. I gasp in a few
more strangled breaths of fresh air as if it will somehow help me come to my senses with what just happened. Heat lingers on my face, on my skin, and I feel so buoyant again, so light and giddy.

Cat grabs two beach towels, hands one to me, and we
walk down the small boardwalk until we reach the edge and are standing over about six feet deep of lake. The sun is still as strong as it was before, although the breeze has picked up again and the shrieking kids to our right have gone inside.

Sunlight pours its way onto my bare skin, and I
shift uncomfortably beside Cat. I’m consciously aware that both of us are half-naked now. We’ve been here, at the lake, so many times before, done this almost every week for the past six months, but it’s different now. Everything is different now. It’s like Cat and I are new people, with new feelings and new…

I
turn back to her to keep from finishing the thought. She’s dressed in her red-and-blue bikini and I am wearing nothing but a pair of basketball shorts, and I realize this is exactly what she had planned.

Talk about manipulative.

“Staring again?” Cat says, biting her lip as she catches my gaze.

“Nope. Just looking out at the water.”

“Liar.”

I shrug. “If you say so.” But really, we both know I’m lying.

“So,” Cat continues, glancing down at the lake. “Who is going in first?”

“I volunteer you,” I say.

She quirks her brow. “Really?”

“Really.”

The water below is so clear and calm that I can see the rocks far below, but as I dip my finger in, I feel just how freezing it really is.

“Aren’t you supposed to be the big strong guy who saves me and goes in first instead?” She laughs as soon as she says it.
I shoot her a look. “Sorry,” she says, holding up her hands, “I just can’t call you ‘big and strong’ with a straight face.”

I
glare at her. “I’ll have you know, I’m incredibly muscular. Girls practically cling to my side.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Oh yeah.”

“We’ll see about that,” she says, and before I realize what’s going on, I feel a force at my side. The next thing I know
Cat’s hand is on my bare stomach as she shoves me off the boardwalk and deep into the water. For an instant, there is nothing but stillness and warmth from Cat’s touch, and I feel like I’m hovering above the lake. The next thing I know, though, I plummet to the ground. My body breaks the surface instantly, and all of a sudden, I’m submerged in six feet of ice-cold water. I sputter my way to the surface, laughing and gasping for breath, and a fit of shivers comes over me.

“You,” I say to Cat, who is still standing on the boardwalk a few feet above. “You’re done.”

She sticks her tongue out at me. “Oh really?”

I take another breath, and the coolness of the water seems to wash away everything
from before. Suddenly, it’s just me and Cat, just two best friends playing at the lake like old times. “Yes really,” I say. “You’re coming in here with me.”

I reach up a hand to pull her down
after me, but she’s already started running away, laughing and pointing at me and skidding down the boardwalk. My lips break into a smile, and with a grunt I pull myself up out of the water, swing my body onto the boardwalk, stand up, and chase after her.

“You’ll never catch me!” Cat shouts, leaps off the boardwalk, and makes her way over to the beach chair.

A trail of water flies behind me as I maneuver after her. “Oh, Red Velvet, you innocent little thing. I am not leaving until you’re as soaked as I am.”

I leap off the boardwalk after Cat, whose blue eyes are wider and more full of life than I’ve seen in the longest
time. I’m a few feet away from her now, so I lunge for her arm, but she’s too fast. She wriggles past my grip, grinning like an idiot, and sprints in the opposite direction back down the boardwalk.

I smile, dip my head,
and chase her.

“Aren’t we not supposed to run on the boardwalk or something?” I call after her.

She doesn’t turn back to me. “Screw it!” she says. “Society can suck it!” My grin spreads.

It takes another minute of running before she reaches the end of the boardwalk and turns around, nowhere to go.

“Well, well,” I say, stepping toward her, more water dripping off my body. Cat stands only a few yards away from me, pinned against the end of the boardwalk, with nothing but me and the lake on either side of her. “I told you you’re done for.”

Her smile is so big it makes my heart
seriously skip a beat. “I wouldn’t be too sure,” she says. “With your agility, you’ll probably dive for me, miss, and fall into the water instead.”

“Would you want to bet on that?”
I edge even closer to her now. If I wanted to, I could reach out and touch her again, feel the awe-inspiring warmth of her skin on mine.

She tosses her red hair to the side. “
Oh, believe me, I do.”

“Good,” I say softly, bending my knees and locking my eyes with her
s. “Because I’m winning this round.”

She lets out a shrill scream as I
lunge at her, arms outstretched. My body flies into hers a second later, and my arms wrap around her waist as we plummet off the edge of the boardwalk and into the lake.

Together.

As one.

My arms are still around her
even after we hit the water with a loud crack, and a shock of icy coldness comes over us. Finally, we break apart, Cat slipping out of my grip as she swims to the surface. Underwater, her hair streams everywhere, hitting my face and causing me to laugh. I swim up after her.

When we
both break the surface, she giggles, gasping for air, and I smile between pants. “You asshole!” she screams and sends me a playful punch.

I laugh, wrapping my arms back around her almost instinctually. “Guilty as charged,” I say. The sun
has already begun warming us again, a stark contrast from the freezing water, and everything is so,
so
perfect. My smile keeps getting broader.

I’m
still scared, though. Scared of how I keep feeling these things for Cat, keep wanting to touch her—scared of what it means. I mean, yeah, I’m not an idiot. I
know
what it means. But I don’t want it to mean what it means. I want to be Cat’s friend and only her friend. If I fall for her, there’s a good chance we’ll both fuck it up and even better chance we’ll split apart for good. I care about her too much to let her go that easily, to risk losing her because of some stupid mix of emotions that I myself don’t even understand.

I turn back to Cat. She
is watching me as she bobs in the water at my side, but that smile of hers does not falter. Her hair is soaked and she looks like she’s going to yell at me, and I just watch her, suppressing a laugh. “Idiot! You are an idiot!” she screams.

“Really? Like when I do this?” I bring my hands down on the
lake, sending a thick spray of water right into her face.

She gasps and holds out her hands, looking entirely shocked and annoyed, her whole body soaked and dripping, and I think I’ve gone too far. But slowly, her lips part back into a smile. “Oh, West Ryder, you are so dead!”

The next thing I know Cat brings her hands down on the
lake, too, and a flurry of water washes over me too. The cold spray only manages to send more and more energy through my body, though. I turn to Cat slowly, eyes locked, and I grin. “You’re right, for once, Davenport. It. Is. On,” I say and begin splashing at her rapid-fire.

“Oh yes it is,” Cat shouts.
She fights back, giggling hard, and soon we’re both moving closer and closer in the water, splashing each other as hard as we possibly can. I’m soaked and blinded by the spray, the water in my ears, in my eyes, up my nose, but I don’t even care. I just keep laughing and attacking until gradually, we’re only inches apart and still dumping water over each other’s heads, in addition to making quite horrible attempts at trash talk.

“West,” she says
some twenty minutes later, panting hard. We’re both up to our necks in lake water, just swimming back and forth and making weird jokes and, for the first time since I found out Cat was Harper, being happy around each other. The smell of dried leaves is everywhere, and the air tastes like lilacs. The sky starts to gray as the sun sets in the distance. “West, can we talk?” Cat finally says.

“Yeah…” I say cautiously, frowning,
because she sounds serious all of a sudden—too serious. “Why don’t we get out of the water first?”

“Yeah.” She nods. “Sure.”

I climb out before her, pulling myself all the way up from the water to the boardwalk several feet above. I am consciously aware of her eyes on my biceps as I lift myself up, of the small smile that flickers across her lips when they flex from effort. She tries hiding it, but it’s not something I miss.

And as I stand up on the boardwalk, my back to her, I find myself smiling too.

Cat takes the ladder up, flops onto the wood, and sighs. She sits in front of me, her legs crossed, her arms folded and her eyes trained on me. I still don’t have a shirt on, and she’s still wearing her bikini. Both of us are soaked, water dripping from our hair. She looks good like that, though—really good. I find myself noticing how soft her lips look this close to me, how it would feel to kiss the water off of them, what it would be like for them to move with mine…

I shake my head.
No
. This is the last thing I should be thinking about.

“Hey
, West?” Cat says quietly, looking up at me with those big blue eyes of hers. Her face is tired, nervous, and by the sadness in her expression, I know immediately what she’s about to say.

I tense up.
“Yeah?”

“You know how I said I’m going to fight for you with
every last breath I have?”

I look up at her, and she
back at me. Her expression is hard, serious. “Yeah,” I say softly. “I know.”

“I mean it,” Cat says. “I’m going to fight for us—first our friendship and then our…”
She trails off, turning away.

“Our what?” I don’t mean to sound so angry, but I can’t help myself. Why the hell can’t we just stay friends? Why does it need to be a real romance? Isn’t the fact that we’re with each other what really matters? It’s not that I dislike the idea of going out with Cat; it’s just that I’m not even sure
what
I feel for her. And until I’m sure, there is no way in hell I’m risking this not working and me losing her for good.

“Our…” She sighs. “Our potential to be more than just friends
, I guess?” She winces at her words.

I want to punch something.
I thought we were finally getting away from this weirdness.

“What’s the matter, West?” she asks. I’m not exactly working to hide the annoyance
on my features.

“You don’t get it, do you?”
I say.

“Get what?”

“Get us,” I say, squeezing my eyes shut as if it’ll help make this all go away. “You don’t get that our friendship is more powerful than any romance will ever be. You don’t get that we aren’t ‘just friends’ but like siblings, that we were made for each other—maybe in the romantic sense, maybe not. But the thing is, it doesn’t matter. I would be miserable without you, Cat. Hell, I’d probably be dead without you. But I’m not. I’m not because you’re there for me. Because I can lean on your shoulder and you can lean on mine, because I can trust you, I can share anything with you, because I can love you however the fuck I want and it doesn’t matter. We’re lucky, you and I. Not many people have what we have. So, please, for the love of god, don’t call us ‘just friends’ and act like we are nothing if we don’t love each other.”