Page 28 of Between Now and Forever

Her nose is pert and slightly upturned.

In a visage that’s all soft curves and delicate angles, her mouth is a standout. Her lips are full and wide and very pink in the center. The deep crease down the middle of the full bottom one reminds me of the indent on the cherries we’ve been eating all week. She’s fucking gorgeous. But it’s the way she seems to be relishing her solitude that makes it so hard to look away. The crowd between us has thinned and I can see her whole body now.

She’s wearing a black, low-cut, one-piece bathing suit that on anyone else, might be modest. On her, though, it should come with a warning. She’s got small, but full breasts that swell out of the top and peek out of the sides of the suit.

Her tiny waist flares out and curves down to hips that sway seductively to the music.

Flawless, smooth, tanned skin sets off her long, muscular legs.

Her body should come with a warning sign that reads “Carter Bosh’s Kryptonite.”

By the time I’m close enough to reach out and touch her, I can see every riveting and fascinating thing about her.

There’s a thin line of freckles that trail over the creamy skin that’s stretched taut over the high rise of her left cheekbone. It arcs like the tail end of a shooting star and disappears into her hair.

And her dark hair isn’t scraped back. It’s cut very short, wavy and longest on top, but even there, it’s not more than a couple inches long. It hugs the delicate curve of her scalp in dark waves and tapers to curly wisps at her nape.

It’s not a hairstyle many people can pull off. But on her, it’s perfect. It leaves a clear view of her striking bone structure and her long, elegant neck.

She’s wearing small, gold earrings in the shape of some sort of flower in her ears and an impossibly delicate gold chain dotted with diamonds wraps around the base of her throat, and in the firelight, they sparkle like stars.

There’s a telltale white trail of dried tears on her cheeks.

It’s so at odds with the contentment in her smile that, before I can think better of it, I reach out to touch it.

Her eyes pop open and I freeze, my hand in midair as I fall into an ocean of blue. My breath catches in my throat. It’s the color of the water in the picture I carry around in my pocket.

She stops dancing and her posture turns rigid. She glares at my hand that’s still stupidly suspended between us and I drop it to my side.

“Were you about totouchme?” she asks, and her voice is high and cold with indignation, and I drop my hand and shake my head.

“No, no…I’m sorry. You’re just… I saw…” I sound like a total idiot, but I think it’s better than trying to explain what I was doing and sounding like a total creep.

“Well?” she demands, crossing her arms over her chest and cocking her hip to the side as she waits for me to answer.

I blurt out the first coherent thought that forms. “Do you want to dance?”

“Iwasdancing,” she says irritably, but she doesn’t look at me. She looks around the campfire and then out across the lake, scanning as if she’s looking for someone. Her gaze settles on something and her jaw tightens.

“I know…I mean…with me…”

Her eyes come back to me, still full of wariness, as she gives me an assessing once-over.

I smile awkwardly.

She says something under her breath and then she loosens her stance a little. She blows out a breath, puckering her plump lips before they spread into a very meager, but honest smile. Her expression softens, and the grooves of tension between her brows disappear.

“Thank you. But, I’m fine. You don’t need… I should probably go…maybe try and find my frie—the people I came with,” she says and turns to look across the lake again, her expression full of dread.

“Are you okay?”

She nods without looking back at me, and I follow her gaze and see her looking at a small group of people I’ve noticed a lot today.

They’re the loudest group here. And a small fight broke out between a woman and man that ended with him on the ground and her on top of him kissing her. They look older than my twenty-two, like mid-twenties and judging by her looks, that means they’remucholder than her.

“Yeah…that’s them. I should probably go back,” she says, and her whispered response is raw with resignation.

“You say that like you’re about to get on a roller coaster you’ve been peer pressured to ride,” I say.

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