Page 31 of Captivated

“Maybe I’m a good listener,” Zeeb suggested. “Ithasbeen said before.”

“Maybe that’s it.” He cocked his head. “What really happened to your shoe box? I saw how your face tightened when you talked about it.”

Zeeb set the sketching pad on the rock beside him. “My dad found them.”

“And?”

Zeeb could still see his dad’s face. “He had clear ideas about what it meant to be a man. Writing stories about… whatever… didn’t fit those ideas. Neither did drawing or painting. So one day he went up to my room, collected every piece of artwork off the walls, took them and my shoe box outside—and burned them. That was bad enough. What was worse? He made me light the match.”

Nate’s breathing hitched.

“It taught me a valuable lesson.” Zeeb glanced at Nate. “It told me I couldn’t talk to my dad about… about my feelings.” He shivered. “You know something? I ain’t never told a living soul ’bout what he did.”

There were lots of things he didn’t tell people. Things that still itched beneath the surface.

Too much talking.

“You ever go swimming?”

“Not for a long time,” Nate admitted.

Zeeb stood. “Then maybe now’s as good a time as any.”

Nate blinked. “The water’s probably freezing.”

He kicked off his boots. “Hey, it’s July. It can’t bethatcold, right?”

Nate gaped at him. “Wait, are you?—?”

Zeeb shrugged out of his flannel shirt, then tugged the tank over his head. “Yep, I am.”

Before my loose tongue gets the better of me.

Then the jeans came off.

I picked the wrong day to go commando.

Before Nate could say another word, Zeeb took off at a run and launched himself into the lake with a clean, reckless dive, the splash sounding like a crack of thunder.

Water closed over Zeeb’s head, cold as hell and a shock to the system. That was the point. It shut everything out: their conversation, the soft tension in Nate’s voice, the ache in his own ribs from things unsaid. For a few long seconds, Zeeb stayed under, letting the cold drag him back into himself.

When he surfaced, hair slicked back, he squinted toward the shore. Nate was still on the bank, standing by his easel.

“You comin’ in or what?” Zeeb called, his chest heaving.

Nate raised a brow. “You’re naked.”

He snorted. “You expect me to go swimmin’ in my clothes?”

There was a long beat. Nate tilted his head, studying him as if Zeeb was a figure in one of his drawings. “I don’t think you jumped in to swim.”

Zeeb trod water, his lips twitching. “Maybe I like the way the water feels.”

“Or maybe you hate howtalkingfeels.”

Yeah, Nate saw way too much.

Zeeb turned and swam a few strokes out, letting the silence drag. He turned onto his back and floated, his arms out, his chest rising and falling with the slowslapof the water, the sun warming his skin.

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