Page 54 of Lawless
"What?" His hands supported my lower back, a ghostly soft touch under the water. "How can you not swim?"
"I grew up in Middle of Nowhere, Texas, okay? Not a lot of swimmable bodies of water around."
He stared at me like I grew a third eye in the middle of my forehead.
"I don't think I've ever met anyone who couldn't swim. It's like second nature to me."
"Well, lucky you." I directed a small splash at him. "I hope giving CPR is second-nature to you, too, because I was about to need it."
"Sorry, Mari." His face fell. "I didn't know. I just figured everyone could."
"It's okay." I couldn't be mad at him for not knowing. Not with that adorable sad face he was giving me. "Just listen when a girl tells younonext time."
"Tell you what." His eyes brightened as he walked us to the shallow end. "I'll teach you how to swim if you teach me CPR." The devilish grin returned. "Especially if I get to practice mouth-to-mouth on you."
"Hmm, I'll have to think about it." I shot him a coy smile as I pulled myself out. "Show me how good of a swimmer you are while I dry off. I need to know if my teacher's qualified."
"Oh, you couldn't have picked anyone better." He began an elegant backstroke across the pool, eyes still locked on mine.
I settled into a deck lounger as he showed off, even doing flips off the diving board. My hair and skin were dry within minutes under the baking sun. The heat almost made me want to go back in the water just to cool off and cling to Gunner again.
Almost.
How long had it been since I just laid out in the sun, though?
Pushing away everything I learned in school about sun damage, I closed my eyes and basked in the heat. If I used my imagination a little, I could pretend I was on a beach vacation without a care in the world.
Murmuring voices pulled me out of the fantasy in my head, and I cracked my eyes open in curiosity.
Jandro and Reaper spoke in low voices as they walked between the columns of the elegant outdoor corridor, their heads bent toward each other as if discussing something important. Both had on their cuts as if they just returned from a ride.
My heart jumped at the sight of Reaper. Part of me wanted to hide, even underwater, while the other part wanted to march up to him and apologize.
What he told me on the balcony hit me like a baseball bat to the stomach. I thought wrongly about him based on, well, nothing. And while he did awful things for his own and his club's survival, he wasn't the monster I thought he was.
I laid awake thinking about it all night last night rather than sleeping. And the one thought that stuck to the forefront of my mind was what Tessa said that night at the barbecue.
What if he didn't actually kidnap me, butrescuedme?
My throat turned drier than the desert surrounding me. I gripped the armrests of my lounge chair, trying to get up the nerve to talk to him.
"Mari, watch me!" Gunner called gleefully like a child.
I put on a grin as he moonwalked across the diving board then backflipped into the water. When I looked over to the two club leaders again, Jandro removed his cut and was in the process of taking his shirt off while Reaper turned and walked in the opposite direction.
My heart sank as I watched his form grow smaller until he disappeared from view. Of course he didn't want to be around me, not after what I'd falsely accused him of. But it still stung.
"Hey, Mari." Jandro approached me with his signature flirtatious grin, cut and shirt thrown over his bare shoulder. "Careful laying out for too long or you'll get burned."
"I'm working my way up to your shade of tan." I watched him sink into the deck chair next to me, not a single tan line on his caramel torso. For a moment I wondered if his skin tasted as sweet as he looked.
"You can thank my Guatemalan parents for this tan," he chuckled, leaning back and stretching his legs out in front of him. "Arizona and Texas were the Far North to them, and y'all still sunburn like lobsters up here," he teased.
"My dad was from Mexico," I told him. "So I can get as dark as you, I just might have to work harder at it."
"Mm-hm," he smiled before looking out at Gunner's antics in the pool. "Your old man still around?" he asked gently.
"No," I answered, bringing my gaze up to the palm trees overhead. "He was fighting in the Texas border wars and never came home one day. Then my mom went to look for him, and she never came back either."
