Finding It

water.

The salty water went up my nose, and I rose out of the water coughing, and Hunt burst out laughing.

“Oh, you’re going to be sorry, Hunt.”

I pushed the soaking mane of hair back from my face and glared at him. I backed away, knowing I’d need space for my next maneuver. When the water was up to my ribs, and I was far enough away from him that I felt sure he couldn’t get to me quickly, I grabbed my bathing suit top and tugged it over my head without unwrapping it the rest of the way.

The cool air hit me first, and I managed a small smile before Hunt reached me, and shoved me under the water, which seemed a little colder on this second dunk.

Thankfully, I kept my head above water.

“Jackson,” I tried to stand, but his hands shoved my shoulders back down at the same time that a wave crested against my back.

The bathing suit slipped out of my hand, and when I tried to reach down and grab it back, I came back with only water.

“Uh-oh,” I said.

“What does that mean? Are you okay? Did you get stung or cut yourself?”

I held off answering for a moment, hoping his fear for my safety would soften his reaction to the fact that I now had no way of covering myself up.

“This is your fault,” I prefaced.

“Kelsey, just tell me what happened,” he yelled.

“I might have lost my bathing suit.”

His lips pulled into a thin, angry line.

I smiled.” Adventure?”

He shook his head, and exhaled through his nose.

I swam backward a ways, and he followed. Then I lay back and let my body float up, my chest rising above the water. “Adventure,” I teased again. I waited for him to say something, but I seemed to have distracted him from his anger.

His eyes were glued to my chest, and I smiled in victory.

“You could join me, you know.”

He was still almost fully clothed since he hadn’t bothered to take off his shirt or shoes before dragging me into the water.

He looked tempted, so I added, “We could swim out a little farther.” I pointed to an outcropping of rocks on the side of a cliff that was far enough away from the beach for us not to attract too much attention. “You could put your clothes there until we’re ready to go back.”

It was remarkably easy to get him to agree with me while I wasn’t wearing a top.

Once we reached the rocks, I slipped off my bathing suit bottoms and the now ruined sandals that I’d been wearing when he tossed me in. He followed suit, shedding his shirt, shorts, and shoes.

Then we were naked and somewhat alone in a blue green ocean.

Treading water, we moved closer to each other, until our knees bumped.

“It’s later,” he said. “You did tell me later.”

I swallowed. I could do this. It was a matter of will power. Of control. I wanted this.

He touched a strand of my wet hair, and I wrapped my arms around his neck. My wet breasts smashed into his chest, and he said, “All right, maybe I’m a little okay with nude beaches.”

Shivers chased across my skin. I pressed my cheek to his, concentrating on breathing. His tongue tasted the salt on my shoulder, and I dug my fingernails into his back, not because of desire, but because of fear.

I wanted his touch to heal the hurt. I wanted to lose myself in his kiss, so that I could forget. But he didn’t heal or eclipse, he illuminated. Every single second I spent with him was perfect, which somehow only seemed to excavate more pain.

I pulled his head away from my shoulder, needing a break. His eyes locked onto mine, deep and warm. I wasn’t sure exactly what I saw in his gaze, but it felt too big to fathom, like explaining the unexplainable. Like seeing the light of a star and knowing that light is billions of years old. Like the way time slows near a black hole.

And as we stared, unnamed truths passing between us, Hunt’s kicking feet weren’t enough to keep us afloat. The water moved from my chest to my shoulders, from my shoulders to my neck.

And I thought drowning was the perfect word for the way he made me feel. Drowning after a life of drought.

He laughed and said something about deep water not really being the ideal place for the kind of exploring he wanted to do. I might have laughed. Sound was muted, like we’d slipped below the water, and I was still trapped there beneath the surface.

We slipped our clothes back on, and Hunt tried to make me take his shirt.

“I’ll just have to take it off when we get up there. I’m not wearing your soaking wet shirt when I could put my sundress back on.”

Reluctantly, he agreed.

He didn’t put his shirt back on. And when we were close enough to shore that our feet could touch, I climbed onto Hunt’s back, and he carried me out of the water, my bare chest hidden against his back.

He found a small, rocky alcove and he tried to block me from view as I changed, even though no one on the beach was even paying attention to us. Then together we headed back for the tunnel.

I stopped him and unzipped one of the pockets on his bag.

“Let me get your phone.”

“Kelsey, wait—”

I’d already grabbed the phone and swiped my finger across the screen.

He had seventeen voice mail messages.

My brows furrowed, and I looked up at him. “I thought you said this phone was just for emergencies. Why haven’t you listened to your voice mails?”

“Because they’re not emergencies. I’m sure of it.”

I asked, “Who are they from?”

“Nobody important. We should hurry through the tunnel. We’ve got to head back to Riomaggiore for the night.”

I should have pushed. I should have dug my feet in and refused to move until he told me the truth. That’s what I should have done.

I didn’t.

I let him take the phone, and I followed him into that pitch-black tunnel without saying a word.

He kept my hand clasped loosely in his, and I began to consider what I really knew about him. Which was not a hell of a lot. And the more I thought about that, the more I was certain that he was hiding something from me, something that would break apart our already fragile relationship.

Still, I didn’t ask. Not even in the tunnel where he couldn’t see my face, and I couldn’t see those eyes.

Because there was a part of me, small but not silent, that saw this as an escape. It was the same broken part of me that preferred the dark to the light. If I didn’t know his secret, he never had to know mine.

24

WE DIDN’T SLEEP together that night. Not because either of us made an excuse, but just because. When our backs hit the mattress, both of us were so in our own worlds that the thought of closing the distance between us never occurred. At least not for me.

The room was pitch-black. The village was so untouched by society that they didn’t even have street lamps. The occasional house would have a light out front, but not ours.