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Lucas shrugged. “I call blue mermaid.” He tossed his head back and sucked down his beer while she explained that, “It’s actually a blue merman.”
And then she had to catch up and try to drink her beer quick, before he yanked the can from her hand and trudged back a few steps closer to the bank so he could throw their cans.
“Where are you going?” Nox asked.
“I’m a motherfuckin’ merman,” Lucas called over his shoulder, and dove into the water.
Jenna’s laugh echoed off the cliffs, and she clapped her hands together and dove in too. It was pretty shallow though, so she jammed her fingertips on a rock and scraped her knees, but everything was okay—she was a very fast healer.
In the middle of the river, he hung back and waited for her. “Do you not know how to swim?” he asked.
“I am swimming!”
“You’re dog paddling.”
“This is how some people swim. We can’t all be perfect like you, Lucas. I’m doing the best I can without my goggles.”
“Oh God, please let us go back and get your goggles. I want to see them.”
Jenna splashed him. “You already think I’m the hottest person here, Lucas. If I show you my goggles, you will be addicted. Terribly inconvenient for you,” she huffed, winded as she treaded water. “We can’t have that.”
“Do falcons not like water?” he asked, and damn his grin as he swam backwards in front of her.
“I thought silverbacks were supposed to sink, but here you are, swimming around like a freakin’ tuna,” she muttered.
“If you start drowning, just tell me,” he teased.
“I don’t need your help, I just need you to stop slowing me down,” she said, focusing on her doggy-paddle strokes. She was going faster now and finding her rhythm. Kind of.
Lucas was doing a backstroke now, easy peasy, making it look like he was a professional swimmer. God, he was beautiful. Just cutting through the water with such power and grace. He had been wrong. She wasn’t the hottest person here by a long shot.
He was.
When they were close to the other side, he waited for her on the rocky bottom and pulled her in by her hands as soon as she reached him. He settled her on her feet as soon as the water was shallow enough and then led her down the bank a ways toward the waterfall.
“It’s been years since I came here.”
“To the river?” he asked.
“No, I mean to the waterfall on this side. When I was a kid, all I wanted to do was be under the waterfall.”
Lucas came to a stop, propped his leg up on a big rock in the water, and studied the waterfall. “I was the same. It was the challenge of racing friends to the waterfall and then we would stay over on this side all day long.”
“When you get older, you forget how fun things can be.”
He nodded thoughtfully. “Come on. I want to show you something.”
Jenna cast a look back at the other side of the bank. Cadence and Kru and a few of the others were watching them, but they weren’t following.
When she turned back to follow Lucas, he was standing right in front of her, offering her his hand. “It’s rocky here. It smooths out closer to the falls.”
How many times had she seen his dad, Kirk, offer his mom a hand just like this? It brought a smile to her face. He remembered the things his parents had taught him, or perhaps he was just that much like his father—instinctively helpful.
She could see why Beaston talked about him the way he did.
She slipped her small hand into his big one and let him keep her steady as they picked their way along the rocks until they reached the fine-sand bottom near the falls.
“Ready, mermaid?” he asked.
