AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I was just trying tobreathe. I hadn’t seen that particular shirt in years, though there was one shoved in the back of my closet. They’d printed them up only once.
She glanced down at the shirt and smiled. “Amie bought it for me as a joke one Christmas. She thought it was hilarious.”
Slowly, Zoe turned, and the sight of my name on her back, the flex of the muscles in her legs, had my skin tightening, my chest blazing with heat.
When she was facing me again, there was an impish grin on her face. “But then I just kept wearing it. It was soft. Warm. Fit me perfectly.” She held her hands up, thumbs poking through holes in the sides of the sleeves, that same thing she did to all the shirts she loved. “I’ve never found another one that I liked as much. When I lost it, I was inexplicably sad,” she said.
Why did it feel like she wasn’t really talking about that sweatshirt?
Why did my chest feel like it was caving in?
Zoe made her way to the edge of the pool, toward the middle, where I stood. She sat, easing her legs into the water with a satisfied hiss.
There was a flash of red underneath the hem of the sweatshirt, and my heart settled into a more natural rhythm, knowing she wasn’t stark-ass naked under there.
I watched her carefully and slid closer to where she sat but stayed just out of reach. “How’d your visit with what’s-his-name go?”
“Fine. We didn’t talk long.” She smiled. “He apologized for how things ended. Asked if I wanted to meet him for coffee sometime.”
“What’d you say?” Fuck, I sounded like such an asshole. Like I had any right to ask.
“I said that there was no need. I’d already forgiven him”—she paused, eyeing me meaningfully—“and I was too hung up on someone else to have coffee with anyone.”
My ribs squeezed tight, and my heart thundered painfully. “Did he cry?”
Zoe’s lips twitched. “No. I wouldn’t tell you if he did, though.”
My eyebrows arched. “What were you doing for the rest of the time?”
“Watching the clock, were you?”
I gave her a droll look, and she laughed under her breath. Zoe shook her head slightly, studying my face like she was still desperately trying to figure me out.
Join the fucking club. I’d been attempting that one for more than thirty years and was still coming up empty handed.
With absolutely no regard for my sanity, Zoe gracefully pulled the sweatshirt up and over her head.
“Fucking hell,” I muttered.
Her bikini was red. Small. Tiny straps holding it over her body.
There was so much skin. So many curves.
Freckles dotted her shoulders and chest. And the tiniest little diamond winked in her belly button. She grinned a Cheshire-cat grin as she gently kicked her legs back and forth in the water.
“We weren’t done talking when he showed up,” she said.
Why did she keep looking at me like that? Like we were already naked. Like I was already inside her. My hands curled into helpless fists at my side. “We weren’t. But I don’t know if it’s wise we continue it here.”
“Why not?”
“Look at you,” I growled. “It’s not fair.”
Maybe there was something magnetic woven into that bloody suit, because quite helplessly, I drifted closer to the edge where she sat. When I got close enough to touch her, I braced my hands on either side of her hips, her legs shifting to accommodate my upper body. Her calf brushed the side of my hip, and my jaw locked tight.
“It’s very fair. You’ve always had me off-balance,” she said. “From the day we met.”
My head reared back. “I have not.”
