Page 76 of UNAwere

‘It’s safe.’ I gesture around us. ‘There’s nobody here. The car park is empty.’

‘It doesn’t fucking matter.’

I shake my head, finally meeting his stormy gaze. ‘You can’t be angry.’

His brows raise at that. ‘Oh? Can I not?’

‘No.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘Because you told me to use my anger.’ I shrug. ‘This is me using it. Rebelling. Doing what I want, despite you warning me against the opposite.’

‘I was referring to fighting,’ he grates. ‘Not swimming in your underwear in the motel pool.’

I raise a brow. ‘What? Would it help if I swam without my underwear?’

He grunts, lowering his gaze. He stammers, trying to reply, but then must think better of it.

‘God damn it, get out.’

‘No.’

He kicks off his boots, and I watch, half-amused, as he throws his phone onto the sun lounge, beside where my things are.

He doesn’t bother taking off his jeans or T-shirt before he dives in. Not even his socks.

I start laughing when I see him angrily swimming towards me, and kick off the wall, swimming to the end of the pool. I try to scramble up the wall and out before he can catch me, but apparently the man with the swimmer’s build uses that to his advantage, and he’s on me in an instant.

He pins me against the wall, breathing hard in my ear, his hands clutching my hips. For a second, that’s all we do. Breathe and touch, lightning striking amidst the space between our bodies.

‘Why are you doing this, Red?’ Jude eventually murmurs.

‘Why are you?’

He breathes deep. When he releases the breath, it shakes out of him, and I feel like there’s something in the way he’s breathing that gives me my answer. But I don’t know. I can’t understand. I don’t get him the way he wants me to.

‘You don’t like me,’ I find myself saying. ‘You drive with the window down, despite me not liking it. Y-you don’t let me put on music. You request silence every time I talk. I-I don’t get it. I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve this.’

‘Nothing,’ he breathes. ‘God, Sybbie, nothing.’

His nose brushes against the space under my ear, and I close my eyes, a sound I can’t control slipping past my lips. His fingers tighten against my skin when he hears it.

‘This doesn’t seem like nothing,’ I say before I can stop myself.

He pauses, and it’s like he’s holding his breath because his chest is no longer brushing against my back in short patterns.

‘What does it seem like to you, Sybbie?’ he finally asks, and his voice is low, careful.

‘I don’t know,’ I say honestly.

And I know it’s the wrong answer as soon as he draws away. As soon as he lets go and swims back to the other side of the pool. I’m left clutching onto the edge, shivering, unable to move.

I listen as he gets out and picks up his things.

‘It’s late,’ he says from the gate. ‘Get inside and go to bed.’

I nod, climbing up the ledge. I don’t meet his gaze as I walk down the length of the pool and gather my clothes. I clutch them to my dripping body, but don’t bother putting them back on. He opens the gate for me, and I mutely duck through, feeling him come up behind me.