“Thanks for making me fight,” he whispered back.
She went up on her tiptoes and brought him down to her in a hug. He was stiff for a moment before he melted into her, hugging her as roughly and fiercely as he always did. His hands spread flat, his arms squeezing her, his face tucked into the crook of her neck the way hers was tucked into the crook of his. They hugged for a long time, their clothes damp and sandy and their skin sticky with dried salt. He smelled like Javi mixed with ocean, maybe May’s favorite scent of all time.
“Goodnight, May,” he whispered, slowly releasing her.
“Goodnight.” She didn’t want to call him Rook or Javi. One was too impersonal and one was way too personal. So she just clapped her mouth shut and moved toward her bedroom door.
“Hey,” she whispered as he started to walk away.
He turned.
“You’re the best father. I shouldn’t have said that about you being absent. Even when you were gone, you were always in contact with her. You were still a part of her life even if you weren’t there for the everyday stuff. I shouldn’t act like you weren’t.”
And then she closed the door, before she could take in the expression on his face.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Rook woke early the next morning and was grateful to see that May was still in her room. The fact was, he couldn’t handle another second with her right now. Something had shifted between them last night. He knew, logically, that that all it really meant was that they were one step closer to getting along as exes. But his stupid, traitorous heart was hoping that it meant they were one step closer to getting back together.
Because he could admit that now. Or rather, he couldn’t deny it anymore. He woke up that morning, and as his eyes took in the ceiling of his bedroom the thought just flashed in his mind like a neon sign. He wanted to get back together with her. Any way she would take him.
The only thing that had kept him from full-on hoping in the past was that there were still humongous blocks in communication between them. Huge gaps that he thought might just never be breached.
But then he’d told her the truth in the ocean last night. He’d told her the truth, and she’d listened, and it had been hard as hell, but he got the impression that she actually, fully heard him.
And then that hug? Jesus. She hadn’t hugged him like that in years. She’d hugged him like she’d actually needed to hold him. Have him close. Feel his heart against hers.
Was he insane or did it seem like maybe something was opening back up between the two of them?
No. That was insane. That was definitely insane.
He was just feeling the relief of finally telling her the truth. The weight and frustration at having her think he was the worst was easing up and he was mistaking that lightness for something else.
When he got to the kitchen, he saw that Ricky was there, feeding Brookie breakfast.
“I hope they’re paying you to babysit.”
His daughter turned and grinned. “Nah. I just like spending time with Brooke.”
“You wanna find somebody else to watch her and come with me to learn how to Jet ski?”
He laughed at how quickly Ricky’s face lit up. “Really? Hell yeah! Don’t tell mom, though. She’d have a heart attack.”
Half an hour later, Rook himself was having a little bit of a heart attack. Ricky was tearing up the ocean on her Jet ski. He watched her with a mixture of pride and horror as she ripped into an aggressive turn, trying to catch the crest of a wave.
“Hey!” He flagged her down. “I think I see some dolphins over there. Wanna go check it out?”
The two of them rode off toward a sandbar that Moreau had mentioned and sure enough, there was a pod of about ten dolphins swimming after a school of fish. They floated on their Jet skis and just watched for a while, from a reasonable distance. Then, when their stomachs started grumbling for lunch, they headed back to the island.
“Dad!” Ricky pointed vigorously behind him and he turned to see a dolphin riding in his wake.
“Holy shit!” he shouted and made eye contact with Ricky.
“Holy shit!” she screamed as another dolphin joined in, jumping and diving in the wake, playing with them.
The two of them were stunned and laughing like maniacs when it hit Rook. Ricky would always be his daughter, but sometime in the not-so-distant future, she’d be his friend too. He wouldn’t always have to parent her so much. There would be plenty of time when the two of them would just hang out together, enjoy one another’s company.
That made him as sad as it made him happy. He wanted Ricky to stay young and small forever. But he also thrilled to the idea of watching her grow and mature.
The dolphins turned off the closer they got to the island and as Rook and Ricky docked the Jet skis, he thought back to his fight with May.
Her words about him having been an absent father had been incendiary and meant to sting him. But they hadn’t truly wounded him, because he’d known in his heart, just as she had, that they weren’t true. Maybe the first seven years of her life, she’d had an unconventional relationship with Rook, but it had always been present and it had always been good.
He smiled to himself thinking of May, her temper hot, spoiling for a fight, thinking of anything to say that would make him fight with her. Engage with her. Talk to her. In the end she just wanted communication with him, and that was the way she knew how to get it.
Also, in the end, she stripped her clothes off and fought with him while skinny dipping. And had seen absolutely nothing odd or remotely weird about it. He thought back to the moment he’d turned and seen her body stepping out of the water, silver in the moonlight, curvy and sexy and perfect. She’d always been his ideal woman.
He used to think it was a coincidence, a holy miracle, that his ideal woman had fallen in love with him. But now, as her body had changed and she was still his ideal woman, he realized it wasn’t a coincidence at all. She was naturally beautiful, but she was perfect to him because he loved her.
Loved her still.
Couldn’t stop.
“You all right, Dad?” Ricky asked as she handed him a line to tie up the Jet skis.
“Yeah. Just thinking about stuff too hard, as usual.”
“You’re worried about what happened at the house?”
He looked up at her. “Are you worried about what happened at the house?”
“Obviously. A man broke into our house and tried to burn it down. And Mom fought him. Of course that worries me.”
He nodded. “Yeah. She needs a leash.”
Ricky smiled. “I dare you to try.”
He grimaced and laughed.
“Dad… do you think that Brooklyn is safe for me and Mom? Is somebody out to get us or something?”
He sighed and sat on the dock next to her, their feet making circles in the clear, turquoise water. “Ricks, the NYPD is trying really hard to figure that out right now. And if they don’t turn anything up, well, Rook Securities is going to be on the case the second we get home. You know how good we are at keeping people safe. I’m never, ever, going to let something happen to you and your mom.”
“Do you think that, maybe, we should keep staying with you in the meantime?”
He eyed her. His proud, brave daughter was scared. She wanted her father near her. And he was never going to turn her down.
“I think my house is a little small for all three of us.”
She nodded and cast her eyes down to her feet, twisting her mouth.
“But I was thinking that maybe we could stay at the bunker.”
Ricky’s head snapped up. “Really?”
“Yeah. I haven’t run it past Mom yet. And you know she’ll have an opinion. But it makes sense. There’s two guest bedrooms in the crow’s nests for you and Mom. I have my own quarters. The whole thing is basically a giant safehouse. You guys would be completely safe there while we try and figure out who attacked the house and why.”
“Will… any
one else be staying there?”
Rook’s brow lowered. He was pretty sure this was his fifteen year old’s non-sneaky way of asking if her favorite movie star was also going to be bunking at the bunker, the way he often did.
“Nope.” He popped the p, a la May. “Moreau and Geo actually just closed on a condo in Queens. It has all sorts of security measures, so they’re gonna try staying over there and see if it feels secure enough.”
Moreau had some crazy fans and had often chosen to stay at the bunker for maximum security.
“Okay. Wow. You, me and mom all under one roof.”
“One gigantic roof,” he reminded her. Not wanting her to start dreaming about them playing house.
“Right. Now we just have to convince Mom.”
“The easy part.”
She smirked. “Sure, Dad. Whatever you gotta tell yourself.”
***
By the time Rook had dragged the rest of the equipment back up to the villa’s waterfront shed, Ricky was already stretched out alongside May beside the pool, animatedly describing the encounter with the dolphins.
As he entered the pool area, May looked up and caught his eye. She wasn’t wearing sunglasses and neither was he. Something soft passed between them. They weren’t ignoring last night.
He hadn’t been sure what to expect from her. But apparently her reaction was going to be… sweet?
May stood up and stretched. She walked around the pool and Rook suddenly felt strangely hot. He was moving strangely, he was sure of it. Like he was suspended in jello. But this was not an unfamiliar feeling. He’d felt like this all the time when he was sixteen and in love with May from afar. Whenever she’d single him out, move toward him from across a room, he’d had no earthly clue what to do with his body. Apparently that feeling had stood the test of time.
“Sounds like you guys had a good time,” May said, tucking her hands into the pockets of her shorts.
Rook looked down at her, that softness between them seeming to expand. “Yeah, it was really fun. I would have invited you but I didn’t want to wake you.”
She nodded. “Listen, Rook, about last night…”
Three words that no one ever liked to hear. Nothing good could follow.
“Heads up!”
Rook and May tipped their heads up and sure enough, a baseball was flying up over the edge of the villa wall and was rocketing toward them.
It wasn’t going fast, just a pop fly that Atlas or Sequence had accidentally hit over from the field where they were messing around. Rook moved to catch the ball but May took a step back and gasped.
He turned to see that she’d stepped back toward the pool and accidentally lost her footing. He might have just let her fall into the pool—no harm no foul—except for the fact that she was tumbling toward an inverted section of the pool, and directly toward a cement corner.
He felt the world move in slow motion as the woman he loved fell headfirst toward concrete.
He forgot about the baseball and lunged forward, grabbing May by the waist and using his momentum to propel them both away from the corner and into the middle of the pool.
They broke the water and submerged, safe as could be, and his hands gripping her waist. The two of them sank straight to the bottom of the pool.
A rush of white bubbles cleared around him and there was May, six inches from him, her eyes on his, laughter in every line of his face.
He groaned internally, releasing a stream of bubbles when he registered the look on her face. Mischievous and up to no good. He knew that face. He’d seen it so many times.
She wouldn’t dare!
The first time they ever played this particular game, they’d been dating about a month. Rook had learned, firsthand, just how frisky May could be. She was seemingly ravenous for him. And he was definitely taking the compliment. The very moment they were ever alone together, her mouth was glued to his and her hands were taking off her own shirt. They hadn’t gone much further than second base, mostly because Rook had an aversion to hooking up while her parents were in the other room.
He always had to sneak through her bedroom window and was living his life clapping a hand over May’s mouth to keep her quiet.
May’s favorite new game however, had become something that Rook could only laugh at. Because it was either laugh or go insane.
She really liked to see how fast she could give him a boner.
A month into the relationship, they weren’t at a point where she was doing anything about the boners she was giving him. But she found them interesting and funny and intriguing.
“It’s like charming a snake,” she’d whispered to him, as she’d straddled his lap, her mouth an inch from his.
He’d laughed and rolled his eyes. He knew what she was actually saying though—May thoroughly enjoyed her obvious power over him. She loved that she could bump her plush hip against his and have him crawling for her. She was just becoming acquainted with her intoxicating charm, and it was already deadly. He never stood a chance with her.
Now, so many years later, with the clear water between them and lungs full of air, May smiled at him, as aware of her power over him as she’d been at sixteen.
And just like that, he was transported back.
***
Rook usually loved pool parties. But since he’d finally convinced May Jones to go out with him, any public event started to seem really pointless. He used to go to parties in hopes of seeing May. Now, May was dragging him around to parties in order to see other people. He had no interest in other people. He only wanted May.
But it was July in Brooklyn and they’d been invited to one of their classmate’s houses on Long Island for the day. So, they’d hopped onto the LIRR and had been out there the whole day. They’d have to catch the train soon, so they were doing one last swim.
Over the last two hours, May had started to get a very specific look in her eye that was making him nervous. She couldn't possibly subject him to her game here, would she? In front of other people?
He wouldn’t put it past her. And he really didn’t want a boner at a pool party. So, he’d been carefully avoiding her. Putting a few people of distance between them at all times. But then, there she was swan diving into the deep end of the pool and swimming, sleek as a seal, across the pool to him.
Incoming.
He felt her hands around his waist and her breasts at his back and he immediately faced the wall of the pool. This wasn’t gonna take much at all.
“Wanna play?” she whispered huskily into his ear, laughter in her voice.
“Yes. At home. In private.”
She laughed. “But you’ve got me all half naked and wet and slippery. Are you sure you don’t want to take advantage of this opportunity?”
Her voice was deceptively sweet as her hands smoothed over his stomach to play with the waistband of his swim trunks. He ran a list of dead presidents in his head, attempted to name the states, imagined his grandmother in a two-piece.
Rook cocked his head over his shoulder and found himself eye to eye with the devil-woman grinning and clinging to his back. “If you push me, you’re gonna get dunked.”
“You wouldn’t dunk me! Not now that we’re toge—” As she spoke, her hand had moved south, teasing and provoking him. Rook had no choice. He’d set down the law, now it was his job to enforce it.
He pushed off the side of the pool and slammed them backwards into the water, May’s wild laughter was the last thing he heard before he submerged them.
She released him and he turned in the water. Her dark, laughing eyes greeted him in the water, her hair floating every which way. She wore a red bathing suit—because apparently her mission in life was to torture Rook—I and her toenails were painted bright orange. He was willing to let it go right there, figuring she’d learned her lesson, but no. May lunged toward him, her fingers hooking in his waistband and her legs tangling with his.
She was still at it! He couldn’t believe it!
He
grabbed her waist, kicked off from the bottom and made sure they’d both had a good breath of air before he dunked them again. Bubbles escaped while they laughed and shouted underwater, both of them grappling. Him attempting to keep May’s hands to herself and May viciously attempting to arouse him.
They came up for air and dunked ten times, fifteen. Finally, Rook had her pinned against him, safe from her onslaught. They sank diagonally in the water.
He said something to her underwater, and she shook her head to show she couldn’t understand him.
He pushed off from the bottom and they broke the surface, gasping for air. Panting, exhilarated, heart pounding in his chest, Rook repeated his words before he could stop himself.
“I love you.”
Her eyes went crazy wide and his blood froze. That was insane! Why had he done that? They’d only been together for a month! He hadn’t even asked her to be his girlfriend yet. And he was saying crazy shit about loving her? It didn’t matter that it was the truth. It didn’t matter that he’d never been so sure of something in his life. All he knew was that he was definitely going to scare her away with this.
She lunged forward, clamping herself around his shoulders and tugged him underwater again.
Her legs pinned around his waist and her eyes on his, they sank down in the water.
She said something to him underwater and his eyes glued themselves to her lips. Trying to make it out.
The words were unhearable, indistinguishable, but her lips were readable.
“I love you too,” she said to him, bubbles rising up out of her mouth like some kind of magic.
He lunged forward and pressed his mouth against hers. In a natural, unavoidable reaction, both their mouths opened for each other. Water rushed in and they shoved to the surface, choking and coughing and laughing.
Breathing hard, they hung off the edge of the pool, leaning on each other. She turned and pressed her forehead against his.
“I love you too,” she whispered.
***
Now, he and May were at the bottom of a pool again and she had that look in her eye. He narrowed his eyes at her as her hand snaked out, the backs of her fingers brushing his stomach.
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