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chapter 12



We head to the water a few minutes later. I gasp in a few more strangled breaths of fresh air as if it will somehow help me come to my senses with what just happened. Heat lingers on my face, on my skin, and I feel so buoyant again, so light and giddy.

Cat grabs two beach towels, hands one to me, and we walk down the small boardwalk until we reach the edge and are standing over about six feet deep of lake. The sun is still as strong as it was before, although the breeze has picked up again and the shrieking kids to our right have gone inside.

Sunlight pours its way onto my bare skin, and I shift uncomfortably beside Cat. I’m consciously aware that both of us are half-naked now. We’ve been here, at the lake, so many times before, done this almost every week for the past six months, but it’s different now. Everything is different now. It’s like Cat and I are new people, with new feelings and new…

I turn back to her to keep from finishing the thought. She’s dressed in her red-and-blue bikini and I am wearing nothing but a pair of basketball shorts, and I realize this is exactly what she had planned.

Talk about manipulative.

“Staring again?” Cat says, biting her lip as she catches my gaze.

“Nope. Just looking out at the water.”

“Liar.”

I shrug. “If you say so.” But really, we both know I’m lying.

“So,” Cat continues, glancing down at the lake. “Who is going in first?”

“I volunteer you,” I say.

She quirks her brow. “Really?”

“Really.”

The water below is so clear and calm that I can see the rocks far below, but as I dip my finger in, I feel just how freezing it really is.

“Aren’t you supposed to be the big strong guy who saves me and goes in first instead?” She laughs as soon as she says it. I shoot her a look. “Sorry,” she says, holding up her hands, “I just can’t call you ‘big and strong’ with a straight face.”

I glare at her. “I’ll have you know, I’m incredibly muscular. Girls practically cling to my side.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Oh yeah.”

“We’ll see about that,” she says, and before I realize what’s going on, I feel a force at my side. The next thing I know Cat’s hand is on my bare stomach as she shoves me off the boardwalk and deep into the water. For an instant, there is nothing but stillness and warmth from Cat’s touch, and I feel like I’m hovering above the lake. The next thing I know, though, I plummet to the ground. My body breaks the surface instantly, and all of a sudden, I’m submerged in six feet of ice-cold water. I sputter my way to the surface, laughing and gasping for breath, and a fit of shivers comes over me.

“You,” I say to Cat, who is still standing on the boardwalk a few feet above. “You’re done.”

She sticks her tongue out at me. “Oh really?”

I take another breath, and the coolness of the water seems to wash away everything from before. Suddenly, it’s just me and Cat, just two best friends playing at the lake like old times. “Yes really,” I say. “You’re coming in here with me.”

I reach up a hand to pull her down after me, but she’s already started running away, laughing and pointing at me and skidding down the boardwalk. My lips break into a smile, and with a grunt I pull myself up out of the water, swing my body onto the boardwalk, stand up, and chase after her.

“You’ll never catch me!” Cat shouts, leaps off the boardwalk, and makes her way over to the beach chair.

A trail of water flies behind me as I maneuver after her. “Oh, Red Velvet, you innocent little thing. I am not leaving until you’re as soaked as I am.”

I leap off the boardwalk after Cat, whose blue eyes are wider and more full of life than I’ve seen in the longest time. I’m a few feet away from her now, so I lunge for her arm, but she’s too fast. She wriggles past my grip, grinning like an idiot, and sprints in the opposite direction back down the boardwalk.

I smile, dip my head, and chase her.

“Aren’t we not supposed to run on the boardwalk or something?” I call after her.

She doesn’t turn back to me. “Screw it!” she says. “Society can suck it!” My grin spreads.

It takes another minute of running before she reaches the end of the boardwalk and turns around, nowhere to go.

“Well, well,” I say, stepping toward her, more water dripping off my body. Cat stands only a few yards away from me, pinned against the end of the boardwalk, with nothing but me and the lake on either side of her. “I told you you’re done for.”

Her smile is so big it makes my heart seriously skip a beat. “I wouldn’t be too sure,” she says. “With your agility, you’ll probably dive for me, miss, and fall into the water instead.”

“Would you want to bet on that?” I edge even closer to her now. If I wanted to, I could reach out and touch her again, feel the awe-inspiring warmth of her skin on mine.

She tosses her red hair to the side. “Oh, believe me, I do.”

“Good,” I say softly, bending my knees and locking my eyes with hers. “Because I’m winning this round.”

She lets out a shrill scream as I lunge at her, arms outstretched. My body flies into hers a second later, and my arms wrap around her waist as we plummet off the edge of the boardwalk and into the lake.

Together.

As one.

My arms are still around her even after we hit the water with a loud crack, and a shock of icy coldness comes over us. Finally, we break apart, Cat slipping out of my grip as she swims to the surface. Underwater, her hair streams everywhere, hitting my face and causing me to laugh. I swim up after her.

When we both break the surface, she giggles, gasping for air, and I smile between pants. “You a*shole!” she screams and sends me a playful punch.

I laugh, wrapping my arms back around her almost instinctually. “Guilty as charged,” I say. The sun has already begun warming us again, a stark contrast from the freezing water, and everything is so, so perfect. My smile keeps getting broader.

I’m still scared, though. Scared of how I keep feeling these things for Cat, keep wanting to touch her—scared of what it means. I mean, yeah, I’m not an idiot. I know what it means. But I don’t want it to mean what it means. I want to be Cat’s friend and only her friend. If I fall for her, there’s a good chance we’ll both f*ck it up and even better chance we’ll split apart for good. I care about her too much to let her go that easily, to risk losing her because of some stupid mix of emotions that I myself don’t even understand.

I turn back to Cat. She is watching me as she bobs in the water at my side, but that smile of hers does not falter. Her hair is soaked and she looks like she’s going to yell at me, and I just watch her, suppressing a laugh. “Idiot! You are an idiot!” she screams.

“Really? Like when I do this?” I bring my hands down on the lake, sending a thick spray of water right into her face.

She gasps and holds out her hands, looking entirely shocked and annoyed, her whole body soaked and dripping, and I think I’ve gone too far. But slowly, her lips part back into a smile. “Oh, West Ryder, you are so dead!”

The next thing I know Cat brings her hands down on the lake, too, and a flurry of water washes over me too. The cold spray only manages to send more and more energy through my body, though. I turn to Cat slowly, eyes locked, and I grin. “You’re right, for once, Davenport. It. Is. On,” I say and begin splashing at her rapid-fire.

“Oh yes it is,” Cat shouts. She fights back, giggling hard, and soon we’re both moving closer and closer in the water, splashing each other as hard as we possibly can. I’m soaked and blinded by the spray, the water in my ears, in my eyes, up my nose, but I don’t even care. I just keep laughing and attacking until gradually, we’re only inches apart and still dumping water over each other’s heads, in addition to making quite horrible attempts at trash talk.

“West,” she says some twenty minutes later, panting hard. We’re both up to our necks in lake water, just swimming back and forth and making weird jokes and, for the first time since I found out Cat was Harper, being happy around each other. The smell of dried leaves is everywhere, and the air tastes like lilacs. The sky starts to gray as the sun sets in the distance. “West, can we talk?” Cat finally says.

“Yeah…” I say cautiously, frowning, because she sounds serious all of a sudden—too serious. “Why don’t we get out of the water first?”

“Yeah.” She nods. “Sure.”

I climb out before her, pulling myself all the way up from the water to the boardwalk several feet above. I am consciously aware of her eyes on my biceps as I lift myself up, of the small smile that flickers across her lips when they flex from effort. She tries hiding it, but it’s not something I miss.

And as I stand up on the boardwalk, my back to her, I find myself smiling too.

Cat takes the ladder up, flops onto the wood, and sighs. She sits in front of me, her legs crossed, her arms folded and her eyes trained on me. I still don’t have a shirt on, and she’s still wearing her bikini. Both of us are soaked, water dripping from our hair. She looks good like that, though—really good. I find myself noticing how soft her lips look this close to me, how it would feel to kiss the water off of them, what it would be like for them to move with mine…

I shake my head. No. This is the last thing I should be thinking about.

“Hey, West?” Cat says quietly, looking up at me with those big blue eyes of hers. Her face is tired, nervous, and by the sadness in her expression, I know immediately what she’s about to say.

I tense up. “Yeah?”

“You know how I said I’m going to fight for you with every last breath I have?”

I look up at her, and she back at me. Her expression is hard, serious. “Yeah,” I say softly. “I know.”

“I mean it,” Cat says. “I’m going to fight for us—first our friendship and then our…” She trails off, turning away.

“Our what?” I don’t mean to sound so angry, but I can’t help myself. Why the hell can’t we just stay friends? Why does it need to be a real romance? Isn’t the fact that we’re with each other what really matters? It’s not that I dislike the idea of going out with Cat; it’s just that I’m not even sure what I feel for her. And until I’m sure, there is no way in hell I’m risking this not working and me losing her for good.

“Our…” She sighs. “Our potential to be more than just friends, I guess?” She winces at her words.

I want to punch something. I thought we were finally getting away from this weirdness.

“What’s the matter, West?” she asks. I’m not exactly working to hide the annoyance on my features.

“You don’t get it, do you?” I say.

“Get what?”

“Get us,” I say, squeezing my eyes shut as if it’ll help make this all go away. “You don’t get that our friendship is more powerful than any romance will ever be. You don’t get that we aren’t ‘just friends’ but like siblings, that we were made for each other—maybe in the romantic sense, maybe not. But the thing is, it doesn’t matter. I would be miserable without you, Cat. Hell, I’d probably be dead without you. But I’m not. I’m not because you’re there for me. Because I can lean on your shoulder and you can lean on mine, because I can trust you, I can share anything with you, because I can love you however the f*ck I want and it doesn’t matter. We’re lucky, you and I. Not many people have what we have. So, please, for the love of god, don’t call us ‘just friends’ and act like we are nothing if we don’t love each other.”

I take a long breath as soon as the words roll out of my mouth. A long silence follows, and Cat just looks at her hands, saying nothing. A part of me feels immediately guilty, like I’ve just committed some sin I can never take back, but a much larger half of me is glad to get it out, to finally say what I’ve been thinking since that first day I learned Cat was really Harper.

I drop my gaze to Cat’s hand as she plays with the wood of the boardwalk, fingering its soaking edge. She doesn’t say anything, doesn’t even move, and I feel like an eternity passes between us right then and there.

I close my eyes. My pulse is pounding and my head throbs, and I don’t know what I want anymore but I know it involves Cat—no matter what.

Always and forever.

Finally, Cat looks up at me. Her eyes are unsparkling, and her voice is soft, weak. “I get that, West, and that’s what you don’t get: that I get that. But the problem is,” she says softly, “I fell in love with you, and that changed everything.”

I can’t look at her anymore. My heart thrums faster, faster, faster, and the sky above us slowly melts from a light gray to a dark blue color. The waves below continue to lap at the shore, and I can smell a barbecue coming from somewhere down the lake. “It doesn’t change anything, Cat,” I say. “It doesn’t matter! We’re still friends. We’ll always be friends. F*ck, if you love me then go ahead and love me, but why do I need to love you back? Why do we need to love each other? Why can’t we just stay normal best friends and be with each other like that forever? It’s no different! I for one am not going to risk losing you for some f*cked up set of emotions I don’t even understand yet. So yes, I’m angry, and no, I’m not confused, and yes, I’m entirely freaking depressed but does that matter? NO.”

My words seem to echo around us as soon as I finish, and my whole body starts trembling. I just want to leave. Everything seems to crash down on me at once all over again, and it strikes me then that no matter, we can never, ever go back to being truly normal. I choke back tears. My face feels so hot, and all I want to do is stand up and run and hide and never come back.

Cat reaches out to touch me, shaking her head, but I push her hand away. “Stop,” I say, and she jerks away like she’s been slapped.

“West, you’re right,” Cat whispers. “We are best friends. We are brother and sister, or whatever you want to call it, and we always will be. But that doesn’t mean we can’t try to be something else too. That doesn’t mean we can’t love each other.” She shifts closer, starting to stand up now. “But let me tell you, West, no matter what happens, no matter where you go, I will also always be in love with you. And you don’t have to love me back. Hell, you don’t need to ever talk to me again. Will I be hurt? Yes. Will I want you back? Yes. But it will all still be worth it, because you have made it worth it. Because loving you has made it worth it.”

Without another word, she stands up, walks across the boardwalk, gathers her clothes, and disappears out of sight.

I find myself sitting there, alone on the boardwalk, staring out at the vast expanse of lake with no idea what to do next.