Page 29 of The Perfect Deal
Instead, I stood there, breathless, waiting to see why she was here.
18
LIBERTY
What the hell was I doing?
I didn’t know. Normally, I would never be so bold as to chase a guy down, dressed in a swimsuit, still wet from a dip in the pool. But this was different. This wasn’t just any old guy. It was Joshua—and he’d kissed me in the woods near where we were standing so recently my lips could still feel his warmth. I might’ve been acting recklessly, putting myself into a situation where things could heat up between us, but at the moment, I didn’t care. The thought of Karrie moving in on him made me paranoid. I was tired of standing in the shadows pretending like I didn’t care who Joshua was with. I wanted him for myself.
And even if that meant we could only steal kisses from one another beneath the moonlight from time to time for a while as we navigated what to do about my brother, it was better to let him know than to continue to hide the fact that I wanted him desperately.
“Liberty?” I heard the surprise in his voice as he turned to address me. “What are you doing here?”
I shrugged, feeling a bit self-conscious all of a sudden. What if I put myself out there, and he wasn’t interested? “We’re both still in our bathing suits. All the kids are in their cabins. Would you like to go for a dip in the lake?”
His eyes widened as he looked off in the direction of the large body of water. All of the slides and other inflatables had been taken down after the lakeside party, so it was just a placid sheet of glass in the distance, but it was beautiful with the stars reflecting off the surface. “I don’t know.”
It was understandable to me why he wouldn’t want to go. This was his camp. He was in charge here. A good night’s rest, a level head, all of those things were important. Yet, I found myself refusing to walk away. “Come on. You know you want to, Joshy.” I grinned at him, the childhood nickname I’d given him whenever I was trying to convince him to do something we were probably going to get in trouble for sliding off my tongue.
“Joshy?” He snickered, shaking his head. “You haven’t called me that in years.”
“I haven’t tried to get you to live on the wild side for years, either,” I reminded him. Stepping forward, I extended my hand. “No one’s gonna know.” Another line I’d used on him when I wanted him to break a family rule.
He sighed heavily, but then his warm fingers wrapped around me, and giggles exploded from me as I took off running toward the lake, dragging him at first until he started to laugh as well, and then we were both running, two kids sneaking out, evading their parents’ watchful eyes.
It only took a few moments for us to reach the lake. We stopped on the dock, our toes on the edge of the wood, our hands still intertwined, as we looked out over the still water.
“It’s beautiful,” I murmured, taking it all in. The trees on the perimeter swayed slightly in a breeze that barely rippled the surface of the water.
“Yeah. Beautiful.” When I turned to look at Joshua, he wasn’t even looking at the lake. He was staring at me.
He was saying that I was beautiful. My stomach contracted, and the urge to push up on my tiptoes and kiss him was overwhelming. A vision of my brother’s face filled my mind’s eye, so rather than doing that, I did the exact opposite.
Giving Joshua a little shove, I watched him plummet into the water. “Hey!” he shouted just as he disappeared beneath the surface. I couldn’t help but laugh as I backed up a few steps and took off running, tucking my knees to my chest and dropping into the lake next to where he’d resurfaced. My cannonball sent a splash over the dock, hitting Joshua in the face so that when I came back up, he was wiping water from his face.
Both of us laughed as we hovered near one another, treading water. I knew a few areas that were more shallow, but both of us were capable of treading water for a long period of time without much effort, so we just hung out there for a few moments, enjoying the sounds of the insects and night creatures calling to one another.
Then, another noise hit my ears, and I couldn’t believe how unbelievably loud it truly was. “Do you hear that?” I asked him, my eyes bulging from my skull.
“What? The frogs?”
“No, that noise that sounds like a fucking freight train,” I said. “It’s a low rumble off in the distance. If you’re super quiet, you can hear it.”
Joshua scrunched up his face and inclined his head back toward the cabins. At first, I could tell he wasn’t picking up on it. But then, recognition sank in, and I could see confusion shift his expression. “What the hell is that?”
“You don’t know?” I groaned and flopped onto my back, doing a few back strokes out into the lake in a failed attempt to get away from the sound. He came along with me. “It’s Karrie. She snores like a dying buffalo.”
“What?” Joshua was laughing, but when I pulled up, leaning forward to start treading water again, he could see that I was serious. “That obnoxious noise coming from all the way over there is Karrie snoring?”
“Yes. This is why I’ve been so tired all the time. A lot of the girls have earplugs, but I didn’t bring any. I wish I had a white noise machine, or a fucking fan or something. It’s utterly ridiculous how loud she is.” I knew I was complaining, and he would likely feel bad for not being aware of the situation and fixing it, but I wasn’t blaming him.
“Damn. If you would’ve told me it was one of the big guys, like Coach Sam, I would’ve believed it, but it’s hard to imagine little Karrie making that noise.” He shook his head in disbelief.
I didn’t like the way he called her “little Karrie.” What was that supposed to mean? Why was he checking out her size?
I was being ridiculous, I knew. “I’m positive it’s her. The same noises have kept me up the last few nights.”
Joshua nodded, and I could tell he believed me then. “Well, I have a few empty bunks in my cabin still if you want to stay in there. Can’t be any worse.”