Make Me Hate You(14)

Even in the dim light, I could see the smirk on his stupid face as he made two long strides toward me. “Swimming, of course.”

“Swimming involves moving,” I pointed out. “I’ve been out here for at least two minutes and there hasn’t been a single splash in that pool.”

“Two minutes, huh?” he asked, draping his arms over the edge of the pool and looking up at me. The way his arms rested, his biceps bulged, the muscles in his shoulders and traps accented by the shadows and the moonlight. “Might be a new record.”

I cocked a brow.

“I was sitting at the bottom,” he explained.

“Holding your breath,” I deadpanned. “Like a child.”

“Hey, don’t knock it until you try it. It’s peaceful down there.”

My heart was still pounding hard, trying to level itself out after my near heart attack as I sat back down at the table. I adjusted the screen of my laptop, deciding it was better to pretend Tyler wasn’t there at all and do what I’d come outside to do in the first place.

Work.

“Wanna try it?”

I was already slipping into work mode, pulling up my outline for the podcast I was guest starring on in a few days. “Try what?”

“Sitting at the bottom.”

“I’ll pass.”

He chuckled, and in my peripheral, I saw him lift himself out of the water on two strong arms. He sat on the edge, facing me with one leg still dangling in the water.

I didn’t dare look at the rest of him.

“You know, the Jasmine I used to know liked to have fun. She was spontaneous. Goofy.”

My nose flared, and the longer I tried to read my outline, the more I read the same sentence over and over with a red filter fogging my vision. “Yeah, well, I’m not the girl you used to know.” I looked at him then. “Maybe you never knew me at all.”

I didn’t watch him long enough to see his reaction to that. I just turned my attention back to work, tuning him out.

Except the motherfucker laughed, and stood, walking over to me with water dripping off every inch of him. His swim trunks were black, and they were the only thing covering him. The rest of him stood on display in the dim moonlight, the mounds and dips of his abs having only grown more defined in the years since I’d been gone. A thin trail of hair sprawled up from the band of his shorts to the middle of his chest, which was new and unfamiliar, but I still remembered the way his abs creased where they met his hips in a thick V.

I swallowed the nearer he came, snapping my eyes back to my laptop screen when he was close enough to possibly notice the way I was staring at him.

“You’re so prickly,” he said.

And then, his wet hands reached forward and shut my laptop.

“Hey!”

“Come on,” he said, reaching out a hand for mine. “I haven’t seen you in years. Swim with me.”

I scowled, flipping my laptop back up. “I’m working.”

“It’s ten o’clock at night,” he said, as if that mattered. “And you’ve been working all day. Maybe not on your podcast, but on my sister’s wedding, which is just as difficult. Come on,” he said again. “Take a break.”

It wasn’t like me to be prickly, as he had so casually pointed out. He was right — I was the happy, bubbly girl. The life of the party. I didn’t do conflict. If anything, I did everything I could to avoid the things in my life that were painful.

But there was something about that man that drove me absolutely mad.

And I couldn’t just avoid him.

Not anymore.

“Look,” I snapped. “Maybe you can afford to just take time off and dick around, but I’ve got an outline to review for a podcast I’ll be on in three days that has seven-million listeners per episode on average. Okay? So, please, sit at the bottom of the pool or swim or do whatever you want but just… leave me alone.”

I effectively ignored him then, eyes on my laptop screen as he stood there, water still dripping off his shorts and his hair, pooling at his feet on the stone that surrounded the pool. He stood there for a long while, seemingly waiting for me to look at him again. But when I didn’t, he finally backed away.

“Suit yourself,” he said.

And then, he ran at the pool full speed and launched himself into a cannon ball that sent a splash so high it covered me completely.

The water was warm, but as soon as it hit me, it was immediately cooled by the night air, and I sat there with my mouth open in shock, cardigan sticking to my arms, hair matting my forehead, every inch of me trembling.

Tyler emerged from the water on a laugh, swimming to the edge of the pool again. “Oh, shit, Jaz,” he said, still laughing, and I hated the way my stomach flipped at him using my nickname, at how I relived a thousand summer nights with the sound of his deep-chested laugh. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

But I didn’t listen. My lips pursed, I slammed my laptop shut again, thankful that it had at least been spared from the splash for the most part. It had a little water on the keyboard and screen, but not enough to hurt it, and I held it away from the soaked parts of myself as I stood and stormed toward the house.

“Jaz, wait!” Tyler was still laughing, but he turned more serious as he heaved himself out of the pool and tried to chase after me. “Come on, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.”