Tragic Beauty (Beauty & The Darkness #1)(13)
I shake my head, still staring out the slider.
“Why not?”
I’m embarrassed to say it, so stay quiet.
“What’s the matter, can’t swim?” he jokes.
By the way I turn sharply to look at him, he knows he called it.
“It’s no biggie,” he says gently. “There’s a shallow area.”
My eyes flick back out the slider, then to him again. “But…now?”
He nods and grins, looking like a little boy who wants to play his favorite game. I haven’t seen him smile like that before. The heat comes up in my skin and I turn back to the pool. It’s a long, narrow rectangle, with a carved out triangle in the middle, that looks like the shallow area, with steps leading down—steps that seem to tug at my feet.
Truth is, I want to go in, desperately.
I look down at my clothes and realize I wouldn’t have anything to wear anyway.
Gavin turns and heads for the stairs. “Be right back.”
Moments later, I hear his steps and turn around to see him walking up to me in nothing but black swim trucks. I blink, and can’t stop staring. Can’t stop my eyes from wandering over the carved out muscles, the rippled abs, the narrow hips and strong shoulders. When our eyes meet, he wears a small smile that tugs at the corner of his lips. I look away as fire explodes across my cheeks.
It isn’t until he extends his arm out that I realize he has clothes in one hand and towels in the other.
“Here,” he says, handing me the clothes.
I take them with a shaky hand. It’s black boxer briefs and a wife-beater tank top. I should be distracted at the thought of holding Gavin West’s underwear, but all I can do is focus on the white tank top.
“It’s all I had that would be small enough,” he says.
I look up and see the mischievous smile in his eyes, then turn around, back to the pool. It beckons, taunting me with its beauty and magic.
“I’ll be a gentleman, I swear,” he whispers, close to my ear.
My pulse spikes at the sound of his voice.
The air shifts and he’s standing beside me, gazing out at the pool too. “Come on. Swim in the rain with me, Ava.”
My name on his tongue catches me off guard and I look at him, wanting him to say it a thousand more times. Gavin turns to me and our eyes meet. “You’re safe with me, I promise.” By the sincerity in his voice, I know he means it. “And besides, if you can go out wearing that scrap of a dress, then you can wear that. Now go change.”
I look down at the clothes, back to the pool, then turn and go to my room. After I change, I look at myself in the mirror, wondering how bad it is. My breasts, not big, but somewhat large for my small frame, push through the fabric, my nipples just barely visible, but I know that will change the moment I get wet. His boxer briefs hug my boyish hips but still feel a little loose so I’ll need to be careful when they get wet. I turn around, and look at my backside, then face front again, and frown. I look almost childlike, compared to that woman, Candace. Maybe I’m thinking that way because of what she said, but I know she’s right. I look young for my age. And I don’t have the shapely hips, or the crazy cleavage, or the long legs like her…but…I think I look alright. At least, I hope I do anyway.
I keep staring at my reflection, when the face of my mother appears in the mirror. It’s eerie how much I look like her. We have the same high cheekbones, the same bow-shaped lips, the same cream colored skin that turns golden in summertime. But perhaps what’s most similar, are the big almond shaped eyes, the ‘color of blue diamonds’ my mom used to say, with thick dark lashes that make it look like I’m constantly wearing eyeliner. I’ve always thought it was strange, that they should be so dark, when my hair is such a pale blonde. And she had the same hair too, but while I always kept mine long and all one length, like now—because that’s been easiest—she kept hers cut short, because she liked to do it up all the time, like Marilyn Monroe, who she renamed herself after, once she turned eighteen. She named me after Ava Gardner. She even tried once to get me to dye my hair black, when I was eight. She got me cornered in the bathroom and almost tried to force it on me because I wouldn’t do it. I was just scared is all, because I thought it’d stay that way forever. She said it wouldn’t, but I thought it was a trick. She’d do that sometimes. She was good at tricks. And she kept at it, getting so mad, but when I got to crying, she gave up.
Maybe that’s why she really left.
I let her go, then get to thinking about my reason for heading out tonight. We’ll be half-naked and wet, which in some ways is a step in that direction I guess, but somehow it doesn’t feel right. Not because I don’t want him, but because it feels like I would be using him. In a bar or a nightclub, like I planned originally, it seems more like fair game. Like that’s what would be expected when two people hook up while out for a good time. But this, the way Gavin and I have been thrown together, it isn’t the same. There’s no future for us, not that he would want one with me anyway, but it feels like it would be wrong to try to seduce him. So while the thought of Shayne being my first is enough to make my stomach turn, I decide to let it go. The thought is a reminder though, of what I have waiting for me when I return home. But it feels a world away, like I’ve slipped into some fairy tale that inevitably has to end.