Tumble (Dogwood Lane #1)(46)

“She worked on that for three nights.” He squeezes my hand. “Now jump.”

“You realize three little girls just did this without help, right?” I ask, enjoying the warmth of his palm.

“Country girls. You’re a city slicker now.”

“I am not.”

He wrinkles his face at the defiance in my tone. It takes me aback too. I don’t know why I took that as an almost-insult, but I did.

“Jump,” Dane says.

Determined to show him I’m not a city slicker, I leap across the trench with gusto. My toe catches on a tree root, and I crash into Dane’s arms.

We both gasp as his arms wrap around my waist and my chest hits his. It takes a second to get my head together. I can feel his heart beat against my cheek. His cologne hangs in the air, but being so close, I can smell him—the oils on his skin. The sweetness of his breath. The scent that’s strongest in the crook of his neck.

He grins as I look up, trying to catch my breath.

“Good thing I warned you,” he teases.

“Yeah,” I pant. “Good thing.”

His palms lie flat against the small of my back. His fingers flex against my shirt. Our eyes stay locked together, a grin tickling the corner of his lips.

Whether it’s too much contact or the sweet summer air, all my sense of reality is lost. I fall happily into his gaze. My lungs fill, my heart skips as he begins to lower his head to mine.

He pulls me closer to him. I lock my hands around his waist. We fit together like a puzzle in the middle of this little forest.

Just as his lips dip toward mine, his eyes sparkling like a million stars in the sky, Mia shouts, “Dad! Are you coming or what?”

I sag, unable to catch myself from laughing. A deflated balloon, I blow out the rest of the air I’ve been holding.

“Damn kid.” He chuckles, flexing his fingers against me. “Coming, Mia, darling.”

“Hurry up. We want to play in the water,” she calls back.

He holds me for a moment longer. I soak up the sturdiness of his body and the way his arms feel around me. I breathe him in one final time before planting my hands on his chest and pressing gently away.

His head bows as he turns toward the creek.

The rest of the walk is quiet. The logical part of my brain chastises me for caving. The human side declares it’s only that—human. How was I to resist being in his arms when it feels like I was just there? Like, somehow, being nestled against him is as natural as being on a balance beam?

The girls see us coming and waste no time getting closer to the water. They toss in rocks and limbs and find a frog on the other bank, but Dane won’t let them that far out to grab it.

I pick out a spot of grass beneath a tree and plop down. Dane teaches the girls how to skip rocks across the water. He doesn’t get frustrated when they ask the same questions over and over, nor does he become irritated when they do exactly the opposite of what he tells them. He just smiles and repeats himself or shows them again.

They play at the water’s edge for a long time. I join them as they attempt to build a dam. When it washes out, so does their excitement.

“Can we head back to the church now?” Keyarah asks. “I’m thirsty.”

“Me too,” Madison agrees.

“Yeah. Go on,” Dane says. “Stay on the path. We’ll be behind you shortly.”

“Can I ask you a question?” Keyarah giggles. “Are you boyfriend and girlfriend?”

My eyes whip to Mia. She’s biting her bottom lip just like her dad does when he’s nervous. She looks at me for an answer.

“No,” I say as cheerily as I can. “Dane and I are friends. We grew up together.”

“My mom said you two used to be boyfriend and girlfriend,” Keyarah says. “We were looking through her old yearbooks, and I saw a picture of you together.”

“Like I said, we grew up together.” I look at Dane for support. “That’s all it is.”

“That’s all it is.” He casts a somber look at me before turning back to the girls. “Stay together and go straight to the church. Got it?”

“Got it,” Mia says. She flashes us a peace sign before they trample off the way we came.

Dane sits next to me. He stretches out, propping up on his elbows. He joins me in glancing across the water.

We don’t say anything for a long time. I wonder if he’s replaying the trip down here like I am. Just as I get to the part where he almost kisses me, he chuckles.

“What?” I ask.

“I don’t remember being their age and knowing what a girlfriend and boyfriend even were. Girls were gross.”

“I wasn’t a fan of boys until a green-eyed brother of a little punk in my class showed up at my front door,” I say. “That sort of changed things for me.”

He laughs, looking up at the clouds. “I remember going home that night and trying to get all the information I could about you from Matt. Of course, being the idiot he is, he knew nothing. He was like, ‘Uh, I think she brings her lunch and doesn’t get a tray in the cafeteria.’”

“Well, that was true.” I laugh. “You were the first boy I ever had a crush on. My first kiss. My first . . . everything.”

The clouds shift overhead, allowing the sun to break free. It glimmers off the trickling water below us.