Daring the Bad Boy (Endless Summer)(42)

He laughed, like he could read my mind. “I only said that because we’re going to get in the water like, right now.”

“Right,” I said, laughing along with him. “I think I’ll wait.”

“Your choice.” He shrugged, the laughter dying on his lips before he said, his voice soft, “Tell me what happened to you when you were four, Annie.”

I sat up straighter, all dirty thoughts fleeing my brain like they were being chased out. And they were, because I had a flash of memory. Of the water sucking me under, of me struggling.

Of feeling like I was dying.

“You can trust me with your secret, I promise. I won’t tell anyone else.” His voice was gentle, as were his eyes, and I pressed my lips together, not wanting to talk about it. It wasn’t a subject I was comfortable sharing, only because I hadn’t talked about the incident in so long. I’d rather forget it ever happened.

“How about I tell you something that I’ve never told anyone else first,” he suggested.

I raised my brows, surprised by his offer. “Like what?”

He looked down, staring at the water. “My mom died three years ago, when I was fourteen. She had cancer. It came…really fast so she didn’t suffer for too long or anything like that, but it was so quick that it felt like one day she was there, and the next, she was just…gone.”

“I’m so sorry,” I automatically said, feeling awful. I couldn’t imagine losing my parents. I don’t know what I would do, how I would react.

“You don’t have to apologize. It was just…it was hard. I was scared and mad. Mad at my mom for leaving me, though she didn’t have a choice. I was just really confused. My dad retreated. He didn’t want to talk about it, or talk about her. He acted like he wanted to just move on and pretend she never existed.”

“That sounds awful,” I said softly.

“It was. He didn’t know how to mourn, I think. It suddenly became the two of us on our own, and we didn’t realize what she did for us until she was gone, you know? He was never around. He became a complete workaholic, and I spent a lot of time alone.” Jake hesitated. “And eventually I got…into a lot of trouble.”

I remembered the rumors I heard about him being a criminal, and how Presley had declared him even hotter when she heard that bit of gossip. I hadn’t believed the criminal stories at the time, and he’d been so sweet to me I hadn’t thought much about the rumors since, but here was Jake confirming everything. “Oh,” I murmured, not sure what else I could say.

“Like, throw me in juvie, threaten me with jail and probation type trouble.” He turned to look at me, his expression serious, his eyes dark as he watched me. “I just wanted you to know the truth. In case that changed your mind about me.”

I frowned. “Why would it change my mind about you?”

“I don’t know. We had a rocky start, you gotta admit that,” he said wryly, his lips tipping up at the corners in an almost-smile. “I wanted you to find out all my dirty secrets from me, not from someone else.”

“Oh,” I said again, at a loss for words. That my opinion of him mattered so much made me feel fluttery inside. “Well, I appreciate that.”

“I just wanted to be up front with you.”

“Do you still do those things? Whatever it was you did that got you in trouble?”

He looked away, squinting as he watched the darkening sky. “Not in a while. I’m under constant watch by my uncle. That’s why I’m here, actually. My dad didn’t know what else to do with me.”

His admission made my heart ache. Did he feel unwanted? If my parents shipped me off to camp because they didn’t know what else to do with me, I think I’d feel that way. At least he had his uncle here, but they didn’t seem that close. Now that he’d mentioned it, I never really saw him hanging out with friends or anything like that. Not really. He worked all the time.

I’d seen him with Dane and knew they shared one of the staff cabins. At first he was hanging out with Kyle, but they weren’t around each other much anymore. He and Brian were friendly, too, but Brian had been spending all of his free time with Hannah lately—trust me, everyone in our cabin knew this, since Hannah left pretty much every night to be with Brian.

Did Jake have any real friends here? I didn’t want to ask because I didn’t want to embarrass him. So I tried a different tactic. “Do you like working here?”

He shrugged and looked away again. “I guess. I don’t know. I feel like I’m being forced to do this, so my heart’s not fully in it, you know?”

“Yeah, I know. The summer is almost over, but maybe you should try. It’s not so bad here. And everyone likes you.” I leaned into him and nudged his shoulder with mine. “We should get the swimming lesson started.”

He glanced down at where our shoulders were still pressed together before lifting his gaze to mine. “You still want to go through with this?”

“Of course I do. I have to work on it so I can get enough courage to actually hang out at the pool with my friends and maybe even really swim.” At his doubtful look I added, “Or at the very least, I could become a really good doggy-paddler.”

I smiled and he chuckled, and for the briefest moment, with us sitting so close, our shoulders brushing, the both of us breathing the same air, I thought he might…I don’t know.